Auction Salary Cap League (1 Viewer)

[NoCheese]

I am commish of a 12 team $100 auction salary cap redraft league. This was our 1st year doing it and owners have mixed reviews. I'm looking for some creative ideas for 2010.

The Positives

- Very challenging. Have to make tough decisions on keeping players at inflated salaries. Much like real NFL teams

- Keeps free agent bidding in check. No ridiculous overbids or unlimited spending potential. Will never run out of free agent dollars.

- Juicier & more active waiver wire as it's more than just is a player worth a roster spot. The question is: Is he worth that salary?

The Negatives

- Harder to make trades. Say you picked up Miles Austin at $1 and want to trade him for Pierre Thomas, who is $12. Very difficult to match salaries and for both teams to stay at or under the $100 cap even though the players being traded are of equal value in reality

- Difficult to make many waiver moves if you have a lot of big dollar players and a bunch of $1-$3 players

I have suggested 2 ways to potentially alleviate some of the frustrations. One is allowing 1-2 "matches" per year, where if you dropped a player like Brandon Jacobs at $24 (underperformance) to get him back cheaper, you could match the highest bid. So if you bid $17 and were outbid by an owner who bid $19, you could match, but only once or maybe twice a year. This would eliminate some of the fear owners have in dropping a player only to get snubbed when they try to pick him back up. Then they have a huge hole in their lineup with cap space available that they'd be unlikely to spend. The second idea was to add $5 or $10 to everyone's cap starting in Week 4 to help with bye week pickups. Or some combination of the two ideas.

What ideas could you provide or have you tried with success?

 

[schu]

Ten years in that format...

To encourage and enable trades, we allow cap $ to be part of the trade. This basically means the former owner still pays some % of the salary of an initial contract that was too high.

Second, if an owner drops a player, the minimum Bid amount for that former owner is his previous salary. This prevents dump and bid strategy. However, once the player clears waivers he is fair game at any price.

 

[NoCheese]

Ten years in that format...

To encourage and enable trades, we allow cap $ to be part of the trade. This basically means the former owner still pays some % of the salary of an initial contract that was too high.

Second, if an owner drops a player, the minimum Bid amount for that former owner is his previous salary. This prevents dump and bid strategy. However, once the player clears waivers he is fair game at any price.

Can you give me an explanation of that? Thanks.

 

[PR Sparty]

Your league sounds similar to mine. We've been at it for 5 years and every year gets better and better. Trades are actually way more prevalent in this type of league than a redraft. We also allow owners to trade players for cash. It happens a lot in the off season. Example... You've got a very cheap Matt Ryan in the 2008 season off waivers. Sign him for $1, $2, $3, $4. During the off season heading into 2009 there's an owner who needs a QB and has cap space. Knowing that Ryan would probably be a $10-13 dollar QB if he were in the draft, the owner could sell Ryan for $10. The Ryan owner could sat "gimme $10 this year and call it good. Or gimme $7 this year, $8 in 2010 and $9 in 2011. Everything is dependent on the two parties trading and the agreement they establish. Same idea goes to keeping cash in a trade. Say you've got an overpaid Marion Barber. Another owner could come at you and say "You're paying MB $18, if you keep $4 of his salary, it'll take him." The old MB owner would then have a -$4.00 on this books.

BTW - Trade deadline day in a league like this the best. We had 7 trades this past Wednesday that basically involved the losers selling one year contracts off to the guys in contention for young, cheap contracts.

Take a look around my website. This is for salaries only. CBS (soon to be mfl) runs all the scoring. If you click each team you'll see the cuts, the gains/loses from trades like i mentioned about

http://floec.com/

 

[NoCheese]

Thanks for the input, PR Sparty. Your league sounds very cool. Ours isn't nearly as sophisticated. It's a redraft, and we currently don't allow trading players for cap room. It's the 1st year we've done it, and it's simply everyone gets $100 on draft night and you must maintain a $100 cap throughout the season. If you only spend $94 on draft night, you'll have $6 in open cap room week 1. Roster size is 16 players. Minimum bid for a free agent is $1, although you may bid any amount you want as long as you are always under the $100 cap.

Owners are attracted to the format change, but have voiced frustration with the difficulty of making trades (see post #1 for the example I gave) and the inability to cut players for fear of losing them. So I'm hoping to remain in the "simple" $100 format, but make some enhancements

 

[Road Warriors]

Thanks for the input, PR Sparty. Your league sounds very cool. Ours isn't nearly as sophisticated. It's a redraft, and we currently don't allow trading players for cap room. It's the 1st year we've done it, and it's simply everyone gets $100 on draft night and you must maintain a $100 cap throughout the season. If you only spend $94 on draft night, you'll have $6 in open cap room week 1. Roster size is 16 players. Minimum bid for a free agent is $1, although you may bid any amount you want as long as you are always under the $100 cap.Owners are attracted to the format change, but have voiced frustration with the difficulty of making trades (see post #1 for the example I gave) and the inability to cut players for fear of losing them. So I'm hoping to remain in the "simple" $100 format, but make some enhancements

IMO, the best thing you can do to improve the league is make it dynasty ( or several player keeper ), so the trade market is greatly enhanced. As noted, cheap young contracts become very interesting to teams that fall out of contention, and it allows shrewd cap management to make a big improvement in the following years. Salary cap in a redraft can make for an interesting draft day, but I don't think it enhances the week to week gameplay much. Salary caps & contracts are usually something with more than this year impact.

 

[upuck]

You say it's a redraft league. If you add a keeper element, I think that can help all around. In our league, once the initial auction is complete, the cap is gone -- it only applies to the "draft" itself. So I could theoretically trade Flacco ($1) for Manning ($50) and still be cool. We also allow trading draft dollars for the following year. We do a $270 cap, so we can use up to $20 from the next year to help make trades. Often, the teams who are out of contention will trade their high-priced stud players for the $20 to a team in contention at the deadline. We can keep three players each year, and their salary increase $3 the next year. This all seems to work pretty well for us.

Matt

 

[GregStarling]

I would also add that having a player keep his salary after he's dropped (until the next auction) really works for us. Then again, we're a dynasty league so I'm not sure it's apples to apples.

 

[schu]

Ten years in that format...

To encourage and enable trades, we allow cap $ to be part of the trade. This basically means the former owner still pays some % of the salary of an initial contract that was too high.

Second, if an owner drops a player, the minimum Bid amount for that former owner is his previous salary. This prevents dump and bid strategy. However, once the player clears waivers he is fair game at any price.

Can you give me an explanation of that? Thanks.

Trade example:team A gives:

Tom Brady

$15 cap

team B gives:

Matt Schaub

•••••

Now players salary automatically goes with the player and cap $ must be negotiated separately (if at all). This means a trade is always technically possible.

One great thing about salary cap leagues is that underperforming players get dumped on the ww midyear adding to the excitement. His often results in a cascade effect as other underperformers are dumped to chase those stars.

 

[NoCheese]

Ten years in that format...

To encourage and enable trades, we allow cap $ to be part of the trade. This basically means the former owner still pays some % of the salary of an initial contract that was too high.

Second, if an owner drops a player, the minimum Bid amount for that former owner is his previous salary. This prevents dump and bid strategy. However, once the player clears waivers he is fair game at any price.

Can you give me an explanation of that? Thanks.

Trade example:team A gives:

Tom Brady

$15 cap

team B gives:

Matt Schaub

•••••

Now players salary automatically goes with the player and cap $ must be negotiated separately (if at all). This means a trade is always technically possible.

One great thing about salary cap leagues is that underperforming players get dumped on the ww midyear adding to the excitement. His often results in a cascade effect as other underperformers are dumped to chase those stars.

Cool, thanks schu. Kind of what I figured, but I'm hesitant to do this. One team would have $85 and one team $115 in cap room. Hmmm. Makes sense, but a little uncertain about this idea. What's your experience with this? Good idea or not?

 

[schu]

It works for the purpose of enabling and encouraging trades. Personally, I think trades should be rare.