Redszone Dynasty League - Discussion Thread

[AtomicDumpling]

Originally Posted by Brutus the Pimp

Atomic,

Here's a suggestion that you guys might (or might not) find useful regarding 'tanking.'

A league I'm in has keepers, and we have been using this for a few years and it's helped tremendously. We make the draft order reverse order of finish, but the "first" pick starts with the team that finishes somewhere around the place nearest the 33rd percentile.

For instance, if we have 9 teams in a season (we do NL-only in this league), then 6th place would get the first pick the next year (we do Auction league, so this is for the reserve draft). So 6th place would get first pick, 7th place would get second, 8th place third, 9th place fourth, then 5th place would get fifth pick.. and back down the line until 1st place gets the last pick.

What this does is give incentives for teams to stay competitive even if it means not being able to win a championship. So far, since we went back to this procedure, it's really helped a ton.

Just food for thought. Hoped maybe it might be something to look at.

OK. Good advice.

Our league is a dynasty league where each team carries its entire 29-man roster over to the next season. So the only players that will be available in next year's draft are the ones that are not good enough to be on any roster at the end of this season or else are not in this year's Yahoo player pool at all -- such as 2009 MLB draftees (most of whom will not be in the Yahoo player pool next year either, at least not at the beginning.)

There will probably not be any highly desirable players available in our short draft, so there really isn't too much incentive to tank in our league when you really think about it. But you never know.

We have not had a problem with tanking, but it is wise to have a procedure in place before it happens to ensure there is no arguing if/when it does happen.

[redsfandan]

Originally Posted by AtomicDumpling

Innings limit raised from 1325 to 1350.
Judging by the innings usage in the league this season it makes sense to bump the limit up a little bit. We are already well above the standard Yahoo limit of 1250, but we can bump it up a little bit more. This is a very minor change that will not have much effect. ...

I don't understand the reason behind increasing the innings limit. You yourself said that it wouldn't have much of an effect. So why bother with an increase?

Originally Posted by AtomicDumpling

Procedure to prevent tanking, negligence and abandonment
In order to keep the league fair, competitive and fun we need to ensure all owners pay attention all season long and try to field the best team they can every day. On occasions where an owner's attention wanes it is the commissioner's duty to urge that owner to do a better job. Of course there are justifiable reasons why an owner may neglect his team for a couple days (vacation, sickness etc) so there will be reminders and warnings before resorting to sanctions. If an owner leaves injured players or minor leaguers in his starting lineup or leaves star players on his bench for more than a few days the following process will be initiated:

1st occurence -- A polite reminder will be sent
2nd occurence -- A polite reminder will be sent
3rd occurence -- A warning will be sent
4th occurence -- Offending owner's waiver priority will be set to 12
5th occurence -- Offending owner will lose his 1st round draft pick the following year
6th occurence -- Offending owner will not be invited back the following year

I'm fine with the polite reminder but I would add that the commish manually replace a player that's in a starting spot but is also on the MLB DL with another player on the team roster if possible.

[redsfandan]

Originally Posted by AtomicDumpling

Roster Size Increase
This will be put up to a vote in a separate post. Current roster size is 29.

Season 2 Draft
The draft will be a snake draft consisting of five rounds. Draft order will be the reverse of prior year's standings. You may not exceed the roster size limit. If you are at the limit when it is your turn to draft you must drop a player before you can draft a player. The dropped player will become draftable immediately -- the next team owner in the draft may select the dropped player without waiting for him to clear waivers. Players added to the Yahoo player pool after the draft begins are not eligible to be drafted and will be placed on waivers after the draft is over. When all five rounds are completed, the commissioner will set a date and time when all undrafted players will be eligible to be added on a first come, first served basis.

OK, now I have two issues.

First, you said that the draft will be a snake draft. That would mean that the first two picks for the team that finished in last place would be the 1st and 24th picks while the first two picks for the team that finished in first place would be the 12th and 13th picks. The best players will likely be taken in the first couple rounds so a snake draft could actually help the teams that need help the least more than the teams that need help the most. A snake draft is perfect for the first year but it just doesn't make as much sense to me for the following years. There's a reason that the MLB, NFL, etc let the losing teams pick first in each round. If you want to "simulate being a real General Manager as closely as possible" then I'd scrap the snake draft.

Second, a month ago you said that one of the issues would be:

"4. Possible change in starting lineup slots".

But now I don't see that listed as a possible rule change. So, are we going to keep the current starting lineup slots or will there be any change? If there is going to be a change, and especially if any starting spots are added, that could affect opinions about how big the rosters should be. Also, I think we should wait on committing to a specific number of rounds until we know how big the rosters will be.

As far as the idea proposed by Brutus I've seen that before and I would really like to have something like that although since this season is almost done I think that it would make more sense to make that kind of switch for the draft in year 3. Make the year 2 draft "normal" but with the understanding that the switch would be effective after the year 2 draft. With only 2 weeks left in the season there's not going to be that much that can happen to change the draft order. I agree that making the switch effective starting with the 2010 regular season could help keep teams more active and make things more competitive.

[AtomicDumpling]

The change in IP is miniscule really. It just reflects the standard level of usage in our league where all the competitive teams reached the limit early.

I want to avoid having the commissioner tinkering with another owner's lineup unless it is a last resort. Unless a player has totally abandoned his team it would cause all kinds of arguments and disputes if the commissioner was making decisions for another team. I want to keep the league friendly.

I have not seen any support around the league for altering the starting lineup arrangement. People have built their teams around this structure and it wouldn't be fair to change it unless there is wide support based on strong logic. I am willing to listen, but as of now we are not going to change the starting lineup slots.

The snake draft is nearly universal in fantasy leagues. I don't expect the short draft to have much influence on the balance of power in our league. The only players available will be the ones that are not good enough to be on a team now plus a small number of minor leaguers. Remember that most minor leaguers are either already available now or are added during the season by Yahoo using the waiver system. Most prospects are added to the Yahoo player pool when they get called up for a September cup of coffee in the big leagues. I am guessing (based on prior seasons using Yahoo) that only a half dozen top prospects at most will be added before our draft next year. Guys like Stephen Strasburg and Aroldis Chapman might be available -- and those guys will be long gone before this year's winners get to draft at the end of the first round, much less the second round. You're not going to see impact players available in our draft.

[nate]

Can we trade draft picks?

[AtomicDumpling]

Originally Posted by nate

Can we trade draft picks?

Do you want to? We don't have a rule against it.

[nate]

I dunno, maybe put it to a vote.

If we're doing a reverse (or modified reverse) order of finish in the standings, should it really be a serpentine (snake) pick? Just thinking out loud but they don't "snake" picks in MLB.

[AtomicDumpling]

Anyone have any thoughts on the roster size? Now is your chance to share your thoughts before we start the vote.

On the league message board Gilpdawg suggested that "mid 30's" would be good.

[nate]

Originally Posted by AtomicDumpling

Anyone have any thoughts on the roster size? Now is your chance to share your thoughts before we start the vote.

On the league message board Gilpdawg suggested that "mid 30's" would be good.

How about 40 with 25 active?

[mbgrayson]

Originally Posted by AtomicDumpling

Anyone have any thoughts on the roster size? Now is your chance to share your thoughts before we start the vote.

On the league message board Gilpdawg suggested that "mid 30's" would be good.

I favor leaving the roster size alone. Currently it is 29 players, with one DL slot. It has already been determined to increase to three DL slots next year, and this is enough change for one year. Next year, every manager can keep a total 32 players under control, as long as at least three are on the DL.

Expanding to the mid-30s would significantly increase the importance of making daily managing matchups, since there will be more choices on the bench. As it is, having 29 active players available every day is enough....

[mbgrayson]

Originally Posted by nate

How about 40 with 25 active?

Yahoo! currently has no way that I know of to designate active vs. inactive players. The only inactive designation is the DL. All players not playing on your active roster are just shown as bench players, and 40 is too many in my opinion....See comment immediately above...

[mbgrayson]

Originally Posted by AtomicDumpling

The change in IP is miniscule really. It just reflects the standard level of usage in our league where all the competitive teams reached the limit early.

I want to avoid having the commissioner tinkering with another owner's lineup unless it is a last resort. Unless a player has totally abandoned his team it would cause all kinds of arguments and disputes if the commissioner was making decisions for another team. I want to keep the league friendly.

I have not seen any support around the league for altering the starting lineup arrangement. People have built their teams around this structure and it wouldn't be fair to change it unless there is wide support based on strong logic. I am willing to listen, but as of now we are not going to change the starting lineup slots.

The snake draft is nearly universal in fantasy leagues. I don't expect the short draft to have much influence on the balance of power in our league. The only players available will be the ones that are not good enough to be on a team now plus a small number of minor leaguers. Remember that most minor leaguers are either already available now or are added during the season by Yahoo using the waiver system. Most prospects are added to the Yahoo player pool when they get called up for a September cup of coffee in the big leagues. I am guessing (based on prior seasons using Yahoo) that only a half dozen top prospects at most will be added before our draft next year. Guys like Stephen Strasburg and Aroldis Chapman might be available -- and those guys will be long gone before this year's winners get to draft at the end of the first round, much less the second round. You're not going to see impact players available in our draft.

Why not 1458 innings? That is 162 games times 9 innings per game?

I agree with you about not tinkering with a manager's roster even if neglected. Let's say the commish was in a critical battle to win a certain category, lets say HRs. What if he took out a DL guy and put in a bench player in that was more of a speed or BA guy, and was not a HR hitter, and the result ended up that the commish gained points in the HR category...It is a slippery slope to start down.

I think the snake vs straight draft is more important if we are really going to expand roster sizes. In that case (which I oppose), I think a straight draft is a fairer way to get equity into the league. If rosters are staying the same, I really don't care.

[AtomicDumpling]

Originally Posted by mbgrayson

I agree with you about not tinkering with a manager's roster even if neglected. Let's say the commish was in a critical battle to win a certain category, lets say HRs. What if he took out a DL guy and put in a bench player in that was more of a speed or BA guy, and was not a HR hitter, and the result ended up that the commish gained points in the HR category...It is a slippery slope to start down.

Yeah that is a scenario we need to avoid.

If a situation ever happens where the commish is forced to tinker with an abandoned team there needs to be a strict procedure. This would ensure there is no decision-making to be done by the commish. I tried to spell that out by saying only injured and demoted players are to be replaced and only replaced by the highest ranked replacement -- without taking into account any particular stat categories.

I think it highly unlikely the commish will ever have to tinker with a team. Keep in mind the first option I mentioned was to appoint a replacement owner to run the team or at least a neutral observer to make the necessary decisions.

The "tinkering" issue is highly unlikely to occur in our league. We have a good group of dedicated owners that are not going to tank their team or abandon their team. The tinkering would only begin after a long series of reminders, warnings and sanctions, and even then only if we can't find a replacement owner. So it will probably never happen, but I wanted a rule in place just in case.

I do not want to be put in a position where I have to make controversial decisions. That is why I want rules in place to cover all potential situations before they happen. That way I can't be accused of biased decisions. It would be great if we didn't need a commissioner at all but since we are using settings that differ from the standard Yahoo default settings we are forced to have a commissioner. I try my best to be absolutely fair and impartial.

[AtomicDumpling]

Originally Posted by mbgrayson

Why not 1458 innings? That is 162 games times 9 innings per game?

Thanks for the well-reasoned idea but really the innings limit is not something we are debating at this time. We don't need to upset the apple cart too much by making major changes yet after one season.

I will give some background on why the limit of 1325-1350 innings was chosen.

The settings used in our dynasty league were based on the settings used last year in the NL-only and AL-only dynasty leagues. As it turned out, those settings worked very poorly in the "only" leagues but they have worked very well in our mixed league. There simply are not enough available players and roster slots in the "only" leagues to make those settings work because none of the teams even come close to reaching the limits, with the result being the only thing that matters is how many injuries your team had that year. Fewer injuries = more games played = more stats. But in our mixed league there are sufficient players and the settings have worked much better.

The standard Yahoo limit of 1250 innings is based on starting slots of 2 SPs, 2 RPs and 3 Ps. Since we are using 2 SPs, 2 RPs and 4 Ps it was decided to add an extra 75 innings (about what a good relief pitcher throws per year). In our mixed league there are lots of available pitchers so it is very easy to reach the innings limit too early. I thought it made sense to add a very small number of extra innings to bump the settings a little bit closer to the reality of what we saw in the league this year.

The goal is to create settings that encourage the owner to utilize a realistic balance of starting pitchers and relievers. If you set the limit too low you encourage overuse of relievers while devaluing starters. If the limit is too high you encourage the owner to load up exclusively on starting pitchers. We saw that 1325 was a little bit too low this year. So that is the reason I chose 1350 for next year.

[AtomicDumpling]

Originally Posted by mbgrayson

I think the snake vs straight draft is more important if we are really going to expand roster sizes. In that case (which I oppose), I think a straight draft is a fairer way to get equity into the league. If rosters are staying the same, I really don't care.

We may expand the roster size by 0-3 slots. We aren't going to go up to 40. Maybe we can go there over a period of years if you guys want to. We could add one player per year until we get to 40 maybe. But we can't realistically go from 29 to 40 in one huge leap without making drastic changes to the league. I don't think we should make any drastic changes.

The draft is really going to be a minor affair. It won't make a huge impact on your team. If we expand roster size by one slot then I bet most teams won't draft more than one new player. Most of our teams already have 30 players under control (29 active slots + one player on the DL). So if we expand to a roster of 30 active players you will have to drop one of your current players in order to make a draft pick. Is there going to be somebody available in the draft in March that you couldn't add to your team for free right now? Not many at all. Only a few minor leaguers and maybe a Japanese import. The guys available in the draft are mostly the same guys available on the free agent list right now. So even though the draft is five rounds long, most teams will only make zero, one or two selections anyway. The only really good prospects will probably be snapped up within the first 4-6 picks of the first round. There won't be much left after that.

I can think of only about three or four guys that might be available in the draft that I would consider dropping one of my current players to obtain.