After playing in a number of different formats over the years, I'm trying to assemble features I liked about a number of leagues into one new league.
The basic structure of the league will be:
[*]Auction-style draft
[*]Salary cap
[*]Increasing salaries for retained players
[*]Fairly deep rosters
[*]Team D/ST (no IDP)
My initial cut of the rules specifies 12 teams, 20-man rosters (10 starters), and a 500-unit cap with a 5-unit minimum salary. Do any of these numbers seem out of whack? I'm currently in a league with 15-man rosters, 400 cap and 10 minimum, which I don't feel is granular enough (2.5% minimum vs 1% in my proposed league).
How do these compare with other salary cap leagues out there? Are there rules of thumb for starters vs roster, or minimum bid vs cap?
I'm also trying to work out a method for assigning salary increases for players kept year-to-year. I'm leaning toward a percentage increase instead of a flat rate, so that a 5-unit "sleeper" doesn't jump so much that he's not worth stashing.
I did a quick search for existing threads, but "dynasty" and "roster" don't return much that's helpful in the first couple hundred results.
TIA
One of the things I think should be considered is the gap between the minimum price player and the average player. Some people set up $10,000 caps with $1 minimum players and then regret that $1 Arian Foster being worth a huge amount more than a $3,000 Adrian Peterson. So you have a league where the average player is $25 and the minimum player is $5. That's probably pretty good. I would plug your numbers into Draft Dominator and see what the gap is between the top players and the minimum price as well, but I imagine you're pretty good there.One thing you might want to consider... the automatic percentage increase can sound like a good idea, but such a system robs you of a chance of putting additional strategic decision making in the hands of owners, where their skill in projecting players and managing a salary cap can make a difference.
I rejected the automatic increase and went with a system similar to one Bob Harris told me about in his league. When a player is acquired he has that original price for 2 years. After the 2nd year, an owner has to decide if he wants to continue to keep the player at that price for a 3rd year, and then lose him to free agency... or if he wants to give him a contract extension for an extra 1 or 2 years, but that requires a raise which goes into effect immediately.
So essentially you can keep a player 3 years at his original price. Or you can keep him 4 years with the first 2 being original price and years 3 and 4 being at the greater of a $5 or 20% raise. Or you can keep him 5 years with the first 2 being original price and years 3, 4 and 5 being at the greater of a $10 or 40% raise. (Our minimum is $1, so for you that would be more like a $25/20% raise for 4 years and a $50/40% raise for 5 years).
It creates a lot more opportunity for strategic thinking. If you extend Miles Austin at his original price he becomes a good value as he becomes a big time starter. If you did that with Robert Meachem, not so much. But you don't have the luxury of reviewing his output every year as the price increases. You have to commit a little further out. If you didn't do a good job seeing Austin's potential, maybe you only got a 4th year out of him when you he would have been worth paying him for a 5th as well. We also don't let extended players be cut until after their 3rd year.
You don't have to go that route, but I have found it added a lot more to the league than automatic raises would have. We also have franchise and transition tags that give the player a minimum salary/raise, and give you right-to-match a winning bid if anyone wants to bid him up, or you can let him go and accept draft picks from them as compensation. So it is possible to retain a player for his full career if you got him cheap enough to start with, and are willing to pay him franchise money somewhere around the middle of his career.
Another suggestion... I find that having a rookie draft combined with a vet auction brings a lot of benefit. The bad teams can get the earlier picks (we go with NFL-style whoever has the #1 pick has it in every round) to help them improve. When you have a hard salary cap it can be harder to get owners to agree to trades since that has to be taken into account. Having some sort of draft picks available to even out a trade to both sides satisfaction is a good thing if you want to see trading... and since I think owner interaction is a good thing I think trading is a good thing.
If you do go with a rookie draft, what I did was create a salary structure based on an average of starter salaries. To find the price of a first round RB, sort all the rostered RBs by salary, and grab the bottom half of the starters. So if you have 12 teams and start 2 RBs, that's 24 RBs who start. So grab the bottom half, RBs 13 through 24 ordered by salary, and the average of their salaries is the cost of any rookie 1st round RB. There is a minimum that applies, if the average for a first round offensive player isn't $6 or more it is set to $6. For you that might be $30 since our minimum is 1/5 what yours is. 2nd round prices are 2/3 of 1st round prices. 3rd round is 1/3 of 1st round prices. 4th round everyone goes for a minimum salary. We have everyone in a round be the same price, the 1.1 and the 1.10 picks get the same salary if they are the same position. I haven't found any negatives to doing it that way. If anything it probably makes draft day trades easier having the cost be the same.
Hope some of that is useful. I LOVE hard salary cap leagues. So much you can add to them that allows owner skill a chance to differentiate itself.
