Keeper league expanding

[Talos]

Hello,


We're going into our 5th year. The first 4 we've moved up and down between 10-12 teams. This year there seems to be some momentum and we're getting more request than open teams. My original desire was to bump to 14 teams, but I'm wondering if we have the desire from good active owners (and there's a $50 entry fee) it might make more sense to bump the league to more teams.

Any suggestions on what the sweet spot is for # of teams (AL/NL mixed)? As a general rule, given my situation, what's better - more teams (say 16?) or bumping up the entry fee to weed out 1-2 and stick with 14?

[lane_anasazi2]

I would rather have 12 great managers than 12 good ones and 4 flaky ones. All things being equal, though - assuming the guys you're filling your spots with are quality managers - I'd say 14-16 teams is the sweet spot. I like larger leagues myself. I play in two 20-team dynasties that are both really fun.

[Talos]

Ay negative to more teams?

[lane_anasazi2]

Drafts take longer, certain positions become almost impossible to fill on the WW (not really a negative in my book), there's usually more separation between top and bottom teams, so bottom teams tend to get apathetic as the year goes on... again, not a problem if you have the right managers.

[Fantasy Sports Genie]

This isn't what I thought you were going to end up asking heh

The optimal size of a league is really a matter of taste, and depends a lot on how intense your owners want to be. What I *thought* you were going to ask was how to fairly add new teams to an existing keeper league. My keeper league has grown twice (once from 12 to 14, and once from 14 to 16). The first time we held an expansion draft; every team could protect like... 3 guys? It was a while ago. When one of the expansion teams grabbed somebody from your team, you could then protect 4 or 5 more, and then again if you lost a 3rd player. I forget. Whatever it was, the numbers were picked so that the expansion teams would be at a disadvantage, but not a horrible disadvantage. So say my league had 12 teams and was adding two. You can figure that would mean that each new team would end up with something like 6 "number 4 guys", 6 "number 9 guys", etc. etc. So an existing team would have
1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14
for their first 12 players, and an expansion team would have something like
4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10
for their first 12 players. For an existing team, after 12 players, their average player would be about a "#7.5 guy", and an expansion team's average player would be about a "#7 guy". That sounds too kind to the expansion teams, so that probably isn't exactly what I did, but hopefully you get the idea.

The second time we took it as an opportunity to redraft and revamp our rules. One of the downsides to our keeper league is it is tough to change rules; almost any rule change is met with, "Whoa! If I'd known we were going to do THAT, I would never have protected Soandso" etc. etc. So all our rule changes get pushed out an extra year to let people adapt.