1.29.2008

Bad Santa Keeper Idea

I thought of an idea to make keepers a little more interesting and dangerous. If you have seen the Christmas episode of the Office, you'll remember that each employee bought a Secret Santa gift for another employee (except Kevin who got himself and did not tell anyone). However, Michael had a trick up his sleeve - he started a Bad Santa game. In "Bad Santa," each employee has a turn to keep their gift or take someone else's. In any event, it led to hilarity.

Now, I am not going to advocate that particular procedure, but I think we can apply the spirit of Bad Santa to fantasy baseball. I suggest that there be two tiers of keepers, let's call them Type A and Type B. Type A keepers are untouchable. Type B keepers can be grabbed from another player under some circumstances. I haven't decided what those circumstances should be. They probably should be when the second player is willing to pay more for the player than the first player is willing to pay. A procedure could be sometime in the month preceding the draft, kind of parallel to the minor league draft, each player participates in a silent auction for Type B keepers. This is done through an e-mail to commissioner (or designated agent, since it's probably a good idea to separate responsibilities for the minor league draft and the "Bad Santa" draft). These e-mails will remain unopened until the end of the bidding period. At the end, the commissioner will distribute the highest bid e-mail to the person with the keeper, and that person will have a couple of days to decide whether to match it. If not, then that player will give up the keeper. That is the basic idea.

Details beyond that which need to be decided include amount of Type A and Type B keepers, and number of bids.

Does anyone like this idea?

2 comments:

JP said...

I saw "The Office" episode in question and yet I am a bit confused. If we can protect 4 players as A Keepers, are the B Keepers just a pre-auction auction via silent bid?

Rich said...

I think that is a fair summary. I didn't say anything about numbers.