Any auction league owners out there? How do you handle keepers? Advice (1 Viewer)

[Run It Up]

All the auction leagues I'm in personally are redraft, and all the keeper leagues I'm in are non-auction. My personal league has decided they want to change the format from a non-auction keeper league to an auction keeper league.The only thing holding me back at the moment is figuring out how to properly balance how keepers are handled. All I've have ironed out so far is keepers can only be kept for one year and it will be at an inflated price than what you paid the previous year.I want to maintain a competitive league and I want to reward owners for finding value.I feel like players that you get for a steal should still have a floor value but as a person can decide to keep whomever they want having a flat value isn't dynamic enough. I also feel like having a stud two years in a row (A. Rodgers for example) should cost you, but I feel it should have a ceiling also.Hoping some owners with experience have some ideas.

 

[statman]

I have been in a keeper auction league for about 6 or 7 years now. We can keep between 2 and 8 players. Our auction budget is $300 and players' salaries increase $10 per season. We can keep players for as long as we want.

 

[Run It Up]

I have been in a keeper auction league for about 6 or 7 years now. We can keep between 2 and 8 players. Our auction budget is $300 and players' salaries increase $10 per season. We can keep players for as long as we want.

So its just previous season salary + $10? 3% of budget seems pretty low to keep a player for the price you paid the season before.

 

[msommer]

This is one league:

Rookies drafted can be given contracts up to four years, salary is determined by draft slot. Salary stays with team unless traded to another team for the duration of the contract (ie if cut and no one else picks up the player, dead cap ensues).

Two franchise players can be nominated (no salary), one O, one D.

Up to four restricted free agents can be nominated, min salary 3% of cap. They go into a separate auction, winning bid determines the salary of the player. If a player changes team in the RFA auction, there is compensation in terms of extra cap, rookie picks or both.

First up is the nomination of Franchise and RFA players. Then RFA auction, then UFA auction (rookies cannot be nominated), then rookie draft, then cap goes soft.

 

[BigSteelThrill]

You may keep 1 player at each interval.... 1-15$, 16-30$, and 31+$.

At the end of each season, every player has an increased cost of 10$. May be declared a hold over up to 3 times... then reenters draft.

Free Agents have base price of 5$ each when acquired, so they cost a l'il more then the good draft cheapies to hold over.

Each team has 200$.

 

[Tackling Dummies]

Have X number of contract years and let the owners decide who they want to keep for how long.

 

[Mr. Irrelevant]

All the auction leagues I'm in personally are redraft, and all the keeper leagues I'm in are non-auction. My personal league has decided they want to change the format from a non-auction keeper league to an auction keeper league.The only thing holding me back at the moment is figuring out how to properly balance how keepers are handled. All I've have ironed out so far is keepers can only be kept for one year and it will be at an inflated price than what you paid the previous year.I want to maintain a competitive league and I want to reward owners for finding value.I feel like players that you get for a steal should still have a floor value but as a person can decide to keep whomever they want having a flat value isn't dynamic enough. I also feel like having a stud two years in a row (A. Rodgers for example) should cost you, but I feel it should have a ceiling also.Hoping some owners with experience have some ideas.

My best experiences have been with some sort of hybrid system ... in the one I developed, keeping a player who you bought for (or kept at) $X the previous year costs you the greater of $2X or ($X + 5% of the cap) the following year. UDFA's all carry a base price of $5. Limit the number of keepers in one season however you want, or not at all (I like 3, but that's admittedly arbitrary).

IMO, this is the best of both worlds ... it almost guarantees the true studs are back in the auction pool every year (e.g. even if someone stole A-Rod for $50 last year, he'd be hard-pressed to keep him this year for $100), it rewards people for finding diamonds in the rough (a guy you land for $3 in year 1 of a $200 league will only cost you $13 to keep in year 2), but it prevents them from holding on to them too long (that same guy will cost you $26 to keep in year 3, then $52 in year 4).

I guess having a ceiling on the number of seasons you can hold one guy accomplishes pretty much the same thing, but in my system you never have to look back past last year to determine who's eligible to keep whom at what price this year. To me, that's a distinct benefit compared to having to dig back through 3-4 years of records to figure that out ... people join and leave leagues, change e-mails, accidentally delete files - oh, and have selective memories.

 

[DepthCharts]

25% increase, round up, minimum keeper salary = 10$ (for free agents and 8$ and under guys)

 

[Quibbler]

I'm in one: $200 budget, $5 inflation per year, but you can only keep 2 players.

 

[Lehigh98]

I'm in one: $200 budget, $5 inflation per year, but you can only keep 2 players.

Similar in my league. $200, $5 inflation per year, can keep up to 3 players.

FA's can be kept for $10 the following year.

 

[Lehigh98]

I have been in a keeper auction league for about 6 or 7 years now. We can keep between 2 and 8 players. Our auction budget is $300 and players' salaries increase $10 per season. We can keep players for as long as we want.

So its just previous season salary + $10? 3% of budget seems pretty low to keep a player for the price you paid the season before.

Yep, so you can keep your guys for years.

Rewards the good drafters but drives up the price of speculative rookies.

For example, at the draft last year I paid $28 for Doug Martin and $12 for David Wilson.

Trent Richardson went for $29, ADP turned out to be a bargain at $31.

 

[Mr. Irrelevant]

I have been in a keeper auction league for about 6 or 7 years now. We can keep between 2 and 8 players. Our auction budget is $300 and players' salaries increase $10 per season. We can keep players for as long as we want.

So its just previous season salary + $10? 3% of budget seems pretty low to keep a player for the price you paid the season before.

Yep, so you can keep your guys for years.

Rewards the good drafters but drives up the price of speculative rookies.

For example, at the draft last year I paid $28 for Doug Martin and $12 for David Wilson.

Trent Richardson went for $29, ADP turned out to be a bargain at $31.

That's exactly what it does and my question to the OP would be, how much of a dynasty element do you want in your league? Because any league where you can keep (in the earlier example) up to 8 guys and pay only a $10 tax on each is going to start to resemble a dynasty league in a couple years' time. That's fine if you have committed owners, low turnover, people who enjoy following CFB and yada yada the usual caveats about successful dynasty leagues.

Personally, if I wanted to play in a dynasty league, well, I'd find a dynasty league. But I don't think that's what the majority of redraft owners - even those in keeper leagues - are looking for. A lot of them may very well see rules that greatly reward this sort of advance scouting and "diamond mining" as adding more trouble to the redraft experience than it's worth. My .

 

[brewer]

My absolute favorite league is an auction contract league. Basically, when you win a player in the auction, you immediately decide how long you would like the contract to be(1-4 years). The signing bonus is on a sliding scale depending on the length. If you release the player before the contract is up, you are still on the hook for the remaining portion of the signing bonus. We also have franchise and transition tags in place so that you have the option of 'keeping' your favorite players beyond their contract, without simply throwing them back into the yearly auction. Other owners can bid on those players and there is draft pick compensation should the tagging team decide not to match. Finally, we have a structured scale for the rookie draft. Each slot has it's set salary and these players also have a 4 year maximum contract length.

It's a bit complicated, but it is by far the most entertaining league that I've ever seen.

 

[Mentos]

My absolute favorite league is an auction contract league. Basically, when you win a player in the auction, you immediately decide how long you would like the contract to be(1-4 years). The signing bonus is on a sliding scale depending on the length. If you release the player before the contract is up, you are still on the hook for the remaining portion of the signing bonus. We also have franchise and transition tags in place so that you have the option of 'keeping' your favorite players beyond their contract, without simply throwing them back into the yearly auction. Other owners can bid on those players and there is draft pick compensation should the tagging team decide not to match. Finally, we have a structured scale for the rookie draft. Each slot has it's set salary and these players also have a 4 year maximum contract length. It's a bit complicated, but it is by far the most entertaining league that I've ever seen.

I am considering starting a league along these lines.

 

[Run It Up]

Sorry for not responding to anyone all day, semester is almost over and crunch time is no joke.I got together with the core of the league that are really interested in making this happen and discussed a bunch of options. Aside from an argument over whether or not the draft order for this year which was determined by last years placement in the league applies to the nomination order this year (which aside from being dumb actually became hilariously heated), everything went pretty smoothly.We decided upon this formula for determining a keepers new price.Price of a player to be kept = ((last seasons salary) * 1.15) + ((annual budget)*0.05)10 Teams, $300 budget, 21 player rosters - unlimited amount of keepers. All players drafted for less than $5 (including free agent acquisitions) are elevated to $5.In a $200 league, its not uncommon to see the highest paid players to range from 30% to 40% of your budget, it was my goal that if a person wanted to keep a player drafted for 30% of their budget that to keep them would be roughly 40% the following year, but I also wanted an established floor - while I want to reward owners for drafting well, I don't want to see a team with 80% of their budget left and 3 Alfred Morris on their team. I also didn't want it to be realistic to keep a stud for more than the year you drafted him and another year.Using the above formula it worked out to well within my acceptable range.Examples:A. Rodgers drafted at 30% of budget ($90), ($90*1.15) + $15 = $119 (39.6% of budget)A. Morris undrafted minimum salary is $5, ($5*1.15) + $15 = $21.5 (7% of budget.)A. Morris the next year, 7% of budget ($22), ($22*1.15) + $15 = $40.3 (13.3% of budget.)It should be said however, this is not a dynasty auction league, I would not recommend anything like this for a dynasty.

 

[Run It Up]

In my league the keepers are pretty simplistic,

1 year for $10 Floor or 10% Salary increase rounded up to the next dollar, whichever is highest.

2 years, $15 Floor or 15% Salary increase rounded up to the next dollar, whichever is highest.

if you are just instituting this this year, you should have no keepers until next year. Most fair

Believe it or not, my initial recommendation was thislayers kept will be the greater of (previous years salary*1.3) or (previous years salary + 5% of maximum cap).Which pretty much accomplishes everything I wanted accomplished, but the number one complaint was "its too complicated" So we spent 6 hours to remove the conditional OR and just making it one formula...

 

[fightingillini]

10 team auction keeper league. We can keep 4-8 players. $200 cap. Salaries increase 10% from the previous year, rounded up to the nearest dollar. Minimum $2 increase, so a $5 player last year can be kept for $7. So the $2 increase will apply to any player with a 2012 cap value of $20 or less. A player that was $21 in 2012 will need $24 to keep him, since you round up the next dollar.

We also have a performance clause. If a player finishes in the top 5 QBs, top 10 RBs, top 15 WRs, top 5 TEs (this would be the upper half of the required starters.....we start 1QB, 2RB, 3WR, 1TE...and 2 superflex), they have to pay the the bottom baseline starter's salary. For example, say in 2011, the guy drafts Marshawn Lynch for $2, and Lynch finished in the top 10 RBs that year......to keep Lynch, the owner had to pay RB20 salary (based on the pricing, that was $17). $17 seems low, but we have a superflex league so QBs go for much more than a typical league. We have the performance clause so that someone who hits the jackpot with a cheap player (think Cam Newton) has to pay at least a starter salary. Now this doesn't force someone to pay market value.....in fact, Newton and Lynch are still incredible bargains at their cap values.......it's not fair for someone to have to pay full market or close to it when they hit the diamond in the rough. But it's not fair to have the Newton owner keep him for $3 when he bought him in 2011 for $1.

Essentially our system will generate some players who will never be let go since their cap values are so low in relation to their performance. But that's going to happen in auction keeper leagues.

Auction keeper leagues are awesome in that you can trade high priced studs for lower priced future keepers as long as you have the cap space to do it. (we get $30 of extra free agent cap space after the draft, for a total of $230.)

Our league has a new wrinkle....If you go over the cap, you must pay into the pot $2 per week per $10 that you're over the cap. So if you're current team has a value of $235, you need to pay $2 every week until you get to $230 or under. At $241, you pay $4, and so on. It's called a "luxury tax". With a $50 buyin, the luxury tax can get expensive. This extra money goes into the pot and gets paid out in the same fashion....60/30/10 for the top 3 finishers.

 

[Mr. Irrelevant]

Essentially our system will generate some players who will never be let go since their cap values are so low in relation to their performance. But that's going to happen in auction keeper leagues.

No, it isn't - not in any league that I'd run or play in, at least, because I believe very strongly that it shouldn't. Not to climb the soapbox here, but IMO one of the commandments for setting or adjusting keeper rules in a league should be "every fish goes back in the pond eventually". To me, this is one of the bright lines that separates keeper leagues from dynasty leagues. Yes, you want to reward owners who make shrewd buys on future studs, but only to a point. And the reward of keeping someone essentially forever at below-market value is ludicrously generous in proportion to the risk. I think the line should be somewhere around 3 seasons. If someone outbid me by a buck for Arian Foster before the 2010 season and he's reaped the rewards for three years running, great, more power to him. But this year (year 4), I'd either want Foster back in the pool, or his owner to be put to a really tough decision about whether or not it's worth keeping him. Otherwise, why bother calling it a "redraft" league at all?