2.14.2007

And a new contender enters ...

justin said...

An auction league definitely interests me. I would prefer to just go ahead and fold the keeper league into an auction draft. Given that I've managed to place in the bottom quartile of every FLB league for the past few years, I am not a candidate for managing teams in different leagues with different rules. Beyond setting a ~$30 price for the four keepers everyone gets this year, perhaps we should mandate the 2006 holdovers get dumped back into the draft pool next year. Otherwise whomever has Pujols and a couple of other clearly great players will have them locked in at the still great price for several years.

11 comments:

Rich said...

Initially, I am not in favor of a redo from last year. After all, we got those picks fair and square and we knew it would be a keeper league back then. You do have a point though and I could be convinced otherwise (especially since i don't feel like my keepers are good). But, if we resolved keeper value using the flat value approach in the future...then, we would just end up in the same place next year. Do you have a better suggestion?

Rich said...

Just to get the ball rolling - one alternative is to have have keeper cost = auction cost + $5 each year to account for inflation.

We could also acknowledge our keepers from last year even though we do a complete redo by giving whoever keeps a player(maybe limited to one or two) doesn't actually retain the player but retains the ability to outbid the top bidder by $1 after bidding closes.

Rich said...

I am in total agreement with my comments above. Also, I would set a floor for all keepers somewhere in the $20-30 range. This would allow you to profit off some good picks for the coming years, but not ridiculously so.

Dave said...

I guess my solution, building off what Rich said, would be to set some flat keeper rate for all keepers on rosters from last year, then have the inflation thing kick in starting next year. So, just spitballing, the keeper rate for guys on rosters last year would be $30. Then, going forward, keepers would always be whatever you paid last year for a guy, plus some inflation dollar amount. Therefore, guys we kept this year at $30, would be $35 to keep for next year and so on, whereas a guy purchased this year in the auction for $23 would be $28 to keep for next year and so on (assuming $5 is the inflation rate, though $5 seems a little steep but what do I know?). I also agree that there should be a floor value on keepers, with that value depending on the grade of inflation. I think if $5 is the inflation, the floor should be more like $15 than $20 in order to let somebody take advantage of their foresight for at least a few years (keeping in mind that there aren't too many players who are actually worth a bid of more than $25 or so out there from what I can tell, though that might be based on a $260 budget as opposed to a $300 budget). I think once we've established our budget, all other determinations related to value will be more manageable as we'll have a frame of reference. I would suggest either going with $260, as that's what seems to be the standard amount, or $300, for no other reason than it's a nice round number.

Rich said...

Just to update this thread, I talked with my brother, and he suggested that to take into account the fact that not all keepers are equal a two-tiered valuation of keepers for this year. Based on a $260 budget:

Group A (compromising elite keepers, think Pujols, top 10) - $30 to keep
Group B (compromising other keepers) - $25 to keep.

We two are agreed on a keeper floor tentively set at $20 for future years and inflation tentively set at $5. Thoughts?

Strobl said...

So much to comment on...

1)Overall budget: I think this is all relative. We can have $260 and spend less per player or $300 and spend more. Either way we'll need to price keepers accordingly and would probably assign a value at X% of the total budget. So I don't think the actual number matters all that much. $260 seems to be the common number.

2)Floor prices: This is to say that regardless of how little you draft a player for, it would be a minimum of $20 to keep him for the following season, correct? I agree that if you pay $5 for a guy and he busts out you shouldn't be able to lock him for the $5 +inflation only. I'm not sure about a suitable floor price, but I'll think about it.

3)Keeper values: This is the hardest issue in my opinion. It seems like the three most logical options are A) Price all keepers the same at a predetermined amount, B) Divide keepers into price tiers commensurate with performance and potential, C) use an outside reliable source to price them out. I have significant problems with each of these. Option A is just unfair- there's no way Pujols should be worth the same as a lower level keeper. On the other hand, this option puts everyone on (somewhat) equal ground to start in that we'd all be spending the same amount in the draft rounds. Option B worries me because it's subjective. Who's to say what constitutes tier 1 or tier 2? How many tiers would there be? Would we vote? This, to me, is dangerous. However, it is more fair than option A in that it accouints for disparities in talent among keepers. Option C is tough because it would probably undervalue young guys with big upsides and overvalue aging solid performers. However, it would be less subjective and more fair in contrast to A and B. I'm not sure what I think about this yet...

4)Inflation: I think this again depends on our budget. $5 inflation rate at $260 budget would be about 2% of the total, so that the same guy would cost an extra 2% of your total budget each year. I guess on the face of that seems pretty fair. We'll have to think about that too once we agree on a total.

Rich said...

let's settle on the $260 budget if there are no objections.

matt, just to take one thing out of your comment above, i think that a vote to determine the tiers would be a good idea - if people actually voted. we could compile a list of potential keepers (maybe just pull the top 40 from ESPN) and have people vote on who they think should be in the top tier. then, management can use this information to compile a list of the top tier with the non-binding goal of finding 10 such players. dare is say use a poll for this?

Strobl said...

I think the BP Player Forecast Manager is something we would want to seriously consider using.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=4793

Rich said...

actually, take that back. i think we should just vote and forget about the rest of the league. i don't think people will vote.

Rich said...

actually, an even better idea is to have everyone tell us who their top two keepers are, then we could decide who to assign a top tier status with parity in mind.

Dave said...

I agree with Rich's last idea, particularly as I had been about to post a similar idea. I'd say the way to work the tier system is to either 1)Have everyone pick a "top" keeper on their team and price that guy at tier 1 and have any other keepers priced in tier 2 or 2)have everyone provide their "top 2" keepers and then maybe pick the top 10 of those guys and assign them "tier 1" status and price them accordingly