Adding the auction to a keeper league

[dsm0114]

Our league has traditionally done a snake draft but will be moving toward an auction this year. We have increased the number of keepers each year and are sitting at 6 right now. There is talk of us easing into a dynasty league but there is also a lot of reluctance about a rookie-only draft.

The big issue right now is how to switch over to the auction in a way that awards teams that have found good keepers and engages the teams that have not -- creating a league with some checks and balances. The idea is to still allow for up to 6 players to be kept per team. We are considering a $200 cap, with a cost of $5/$10/$15/$20/$25/$30 for each consecutive player kept up to 6. This would allow for a team happy with its keepers to pay flat rates, but would also allow a team that opts for fewer keepers to have comparably more bidding money.

Does this system work for now and the long run? How could it be tweaked? Could this allow for a dynasty option that is not mandatory?

[norton7613]

I actually like that system. I've been running a league for about 3 years and have been learning more and more about what works and how I want the league to be. Next year we are taking a step further toward a keeper/dynasty type league. One of the biggest issues I'm running into is people complaining about the draft being so depleted. I keep saying explaining that that is kind of the point, but ugh.

Anyway, my point is I am trying to convince the league to use an auction draft to make the full reset next year and your system sounds like it would work well. I'm really curious what people think on this.

[DTMan]

This is a cool problem.

I would try to do something consistent with how keepers have been "priced" in terms of draft picks up to this point.

One idea is to use the results of a 2012 auction re-draft from an experienced league with the same number of owners and roster spots as your league has and use that as a baseline for determining keeper values. Since I assume that keeper prices under your league's current rules are based on the round each player was picked, you could easily determine the average 2012 (and 2011, and 2010 and so on if necessary) auction cost of players in each round and use those numbers.

For example, let's say the average cost of the 10 or 12 guys taken in round 1 was $50 and the average cost of the round 2 picks was $35 and the average round 3 pick was $25. If your current rules state that a keeper costs the draft pick in the round he was taken last year, you could now say that keeping a guy drafted in round 1 is $50. If your current rules call for keepers getting one round more expensive each year they are kept, you could escalate the auction keeper price in a similar way. In that model I might use a flat increase ($5) instead of bumping up to the next round's price, but that's just personal preference.

I like that system better than the flat rate pricing because it enables more keeping of good sleeper draft picks. Just considering my own team under the flat rate model, it'd be awesome (but maybe unfairly cheap?) to keep Calvin Johnson for $5 and Arian Foster for $10 and then AJ Green for $15, but then I wouldn't be able to keep, say, David Wilson for $20. Whereas since Wilson was a $1 draft pick who might have been a 15th rounder in a snake draft, I should probably be able to hold onto him for a buck or two or six.

I think the main variable in figuring out how to make something like that work for your league is how far back the keepers go and how to use past years' auction data to assign fair prices to guys who have been kept for years. But again, I think the answer is to come up with something that values them fairly equivalently to how they are priced in the existing system.

Good luck - I love this question and if you want to discuss it further in this thread, I'm happy to participate.

Dan

[DTMan]

I was just walking my dog and thinking about this more and there's an easier way to say what I said before.

Basically, if a guy drafted Brady in the 2nd round a couple years ago and keeping him has cost a 2nd round pick each year since then, I'd assign Brady an average 2nd round pick cost ($35 in my previous example).

If a guy drafted Rice in the 8th round when he first came into the league and then kept him for a 7th round pick and then a 6th rounder and then a 5th, I'd assign him a typical 4th round pick cost (say $18) for 2013.

If for some reason keepers are basically free and keeping four guys just means you don't get your last four picks, then I'd say that the first keeper costs a typical 15th round cost ($1), the second one costs like a 14th rounder ($1 or $2), the third costs a 13th rounder (maybe $3) and so on.

When I say "1st rounder" in regard to an auction draft, I mean the 10 most expensive players in a 10-team league or the 12 most expensive in a 12-team league and when I say "15th rounder" I mean the 141st to 150th most expensive players in a 10-team league or the 169th to 180th most expensive players in a 12 team league.

To me that's a simple and fair translation of your current rules.

Dan