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Friday, March 29, 2024

In the last Shopping Cart, I made a reference to leagues where you might acquire a player in FAAB and what his salary would be if he were to be kept next year.

And in last week’s Captain’s Log (“The road ahead in fantasy baseball”) also talked about some free agent pickups that might help this year but would be worth even more last year.

This brings up a very important point that I understand is different for many of you – your league’s rules – what they are now and what they should be. The salary structure in keeper leagues must be sound so that the values from your auction prices and minor league drafts (if you have them) are not subverted. With trades that are often unbalanced as one team who is in contention this year is dealing with a team that is looking to improve it’s roster for next year and beyond, it is imperative that your rules work together or it will break your league apart with arguments, disagreements, and keepers or prices that are unfair.

Here are some basic tenets of AL or NL only keeper leagues (more fully explained by an article I did some years ago about optimum salary structure for keeper leagues):

  • Players who are traded over from the other league can NOT be kept for next season. They weren’t in the player pool for your auction so there was/is no way to fairly determine their value and that player shouldn’t be and advantage for a team that happened to have an available roster spot or the FAAB to obtain them. (this also applies to any player that was not your league’s player pool on auction day like a free agent who later signed or who was on a minor league roster in the other league but ended up changing leagues.
  • The FAAB price to get a player during the season should have NOTHING to do with either their salary for the following year or their price against the league’s Salary Cap this year.
  • Keeper leagues MUST have a salary cap. This helps to control the roster advantage that any team would acquire through multiple trades.

Okay, here is the original article with some items summarized at the end. I am glad to answer questions about the article or the rules themselves on the message boards.

 

Optimum Salary Structure     

by Perry Van Hook

At Ron Shandler’s AFL First Pitch symposium in October, there were several questions about FAAB, Salary Cap and Free Agent salaries and contracts.

The questions were not unusual given that most of the attendees play in multiple leagues. What is surprising is that many of these leagues do not have a set of rules where all these components are interrelated to each other as they should be.

In keeper leagues, especially those with minor league systems, the salary of a free agent cannot logically be less than that of a minor leaguer. If you drafted Delmon Young, Tampa Bay’s talented young OF as a minor leaguer, you don’t want his salary to be higher than that of Joey Gathright who another team picked up as a free agent during the year.

At the same time, the league needs to have the Auction salaries protected. If you purchased B.J. Ryan for $1 in last year’s auction, there should be a far greater benefit to you than to a team who picked him up during the year as a free agent. (This also gives more value to your roster moves and helps promote trades during the year as the player increases in value.)

There are several leagues where the salary of the Free Agent player is tied to the winning FAAB bid. This will severely distort your leagues salaries as the previous examples noted. The FAAB (Free Agent Acquisition Budget) bid is only indicative of the “closed auction” price that you paid for that player in that week’s (month’s) bidding. For standard leagues with an Auction budget of $260, a free agent pickup (whether that player was a reserve pick or added during the course of the season) should have a contract of “10F04”  - $10 contract for retention purposes, acquired as a free agent, starting with the 2004 season. BTW this salary nomenclature has a huge advantage over trying to use letters (A, B, C) or numbers (1,2) designating when a player was acquired, as those indicators have to be changed every year, and you are not quite sure whether a team changed their 12B player to this year’s 12O or 12C. If you use $,X,YR (13D04 = $13 salary, Drafted, in 2004), you and everybody in your league or anyone you discuss trade or keeper decisions with, will know the status of the player without guessing or needing an explanation. The salary ($), and year acquired are self explanatory, here are the suggestions you might use for X = the method of acquisition. D is drafted, F picked up as free agent, X cannot be retained, M minor leaguer and C for a player under contract (where the year acquired would be changed to indicate the year the contract ends, i.e., 10C05 a player under contract for this year for $10 who will be a free agent in 2006).

At the same time, if we are playing in a league using a Salary Cap (and we should be, but that is another column), we must not put a team at or near the cap because they had to replace a few players who were injured or sent to the minors or traded out of the league. Again, based on the standard $260 league, a free agent’s contract should be $10, but only a $5 charge against the cap. Note to Commissioners: this is fairly simple as most of the websites where your leagues are hosted allow you to set automatic FA salaries, and/or easily adjust them when making your league’s transactions.

If you play in a league that allows players traded from the other league to be FAABed you will need to use a different method for the salary cap. You should not have to worry about the retention salary – these players should all be released to the free agent pool at the end of the current season (designated as $X04).

Their salary against the cap should be based on the FAAB bids as follows:

FA Bids $1-5,   $5 against the cap like normal Free Agents

                                    FA Bids $6-19, $X (the actual bid amount)

                                    FA Bids $20+,  $20 against the salary cap

This will adequately put a premium on acquiring a premium player if he is traded during the season, yet not force a team to tear apart their roster in order to acquire him. At the same time it enhances the strategy in your league’s Free Agent bidding process.

Remember that all these facets of rotisserie league management are interrelated – you would be hard pressed to effectively use a Salary Cap if a free agent’s player was his actual bid price. In addition, you would effectively not be permitting your teams to find next year’s Lew Ford or Esteban Loaiza (2003 version).

 

Here is a total recap of my suggested salary treatment:

Auction/keeper budget:            $260

Reserve picks/Free agents:      $10 for retention; $5 against the cap*

Minor League players:            $  5 (or 3) upon being activated to your roster)

NL players to AL League:       $ NO contract for retention; scale against cap

FAAB budget:                                        $100 per team; minimum $1 bids ($0 bids only when

                                                                          a team uses all its FAAB; NO trading of FAAB$

Salary Cap:                               $300 (note – this permits plenty of trading, but many

                                                                                leagues successfully use 320 or 340 – above that

                                                                                will cause serious trading problems)

 

*Free agents                              When replacing a player who is on the DL, the charge against            

                                                   the cap for the replacement player should be $5, or the salary

                                                   of the player being replaced if less than five dollars. For instance,

                                      if you are replacing your $1 catcher, the new catcher

                                                   should be $1 against the cap, but as a free agent, his

                                                   contract would still be 10F04.