Draft Order in a Keeper Leauge

[fsbarren]

I'm in a 14-team 5x5 roto league and this is the first year we're using keepers. We each keep three players (and it must be three).

My question: Originally, we were planning to make this season's draft order the reverse of last season's final standings. I've been advocating that the draft order should be based on ranking of the three keepers for each team. In essence, the team with the weakest keepers would pick first and the team with the three best keepers would pick last. I've advocated using either ESPN's rankings or an average of ESPN/CBS/Yahoo.

I won the league last season and I have the best keepers, so I'll pick last either way. I'm simply advocating that a draft order based on keeper ranking is fairer, as the second place team last season might be been really balanced and so his keepers are weak, or a the last place team might be poor overall but with three tremendous keepers.

Just wanted to get some input as to what other managers do or what they think is the right way to handle this.

Thanks.

[StoneColdBrown]

I think inverse order of standings is better. Your argument for the average keepers assumes that the incremental difference between each of the 42 keepers is the same, which is nearly impossible from a mathematical sense. Stated anther way, you're assuming that there's no huge drop-off anywhere in the first three rounds.

[NBH]

Great question - I think the answer depends on your goal. Is the goal to have the most balance going into the 2013 season or is the goal to give a reward to the teams that finished the lowest?

If your goal is to put everyone on near equal footing going into 2013 then I really like the idea of ranking keepers - add up the rank for all three keepers (using whatever site you prefer) and rank your teams that way - the "best" teams going into 2013 will have the lowest scores (e.g. Votto-Verlander-Braun will sum up to ~20 while Longo-Cain-Bruce will sum up to ~75). The teams with the highest scores draft first, which is a big advantage in a keeper league because they get to pick the players that were ranked better than 36 but were not able to be kept because a team had more than 3 guys ranked in the top 36. In my league the correlation between 2013 keepers and the 2012 finish in the standings is not terribly strong. The guy with the best keepers finished around 6th out of 12. The last place team in my league has strong keepers - not weak keepers.

If your goal is to help out the weaker teams from 2012 (ostensibly because they have weaker owners and need help) then letting them pick first gives them an advantage.

One big thing to consider is if the teams with the best keepers obtained those keepers via trade - because they were out of the running in 2012 and traded quantity for quality in order to retool for 2013. If your last place guy has the best keepers because he was out of the running in 2012 and dumped everyone via trade in order to get the best keepers, he/she will get the last pick under your system but the first pick under the system of inverse standing. I don't know what is fair in that situation - the guy with the best keepers already has a leg up (his reward for making dump trades and finishing last in 2012) - now you're going to give him another boost by letting him pick first because he finished last?

In our league we do it random each season - every year we vote and it's usually 10 votes to 2 for random. I like random - there are fewer ways to manipulate the system.

[NBH]

Thinking over the other comment:

"I think inverse order of standings is better. Your argument for the average keepers assumes that the incremental difference between each of the 42 keepers is the same, which is nearly impossible from a mathematical sense. Stated anther way, you're assuming that there's no huge drop-off anywhere in the first three rounds."

It's a great point - to work around it you can use auction $$$ values instead of rankings. The big sites put an auction $$$ amount on all the players when they rank them - that $$$ figure captures the incremental difference between keepers. So keepers A-B-C could be "worth" $75 ($30 + $25 + $20) while keepers D-E-F could be "worth" $50 ($20 + $20 + $10). So the guy with $50 would pick before the guy with $75. I actually really like that setup.

[fsbarren]

Thanks guys. I really like the idea of auction values for calculating keeper rankings. Thanks to everyone.

[RotoValue]

Thanks guys. I really like the idea of auction values for calculating keeper rankings. Thanks to everyone.

Make sure the values you use match your format. For 5x5 it's probably not much of an issue, but as your rules differ, player values can differ as well. Leadoff men are much more valuable in 5x5 than in 4x4, and 5x5 puts a little more weight on pitching relative to offense (strikeouts as another cumulative category gives starters more value).

Of course, now that you've gone this far, maybe it's time to switch from a draft to an auction anyhow, and setting salary caps!

One other thing to be aware of: what stats are fed into a pricing model? Do you want to determine keeper value by using actual 2012 stats, or some sort of projection for 2013?

[germani40]

I feel like this idea could be exploited. Someone has 1 great keeper and a couple average keepers they just decide to keep a couple crappy players to get the first overall pick. Or if you use the auction value way you could just keep your 1 stud and 2 prospects like Bundy and Profar and since their auction value is probably only a couple dollars their keeper ranking will be low when in reality it isnt.

[pvhawkeye]

Especially for a 6 month long season you want to prevent tanking for those top picks. It could really ruin your league and you'll have to try to put a stop to it after it's been going on for a month or longer by making up rules on the fly.
Here's the offseason draft order my league uses:
12 teams - 4 teams make playoffs
Picks 1-8 will be assigned to the 8 non-playoff teams the previous year RANDOMLY. 5th place finisher has equal chance of pick 1 as 12th place.
Also, our offseason draft will be 16 rounds (multiple of 8). In round 2, the 1-8 picks will be reassigned randomly and this will continue so every non-playoff team has picks 1-8 twice each. For example, each team will have pick 1 twice, pick 2 twice etc for the 16 rounds. Mean while, the 4 playoff teams will just be the last 4 in reverse order of finish since there's no reason to tank it in the playoffs when prize money is on the line.

Please help my commish question? viewtopic.php?t=454817

[jefferey13]

My vote is reverse order for those who finished in the money and then randomize the rest. No tanking for first pick. I also don't like assigning keeper values to get first pick. For instance if I took Trout high in the draft last year before anyone else, I shouldn't be penalized this coming year because my intuition paid off.

[fernkes2]

an alternative to reverse order.

In my league first second and third get paid. So we do 4th through 10th as picks 1-7. then 3rd 2nd and 1st as picks 8-10 respectively. thus allowing no team to give up through the year or collusion. And it rewards the 4th place team for his effort to get 1st pick.