Trading draft picks in non-dynasty league (1 Viewer)

[Hank Mardukas]

Does anyone here allow draft picks to be traded in their keeper or non-keeper redraft league? If so, what system do you use to account for the fact that bad teams could just dump their roster once they think they're out of the playoff hunt?

 

[unckeyherb]

keeper league here, we do a lot of different things to ensure people don't dump their teams. We only allow two keepers with a third option (sacrifice your first pick in the draft to keep a 3rd player). We apply 2 year limits to keepers that are attached to the player (so once Foster has been kept for two years, regardless of team, he is thrown back into the mix). As such picks are pretty valuable.

We do victory point scoring, so the playoff picture is typically still pretty tight leading into the final three weeks (divisional games-weeks 14, 15, 16). Trade deadline is week ten, which makes it tough to pull the trigger on flushing away your season, as you can't tell yet where you lie within the rankings, unless your team really sucked ###.

For our playoffs the three divisional winners make it and the next three overall highest VP scorers are the wild-cards. We institute a toilet bowl championship for the 6 non-playoff teams that runs parallel with the main championships. The winner of the toilet bowl gets pick #1 the next year, adding more incentive to still field a good team through the entire year.

In the end, if a team wants to dump their season for the chance at maximizing their chances next year that's their prerogative as they own the team. Only stipulation I put out as commish is that next years league fees are due from both teams prior to me accepting a trade where next years draft picks are involved.

HTH

 

[Hank Mardukas]

keeper league here, we do a lot of different things to ensure people don't dump their teams. We only allow two keepers with a third option (sacrifice your first pick in the draft to keep a 3rd player). We apply 2 year limits to keepers that are attached to the player (so once Foster has been kept for two years, regardless of team, he is thrown back into the mix). As such picks are pretty valuable. We do victory point scoring, so the playoff picture is typically still pretty tight leading into the final three weeks (divisional games-weeks 14, 15, 16). Trade deadline is week ten, which makes it tough to pull the trigger on flushing away your season, as you can't tell yet where you lie within the rankings, unless your team really sucked ###. For our playoffs the three divisional winners make it and the next three overall highest VP scorers are the wild-cards. We institute a toilet bowl championship for the 6 non-playoff teams that runs parallel with the main championships. The winner of the toilet bowl gets pick #1 the next year, adding more incentive to still field a good team through the entire year. In the end, if a team wants to dump their season for the chance at maximizing their chances next year that's their prerogative as they own the team. Only stipulation I put out as commish is that next years league fees are due from both teams prior to me accepting a trade where next years draft picks are involved. HTH

But how do you account for the fact that if a team decides to dump their current season they'll likely be prohibitive favorites the next year with extra draft picks? Do you place a boundary on how high of a pick you can trade? Do you require compensatory picks going back the other way? Do you limit the number of picks someone can have in the following draft?

 

[Herm23]

We do 2 fairly simple things and have never had a problem with it:

#1- we require 25% of the league fees for the upcoming season to be paid each time a draft pick is traded. This is required from both the team acquiring the draft pick and the team trading the draft pick

#2- we limit the number of draft picks that any team can acquire between drafts to 2. This means you can only have an additional 2 draft picks coming into the upcoming draft and if you want to trade for a 3rd, you must include a draft pick of your own. This rule was actually constructed because of yours truly (and even named after me in our rules section), as I was very active about acquiring draft picks for the following year during the first year of our league, in which I had drafted for the future, had some bad breaks, and quickly fell out of playoff contention. Thankfully I was up and up about it and wasn't simply destructing my team at all costs and actually only sought fair deals, but we decided that it was best to avoid any future situations in case a different owner just started selling off every piece of his team possible

We use rule #2 to avoid any 1 team from completely selling out their future to attempt to dominate in the current year. They can harm their future in order to maximize their chance to win in the current year, but they are unable to totally decimate their future. Not only would it severely harm competitive balance for this season if any 1 team traded many draft picks to acquire pieces for this year, but it significantly harms it for next season as well. Because it is not a dynasty league and is instead a keeper league (in our situation, we keep 4 offensive and 1 defensive player with keeper costs, etc... affecting who is kept), the draft picks carry significantly more value, as much more of the player pool is available than just incoming rookies (and in some cases, some blue chip players are available due to contracts expiring, keeper costs being too expensive, etc...). If any team were to acquire an additional 4-5 picks, they would become a prohibitive favorite to win the title the following year and would need some combo of bad luck AND extremely poor drafting/roster management to not be dominant.

 

[unckeyherb]

keeper league here, we do a lot of different things to ensure people don't dump their teams. We only allow two keepers with a third option (sacrifice your first pick in the draft to keep a 3rd player). We apply 2 year limits to keepers that are attached to the player (so once Foster has been kept for two years, regardless of team, he is thrown back into the mix). As such picks are pretty valuable. We do victory point scoring, so the playoff picture is typically still pretty tight leading into the final three weeks (divisional games-weeks 14, 15, 16). Trade deadline is week ten, which makes it tough to pull the trigger on flushing away your season, as you can't tell yet where you lie within the rankings, unless your team really sucked ###. For our playoffs the three divisional winners make it and the next three overall highest VP scorers are the wild-cards. We institute a toilet bowl championship for the 6 non-playoff teams that runs parallel with the main championships. The winner of the toilet bowl gets pick #1 the next year, adding more incentive to still field a good team through the entire year. In the end, if a team wants to dump their season for the chance at maximizing their chances next year that's their prerogative as they own the team. Only stipulation I put out as commish is that next years league fees are due from both teams prior to me accepting a trade where next years draft picks are involved. HTH

But how do you account for the fact that if a team decides to dump their current season they'll likely be prohibitive favorites the next year with extra draft picks? Do you place a boundary on how high of a pick you can trade? Do you require compensatory picks going back the other way? Do you limit the number of picks someone can have in the following draft?

None of that. And I can tell you that every year for the last 5-6 years someone has done some iteration of this. They absolutely 100% of the time have not been prohibitive favorites past a few weeks and only once has someone made the final game (me 2 years ago-I lost). There are a few people in my league that ##### about it, but my response is always the same-if you don't like the guy stacking picks, don't trade with him. If you think it isn't fair that people are getting their team stacked, make trades to benefit your team. This is a keeper league which has been going on for about 10 years. If I want to dump my current season that I paid for to maximize the talent on my team next year (and can convince enough people to give me meaningful picks) why shouldn't I be allowed to?

 

[dparker713]

Don't think you should be able to trade picks in a redraft.

In my keeper league, your keepers replace your 14-16 round picks, so everyone is going to keep 3 players. With trades before keepers are declared, you're generally looking at only a few players falling. That means a first round pick is essentially a 4th with maybe the first 3 picks having extra value. People have learned this over the years and 1st round picks are rarely traded during the season.

Also, we don't assign the top pick to the worst team. Top 4 make the playoffs, so our non-snaking draft order is 5-12, 3, 4, 2, 1. Thats a fairly powerful incentive to keep trying all year.

 

[GregR]

Does anyone here allow draft picks to be traded in their keeper or non-keeper redraft league? If so, what system do you use to account for the fact that bad teams could just dump their roster once they think they're out of the playoff hunt?

1) Set an early enough trade deadline most teams will still be in the hunt so it is more unlikely.2) Have enough playoff spots that most teams are still in the running for awhile. I.e. have 6 spots in a 12 team league, not 4 spots.3) Have picks used to keep players come off the top of the draft (so to keep 2 costs your 1st and 2nd round picks), and picks not used to keep players can select normally from the unkept player pool. That way teams are not likely to trade early enough picks to overpower anyone since it would mean they can't keep players.I probably wouldn't want future year draft picks traded in a total redraft league.

 

[Herm23]

Does anyone here allow draft picks to be traded in their keeper or non-keeper redraft league? If so, what system do you use to account for the fact that bad teams could just dump their roster once they think they're out of the playoff hunt?

1) Set an early enough trade deadline most teams will still be in the hunt so it is more unlikely.2) Have enough playoff spots that most teams are still in the running for awhile. I.e. have 6 spots in a 12 team league, not 4 spots.

3) Have picks used to keep players come off the top of the draft (so to keep 2 costs your 1st and 2nd round picks), and picks not used to keep players can select normally from the unkept player pool. That way teams are not likely to trade early enough picks to overpower anyone since it would mean they can't keep players.



I probably wouldn't want future year draft picks traded in a total redraft league.

I would actually take this a step further and say that if it's only a keep 1 or keep 2 league, I wouldn't want future draft picks being traded. In my opinion, a keep 1 or keep 2 league is much, much closer to a redraft league than a long term keeper/dynasty league and thus should be treated as such.If you are keeping 4+ players, then it starts to require owners to begin to balance success in the present with success in the future, meaning the trading of draft picks begins to make a lot more sense.