FF2010: Keeper League discussion thread

I don't like D, it makes keeping someone more than 2 years nearly impossible. I prefer B, with a low salary floor.

I'm going to make an executive decision and go with A/B. The exact formula is still TBD but let's just say that D makes my brain hurt. A keeper salary floor will take care of any free FA pickups should that be the way the Fleaflicker operates.

That being the case, what is the inflation chart and what is the floor?

Grumpicus wrote:

The exact formula is still TBD

Discuss.

Grumpicus wrote:
Grumpicus wrote:

The exact formula is still TBD

Discuss. ;-)

Randomly throwing this out there:

5 keepers
10% + $1 inflation with $10 floor

So any player that was bought below $10 would be bumped up to $10 if kept. Any player above $10 would be 10% plus one dollar. All %s on the dollar are rounded up.

Buy $2 - Keep for $10
Buy $9 - Keep for $10
Buy $20 - Keep for $23
Buy $29 - Keep for $33
etc....

Or we could do an increasing inflation the more years you keep them. Say the first year is 10%, second is 15%, third is 20% etc...

ukickmydog wrote:

5 keepers

I am opposed to arbitrary keeper limits. Why 5? Why any specific number?

I am in favor of keeping as many or as few players as you want, based on your wishes and ability to fit them into your budget. (Obviously, your $200 roster is going to inflate beyond $200 the next year, so you can't keep everyone even if you wanted to, and others aren't going to be worth keeping at their inflated values. So I see little risk of people going all hardcore dynasty with their rosters, and as such, no need for arbitrary limits).

I think I might be in favor of a lower salary floor and a higher inflation rate than that. But I need to look at some average auction values and do some projecting.

*Legion* wrote:
ukickmydog wrote:

5 keepers

I am opposed to arbitrary keeper limits. Why 5? Why any specific number?

Agreed. If we're doing inflation, why impose limits?

Myself and others have run data sets and proposed tiered inflation percentages earlier in the thread. If you're going to post suggestions, back it up with some data, at the very least, and have a goal in mind. The values you posted will likely allow a player to be kept for the duration of their useful career, at least in the case of running backs. Is that something folks are really interested in? The inflation values we go with will have a huge effect on the balance of the league after a few years, and if there's any flaw in the values we use it's going to tip the balance in favor of those who are best able to exploit those flaws.

I'm going to lobby hard again here that we do not allow free agent acquisitions to be retained as keepers, for reasons detailed earlier.

Landshrk83 wrote:

If you're going to post suggestions, back it up with some data, at the very least, and have a goal in mind.

Well excuse me, I'll just not say anything then. I was just trying to get the conversation started, hence i said "just randomly throwing it out there".

Disclaimer: This is fairly stream-of-consciousness. Apologies if it rambles.

In 2008, CJ went for $5.
By 2009, he had skyrocketed to $46.
This past weekend, he went for $61 (as did Peterson).

Now that was an extreme example. Let's take the other player at the top of this year's lists. (Links are same as above.)
Adrian Peterson - 2008: $65, 2009: $61, 2010: $61

Ok, all that really tells us is that $65 (+/- $5 since LdT was "ranked" at $75 in 2008) is the rough top end.

And a couple more...
MJD: $31, $56, $57
Michael Turner: $19, $58, $47
Ray Rice: N/A, $12, $59
Pierre Thomas: $2, $19, $21

And one more of personal interest: Miles Austin, who I picked up last year for free (or maybe it was $1) right before his breakout game, went this year for $31.

Anyway, as I've mentioned before, I'd like to reward people who picked up CJ in '08, or Ray Rice or Miles Austin last year... but I don't want them to have them forever. My target is around 5 years (just like in the NFL?) if you grab a player right before he breaks out. Now I think the CJ and Miles Austin examples are a bit extreme but perhaps the Ray Rice one is a nice middle ground. So if you picked up Ray Rice last year for $12, I'd like you to be able to have him for a good four to six years.

I played with quite a few different variations (including tiered sets and 1/x formulas) but ultimately settled on one in particular based mostly on its simplicity. [color=#FF0000]Acquisition price +$11[/color].

Now if we accept $60 as the top end for working purposes, here's a couple different scenarios.

Chris Johnson: 5, 16, 27, 38, 49, 60 (6 years - the extreme case - until he is at his "peak" value)
MJD: 31, 42, 53 (3 years - though certainly longer if you picked him up his rookie season or in 2007)
Michael Turner: 19, 30, 41, 52 (4 years)
Ray Rice: 12, 23, 34, 45, 56 (5 years)
Pierre Thomas: 2, 13, 24 (3 years)
Miles Austin: 0, 11, 22, 33 (4 years)

Anyway, that's what I propose. A nice and simple keeper inflation value. [color=#FF0000]Previous year's price +$11[/color]. It might not be perfect but it's easy and "good enough" IMHO. Dissect and discuss.

Edit: I just took the first source I could find but this site had MJD at 2% of budget, or $4, in 2006, so his scale would look like this...
2006: $4
2007: $15
2008: $26
2009: $37
2010: $48
...which is in the neighborhood of the $53 that the ESPN guys "paid" for him and a decent discount from the $56 at which he's "rated." Also, if he's "elite" next year, you can hold on to him for $59. Once again, this falls into the "6 years if you have extreme foresight" category. Returning to thehuddle.com, MJD was up to $36 in 2007 at which point he becomes a roughly 3-year keeper instead of a 6-year so there's definitely an advantage to those who do their homework but it's not insurmountable.

Grumpicus wrote:

Anyway, that's what I propose. A nice and simple keeper inflation value. [color=#FF0000]Previous year's price +$11[/color].

The issue I have with this is that it makes it difficult to hang on to players that haven't broken out yet.

That may not be enough reason in itself to reject the proposal.

But if I took Earl Bennett last year at his $3 AAV, and I wanted to hang on to him this year because I think he's going to have some value in the new Martz offense, well, he'd be a $14 receiver in the +$11 system.

To me, +$11 takes care of undervalued superstars for sure, but at the expense of inflating the living crap out of everyone else.

Here's the AAV of WRs in current drafts.

$11 is the cost of the #24 wide receiver - which is a starting WR2. At the border of starting WR2 to starting WR3, but still, starting WR either way.

So inflating by $11 is inflating a player's value by the cost of a starting 2nd/3rd WR. That's a lot.

Grumpicus wrote:

Your list has him at $1. No formula goes from $3 one year to $1 the next. Taunting aside, that's a classic case of if you want him again, throw him back and draft him again.

OK smartass I could come up with a better example. But the larger point still stands. That inflation is the cost of a starting WR. It's a sensible amount for studs but it's awfully steep for the classes beneath them.

I think I might want to dust off LandShrk's floor + graduated inflation percentages from before.

Your list has him at $1. No formula goes from $3 one year to $1 the next. Taunting aside, that's a classic case of if you want him again, throw him back and draft him again.

Traditional keeper leagues generally only allow 2 - 4 keepers. I have no desire to impose such arbitrary limits (more overhead) but if my formula results in similar behavior, I'm ok with that. Remember, I'm also trying to keep it simple.

Edit: Thinking a bit more about how traditional keeper leagues do it, depending on the format, keeping a player generally costs you either your first round pick (with subsequent round for subsequent keepers) or a pick two rounds above the previous year's draft position. Now $11 might not "mirror" that so much at the bottom of the pool, but it's in the right neighborhood in the top half. Eh, try again.

A floor still puts him at $10...

Edit: Another format involves signing players to contracts...

Edit2: Keeper leagues generally aren't for keeping your whole roster.

Landshrk83 wrote:

The formula I found that came closest was this:
-Increase by 15% if value > $40
-Increase by 28% if value > $30 but < $40
-Increase by 41% if value > $20 but < $30
-Increase by 50% if value >$ 10 but < $20
-Increase value to $10 if value <$10
-If a price increase would push a player to the next bracket, he is instead increased at the lower rate.

Going back to page 2, and some wonderful analysis by Landshrk, I would vote for this system for inflation. We could round out the numbers more to be a 15/30/45/60% split in each tier if you want. It would make more sense to me so that the numbers are less random, even though I know they are driven by statistical analysis. I still prefer qualifying offer, for the record, but this looks like it would work.

Edit: Semi Tannhauser'd by legion.

Grumpicus wrote:

A floor still puts him at $10...

Edit: Another format involves signing players to contracts...

The way I read that, 'signing to contract' is basically a no inflation keep whomever you like strategy. I think we're trying to avoid that.

Grumpicus wrote:

A floor still puts him at $10...

I know. There's nothing that's going to fill my desire to go dynasty style and load up on all the guys I think are awesome future prospects.

But I like the $5 prospect becoming $10 a lot more than him becoming $16. At least guys that have started to pay off somewhat, I can consider keeping.

Edit: Another format involves signing players to contracts...

If we were to take it to that level, then I would no reason to not use the restricted free agency style instead.

That's true. At the same time, I don't want keepers to just be the equivalent of skipping the first 4 rounds of the draft, everyone just keeping the guys that would've been taken at the top of the draft. That's not really any more interesting than a redraft.

The example in this link defends against that by prohibiting keeping guys from the first 3 rounds of the draft. Obviously that doesn't work in an auction format, and I generally want to lean away from arbitrary things like that. I'd just like to figure out a keeper value system that allows lower-end players to still be worth keeping in at least some circumstances.

Jolly Bill wrote:

The way I read that, 'signing to contract' is basically a no inflation keep whomever you like strategy. I think we're trying to avoid that.

Yeah, just throwing out food for thought/conversation. Though I sort of read that as you're stuck if you overpay for a bust. Also not terribly fun. Increases risk:reward, though.

Jolly Bill wrote:
Landshrk83 wrote:

The formula I found that came closest was this:
-Increase by 15% if value > $40
-Increase by 28% if value > $30 but < $40
-Increase by 41% if value > $20 but < $30
-Increase by 50% if value >$ 10 but < $20
-Increase value to $10 if value <$10
-If a price increase would push a player to the next bracket, he is instead increased at the lower rate.

I would vote for this system for inflation. ... We could round out the numbers more to be a 15/30/45/60% split in each tier if you want.

For the record, this system sees average increases for starting values over 10 as follows:
Tier 1 (10 - 19) - 7
Tier 2 (20 - 29) - 10.25 (10)
Tier 3 (30 - 39) - 9.8 (10)
Tier 4 (40 - 49) - 6.75 (7)
Tier 5 (50 - 59) - 8.25 (8)

It's also "unfairly" weighted towards players at the bottom of the tiers. For example, a $19 becomes $30 the next year while a $20 player becomes $29. Another example: $29 becomes $42 (+13) while $40 becomes $46 (+6). (Note: this was using the "rounded" values because I'd already updated my spreadsheet.)

Eyeballing that, we can get a similar effect much more simply done by reducing my proposed $11 to somewhere in the neighborhood of $9. It doesn't solve *Legion*'s issue but if there's a general feeling that we'd like to be able to keep players longer than the results that I outlined in my previous post, I could consider it.

Edit: With the "rounded" percentages, the averages for the first three tiers increase to 8.4, 11.25, 10.5. I could be convinced to reduce the $11 to $10 but again, the primary effect will be to further reward people who, for example, grabbed CJ at $5, increasing his theoretical keeper life from 6 years to 7. The bottom half is always going to see churn in any simple system.

I guess my only problem is with the first tier. That's where my brain always goes first looking for the exception. Otherwise I'm good with $10, or even better with $9.

Grumpicus wrote:

Edit: With the "rounded" percentages, the averages for the first three tiers increase to 8.4, 11.25, 10.5. I'd seriously consider reducing the $11 to $10 but again, the primary effect will be to further reward people who, for example, grabbed CJ at $5, increasing his theoretical keeper life from 6 years to 7. The bottom half is always going to see churn in any simple system.

It does need to be pointed out that the $5 number you have for CJ's rookie auction value was presumably for redraft leagues, not keepers.

Backs drafted in the 1st round in the NFL draft would, I would expect, command a higher initial value in a keeper draft than a redraft league.

*Legion* wrote:

It does need to be pointed out that the $5 number you have for CJ's rookie auction value was presumably for redraft leagues, not keepers.

Backs drafted in the 1st round in the NFL draft would, I would expect, command a higher initial value in a keeper draft than a redraft league.

Maybe. Probably. But how much? Let's assume for the sake of argument that his value in a keeper league is double the redraft price. Even at $10, you still have him for around 6 years at +$11/year and maybe even 7 at +$10/year.

Preface: I'm not saying this is a good idea. It's just an idea.

Attempting to address "the *Legion* issue," what about a single "project tag" (like the NFL's franchise tag) that allows you to hold back a player that you would normally throw back due to inflation? It would have to be designed in such a way to 1) be simple to use and explain, 2) have low overhead (e.g. I don't want to the number of times a player has been tagged) and 3) not be subject to exploitation in such a way that you can, for example, keep CJ for $5 indefinitely. I'm still pondering this but figured I'd throw it out in case anyone is bored at work.

Grumpicus wrote:

Maybe. Probably. But how much? Let's assume for the sake of argument that his value in a keeper league is double the redraft price. Even at $10, you still have him for around 6 years at +$11/year and maybe even 7 at +$10/year.

Indeed. But we have to recognize that these numbers are extremely top-heavy.

$60+ is the top-end, but the average starting RB is less than half that. Based on last year's values, once you get to the very top RB2 (#13 RB), you're now below $30 ($28 for MB3 in 2009).

A <$10 player who ends up just being a rock-solid starter instead of a league superstar is going to come up well short of being able to be kept 5 years.

I like simple. Especially when we're a day out. Keeping prospects for years is really for a dynasty league.

EvilHomer3k wrote:

I like simple. Especially when we're a day out. Keeping prospects for years is really for a dynasty league.

There is definitely some wonky stuff that happens if you're trying to analyze average price increases for the tiers I listed a few pages back, because I wasn't trying to necessarily produce a smooth curve for values, I was trying to bump players by a "round" per year (based on average auction values compared with ADP), and those "round" bumps don't follow a smooth curve.

If folks are worried too much about keeping prospects an extra year or so but want something simple, what about this: if a player's value is below $11, increase it to $11. Otherwise, the player's salary increases by $11. It would do some funny things to bidding in the ~$10 range, but it might solve the issue folks have with being able to keep those $4-5 players.

Quoting myself for emphasis:

Grumpicus wrote:

Traditional keeper leagues generally only allow 2 - 4 keepers. I have no desire to impose such arbitrary limits (more overhead) but if my formula results in similar behavior, I'm ok with that. Remember, I'm also trying to keep it simple.

Like Homie said, this is more of a keeper league than a dynasty league... or at least that's been my perspective.

That being said, we have almost a full year until we have to declare with finality what the keeper rules are. I know it affects the draft so for now, you can operate under the assumption that every keeper will increase by $11/year. If that ends up changing (and honestly, I've not yet been swayed very far), at least we all drafted under the same set of operating parameters. If anyone feels strongly enough about it, I'd be more than happy to hand over the reigns and pare myself back to running only 3 leagues.

Grumpicus wrote:
Landshrk83 wrote:

If folks are worried too much about keeping prospects an extra year or so but want something simple, what about this: if a player's value is below $11, increase it to $11. Otherwise, the player's salary increases by $11. It would do some funny things to bidding in the ~$10 range, but it might solve the issue folks have with being able to keep those $4-5 players.

Is there really that much difference between going from $4 (or $5) to $11 vs. an increase to $15 (or $16)? How would you feel when your guy goes up $7 while my $9 guy only goes up $2?

While I appreciate the effort and research that you put into your tier calculations, it just seems unnecessarily complicated when you can achieve nearly the same effect, more simply and equally applied, with a flat ($10 +/- $1) increase.

In reality, there's not a lot of difference, and I think either way will probably be fine. I'm not terribly worried about being able to hold prospects for extended unproductive periods, as that's the realm of dynasty leagues (as EvilHomer3k stated), and I don't think there's much risk of any unbalancing effect with the +$11 plan.

Landshrk83 wrote:

If folks are worried too much about keeping prospects an extra year or so but want something simple, what about this: if a player's value is below $11, increase it to $11. Otherwise, the player's salary increases by $11. It would do some funny things to bidding in the ~$10 range, but it might solve the issue folks have with being able to keep those $4-5 players.

Is there really that much difference between going from $4 (or $5) to $11 vs. an increase to $15 (or $16)? How would you feel when your guy goes up $7 while my $9 guy only goes up $2?

While I appreciate the effort and research that you put into your tier calculations, it just seems unnecessarily complicated when you can achieve nearly the same effect, more simply and equally applied, with a flat ($10 +/- $1) increase.

Quick thought: So the "CJ for $5" horse has been beaten to death. What I'd prefer to see instead is how these numbers will impact _us_ next year with a focus, like Landshrk83, on how it might compare to traditional draft keepers. Would the top 12 to 24 (let's just call it 18) become "unkeepable?" I'm ok with that. Would the next 18 approach this year's top tier? I'm ok with that. I'll play with some numbers later but for now, I've got to finish up some work.

Grumpicus wrote:

Is there really that much difference between going from $4 (or $5) to $11 vs. an increase to $15 (or $16)? How would you feel when your guy goes up $7 while my $9 guy only goes up $2?

I think I like it better than having my $4/5 guy end up at $15-16.

OK, here's my simple proposal: Everything $10.

Salary floor: $10
Salary increase for players above the floor: +$10

Landshrk's "tier" averages ranged from $7-$10 so $10 puts us at the top of that range, a little closer than $11 does. $9 would be closer still but if we're leaning towards simplicity, Everything $10.

Obviously I still don't get to keep prospects multiple years at sub-$10 prices, but I get that the league isn't just how I want it. And the salary floor at least lets me keep prospects at a discount for one year.

Alternative: pin the floor and inflation to the year.

Since this is 2010, floor and inflation is $10. In 2011, it goes to Everything $11, then Everything $12 in 2012, etc.

This continues until players become too expensive and we have to renegotiate the CBA or lock their asses out.

Realism!