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DownloadI had several questions about last week’s log about draft picks with people wanting to know how to set up a minor league draft for their league. So let’s get to work.
While these suggestions are mainly for AL, NL or even mixed keeper leagues, you can certainly use them for a redraft league with easy modifications.
First, the salaries for your “FARM” must complement your auction and free agent salaries. In “normal” $260 auction leagues, I strongly maintain that all free agents (and reserve picks if you use those at the draft) should have a $10 retention salary, which in my shorthand would be 10F14 – a ten dollar free agent acquired in 2014. In keeper leagues where a drafted or free agent player is kept for three years at the same price, you want your minor league players to have a lower salary than a major league player you are acquiring via either FAAB or waivers or whatever your league uses.
Speaking of FAAB, I am strongly against using the FAAB acquisition price to determine a player's retention salary. It just makes no sense – if the player is keepable (in my league that would mean being on an AL roster or on an AL team’s minor league roster), then if you spend $100 in desperation, that player couldn’t possibly be retained. By the same token, teams lower in the standings can’t be adding players for one dollar and carrying those salaries forward. Just use $10 like the founding fathers did.
Another note for keeper leagues is the difference between the player’s retention salary (price he would be kept for next year) and his salary against the salary cap, which all auction keeper leagues should have. I am old school there, using a $300 cap for a $260 league. Yes, you can use $325 or even $350 but that much room is just asking for problems with dump trades that you mitigate with a tighter salary cap. Free agents should count $5 this year against the salary cap but have a $10 salary if kept for next year.
The AL and NL keeper leagues that I have played in for over 25 years both use a $5 salary for drafted minor leaguers. Actually, my GAR AL league splits that to $5 for hitters and $3 for pitchers, which helps balance the minor league drafts.
Most leagues I am familiar with restrict the minor league pool to players who are under a minor league contract. Some specify they must still have Rookie of the Year eligibility. Personally, I favor a wide open policy there, especially if you are going to allow an unlimited number of FARM players, which really gives teams the ability to build a good franchise. Your league will have to define those parameters when you codify all of this to add to your league rules.
Again, I favor excluding all players from foreign leagues (there is one exception as some players in the Mexican League are allowed to play there even though they are under contract to minor league teams in the US). Your mileage may vary – have to keep the lawyers happy especially as I bury a Happy 17th Birthday greeting to my granddaughter Raven Nicole Mills in Bothell, Washington.
Okay, you have defined the player pool for your minor league draft and the salaries they will have once they are activated in your league. In my league, if they are still FARM players, I try and use a M13 designation which would mean they were drafted as a minor leaguer in 2013, for example. Once they are activated, that would be changed to 5DYr for drafted in that year at a five dollar salary. Most of the stat services have an easy way to establish and amend those designations just like auction/free agent salaries. To go back a minute to free agent salaries, you don’t want those cheaper FAAB bids to subvert the pricing of your minor league players, thus the $10 retention salary.
Activation rules differ widely. Obviously, if a FARM player makes an opening day roster, he must be activated to a team’s freeze list at the auction. If they are activated after opening day, here are two suggestions:
1. If the player is activated to the major leagues prior to the All-Star break, they must be transacted (activated, reserved or waived) the transaction (Monday) day after 30 consecutive days on a ML roster. If they are brought up any time after the beginning of the break, they can be held as a FARM player but of course could be activated if their owner wanted to start their salary clock.
2. If the player is activated in April, the same 30 days (you don’t want to have to activate a player if he is only up for a week or two and then sent down) applies. But if they are activated in May or any time later in the year, they can be retained as a FARM player until the following year.
September roster expansion must be dealt with because you don’t want unowned minor leaguers up for just a month to be added as free agents when they should be in the minor league draft the following April. We assign all September free agents a $25 retention salary (25S13) which keeps that from happening.
Okay, we have everything now except the procedures to get your draft order. What I do not want to use is the lazy worst-to-first route. You want all the teams in your league to manage their roster as best they can. Sure, they may be in rebuilding mode, but they should still have an “active” roster, because if even one team's roster is filled with DL and ML players and not accumulating stats, they are distorting the stats in categories where the teams fighting to cash are trying for more points. You don’t want that to affect your league's pennant race.
What you should do is give the first pick in next year’s minor league draft (always held after opening day, which hopefully your auction is as well but a player must be clearly defined as to whether he is actually in the major leagues or in the minors) to the team that is the first team not to cash in your league. So if you pay four places, that would be the team that finishes in fifth place.
In a 12-team league, then your draft order would be 5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-4-3-2-1.
Next week, we will look at trading minor league draft picks. {jcomments on}
While most of the people interested in minor league prospects are in AL or NL-only keeper leagues, there are some redraft leagues that allow teams to pick three minor league players after their auction and then if those players are not activated, they can carry them over to the next season.
This is a nice idea to blend in a little forward looking twist for team management and it also gives some rationale for trades which are often hard to make in redraft leagues. You should broach it to your league mates if you feel your redraft league is getting a little stale.
Another idea to help keep people interested in the top minor league prospects or even a non-prospect at the beginning of the year that might soon be able to help your fantasy team is to allow teams to acquire minor leaguers via FAAB. This is best saved for larger leagues with very short benches because then there is so much value for the roster slot that teams at the top of the league will have a hard time adding a Javier Baez, Kris Bryant, Dylan Bundy or Micah Johnson. But the teams lower in the standings might take a shot on one of them, hoping that if they come up soon they could help them move up in the standings.
But keeper leagues are where minor leaguers have the most value, and I thought as we are now in Super 2 days with Oscar Taveras, the Cardinals young outfielder, and Houston first baseman Jon Singleton recently called up, I would look at the last two seasons of first-round draft picks in an AL-only league.
Mind you, this league has very deep FARM rosters with teams able to keep minor league prospects previously acquired for five dollars each year and then drafting five new players each year. So it is not unusual for a team to have a stable of 20 American League prospects (although the average is probably 10-12). Teams in this league can and often do draft top college and high school prospects, hoping to catch a Carlos Correa in the process but knowing they lose the player if drafted by an NL team.
In 2013, here was the first round:
1.01 Addison Russell, SS, Oakland
1.02 Jonathan Singleton, 1B, Houston
1.03 George Springer, OF, Houston
1.04 Trevor Bauer, P, Cleveland
1.05 Courtney Hawkins, OF, Chicago
1.06 Delino Deshields, 2B, Houston
1.07 Austin Wilson, OF, College
1.08 Bruce Rondon, P, Detroit
1.09 Anthony Gose, OF, Toronto
1.10 Kyle Zimmer, P, Kansas City
1.11 Adalberto Raul Mondesi, SS, Kansas City
Bauer, Springer and Gose were already activated by their teams in this league and Singleton (if not traded this week) likely will be activated next week.
Here are the minor league picks from this April:
1.01 Rougned Odor, 2B, Texas
1.02 Trea Turner, SS, College
1.03 Johan Santana, P, MIN (>BAL)
1.04 Colby Lewis, P, Texas
1.05 Matt Davidson, 3B, Chicago
1.06 D.J. Peterson, 3B, Seattle
1.07 Alex Jackson, OF, High School
1.08 Henry Owens, P, Boston
1.09 Kohl Stewart, P, Minnesota
1.10 Scott Diamond, P, Minnesota
1.11 Devon Travis, 2B, Detroit
Yes, you read some of those older names right – the flip side to those looking younger are owners who are specifically looking for help this year and hoping a veteran pitcher who is on a minor league contract (not on DL or in extended spring training without a contract) will be brought up and bolster a roster or be a nice keeper for next year.
As the Trea Turner and Alex Jackson owners can attest, it will also make this Thursday a bit like Christmas morning – well as long as their player doesn’t wind up being an NLump of coal. {jcomments on}
Many years ago, between the Mastersballs, I introduced readers to “Rotisserie Baseball Math.”
No, not another sabermetric stat for Brian Kenney to proselytize, but a different way to maximize the value of rotisserie baseball trades.
In many leagues where trading is allowed, it does affect auction/draft strategies in that should you be unable to get enough of any counting stat(s) at the draft but happen to accumulate a strong surplus in another category, you know that you will be able to translate the surplus even if you are dealing for cents on the dollar value wise.
So if you failed to get a good closer at your draft, you aren’t restricted to spending all your FAAB to get one of the new (usually temporary) closers in season, but can trade your extra stolen bases for some saves. Thus many trades are need for need.
But I want you to look deeper than just getting more points in the category you are trading for. While there are some instances where you just have one good prospective trading partner, it is far more likely that you will have several suitors for your Dee Gordon this year. Sure, you want to see what the best return for the Dodger speedster is, but I want you to look at the category positions of your trading partners. If you do it right, you may be able to “double the category points” in your trade.
In its simplest form, it is a variation of "Addition by Subtraction" for rotisserie scoring for your team. The premise is that while more points in a given category for your team results in a higher place in the league standings, so too are fewer points for one or more of your opponents in one or more categories.
Here is an outdated but still strong example of this type of trade:
Here were standings for the Cannonball Run III American League.
Rank | Team | Pts |
1 | Pt. Loma Quahogs | 82 |
2 | Surprise Royals | 76 |
3 | Framingham | 72.5 |
4 | Boston | 71 |
5 | Kilbourne | 68 |
6 | St. Paul | 67 |
7 | Beverly Hills Coyotes | 65 |
8 | Cape Cod | 62.5 |
9 | Brooklyn Cyclones | 62 |
10 | Salem | 58 |
11 | Scarsdale | 54.5 |
12 | Silver Lake Lookouts | 41.5 |
Note how close the teams are, especially from 9th at 62 points all the way up to 2nd at 76.0. And of course some of the categories are so close that point totals and places can shift from day to day.
Now let’s look at two categories – Strikeouts
Salem | 562 |
Point Loma | 466 |
Surprise | 449 |
Boston | 444 |
Scarsdale | 437 |
CapeCod | 434 |
Framingham | 425 |
Brooklyn | 419 |
St. Paul | 413 |
…and Saves
St. Paul | 56 |
Surprise | 38 |
Boston | 33 |
Beverly Hills | 28 |
Kilbourne | 24 |
Silver Lake | 21 |
Framingham | 21 |
Scarsdale | 19 |
If St. Paul could trade one of his premier closers (they were Mariano Rivera or Joakim Soria but could just as easily be David Robertson and Greg Holland today) and trade him to Scarsdale for a SP who would add a decent amount of strikeouts, he could not only gain four-plus points in K (and take away a point each from Framingham and Cape Cod), but Scarsdale, with the additional saves, would take away another point from Framingham and Kilbourne. With any additional improvement in other categories, this one trade would put him in a battle for 2nd place in the league with only one point of downside.
There is also the possibility of making a trade which doesn’t gain your team any categorical points but improves your position in the league standings!
Yes, you read that correctly. If your main competition loses points, you will have more of a lead or gain ground on a team ahead of you, even if you don’t gain points. The way you can do that is to find a specific trading partner. Let’s say you can trade saves for stolen bases in your league. If you trade your saves to a team that is currently behind your targeted opponent so that they may overtake them in the standings, you will have a net gain even if your side of the trade does not produce a gain in the SB category.
Let’s go back to Dee Gordon and his current 30 stolen bases. Here are the standings from a 2014 league, as of Monday.
Liquid Hippos | 126.5 |
Canadian Bacon | 121 |
Busted Flush | 106.5 |
Bronx Yankees | 104 |
And now the stolen base category where Hippos own Dee Gordon.
Liquid Hippos | 77 |
Bronx Yankees | 56 |
Busted Flush | 51 |
Hudson Hawks | 48 |
Canadian Bacon | 43 |
Doughboys | 43 |
Hackers II | 38 |
Dreamers | 38 |
Look how much flexibility there is in considering where to trade Gordon. Any team below Canadian Bacon would work in terms of not only taking a point away from him or preventing him from gaining a point. Hippos can gain points in several categories – HR (and only one home run ahead of the Canadian), Runs (4th but only four behind Canadian in 2nd), Saves (tied for 5th with Canadian), or Wins (4th with 32 but three-way tie for 1-2-3 with 33 including Canadian and Flush). So lots of choices to help the aqueous hog hold onto first place.
So when you make trades in your leagues, look beyond the ability to add points in one category – you may be able to “gain” in two or more categories just by picking the right team to trade with.
Simple “Rotisserie” Math. {jcomments on}
You may have seen an observation attributed to Ron Shandler that the teams in 1st through 4th place in leagues at the beginning of May are 80% likely to finish as the leaders at the end of the season.
I am not here to argue Ron’s “research” (although I would love to see it) but suggest it might only apply to non-mixed leagues where there is no trading. Even then, some slow starters coupled with one key crossover player could easily move a team from the second division to a money spot.
More importantly, let’s look at the ways you can significantly improve your team in a keeper league.
And in doing this I am going to suggest it can’t be a 1984 “Rotisserie League Baseball” book rules league, where you can’t bench a player or drop or replace (unless he is on the DL) for weekly lineup changes.
1. Realistic Team Evaluation – you can’t really decide on how to get someplace unless you know where you want to get to and how you are going to get there. Not that May category standings are etched in stone, but you do need to know where you really need help. If you are very low in stolen bases but have Mike Trout and almost any other minor SB threat on your team, you are going to improve in swipes. If you have players who have started very slowly but have a track record and are not dealing with an injury, you have some regression upward coming.
2. A Little Math Work – no, you don’t have to know calculus or be an Excel wizard but you do have to break down weekly numbers in your league (and by the way, I can’t really help because every league is radically different) to see how many points you might be able to add. Take Strikeouts for one example – How many SP vs RP are you currently playing? If you trotting out seven starting pitchers each week and are still buried in strikeouts, you have too many Kyle Lohses or Mark Buehrles on your staff. So don’t trade for Clayton Kershaw and try to pick up five points in that category (unless it is very tightly bunched – see #1). By the way, in looking at the categories this way you should completely leave BA, ERA and WHIP alone – you are either going to improve in those categories or you are not. Sure, you can do simple math – we are one-quarter through the season and your ERA is 4.900 – What do you need to get to 3.60? Well, you would need to have about a 3.17 ERA for the rest of the year. Reasonable? Probably not, so
3. Accumulate All the Counting Stats You Can – Either you can get enough points in HR/R/RBI/SB/W/SV/K to add in whatever you get in the ratio columns to win your league. And in keeper leagues, you can trade off your excess late in the season to help bolster another category. Even if you take ten cents on the dollar for extra stolen bases, it may be a small amount of RBI that will gain you another point or two (yes, back to the math work which must be continually reviewed).
Okay, I know you knew all those, but please read them again later because 95% of players don’t remember to remember them (Yogi Berra).
4. Spend your FAAB – down to whatever minimal levels you need in your particular league. There is no guarantee that even if you have enough FAAB units left, you would win the best crossover player to your AL or NL-only league. First, there is always the guy who hoards his units. Second, you do not have (and nobody else does either) any idea when that player is going to arrive or if the first one is really the one you need. Right now, you can make significant changes in your roster via free agents. Let’s stop to take a look at what I mean.
American League Examples
Weekend before May 5 - you could have added Steve Pearce, Eduardo Escobar or Grant Green. Pearce was a monster for that one week; Escobar still playing most every day and at SS or 3B; Green qualified at second base but will add outfield and may survive Kole Calhoun’s imminent arrival or be reservable.
Weekend before May 12 – you could have added Robbie Ray, James Jones or Erik Bedard. Again, Ray was great the week before (if you could add minor league players – can’t in my AL) but good that week and gets another start this week. Jones is contributing good average and some swipes for a weak outfield slot and Bedard has been excellent lately (not originally when I picked him up and then had to drop him).
Weekend before May 19 – you could have added Nick Tepesch, Kyle Blanks or Chase Whitley. Tepesch, who showed a little something last year, had been lights out in the Minors this year and for now has a spot in the Rangers rotation. Blanks, even on the short end of a first base platoon, could get 300 at-bats and double-digit home runs. I don’t know about Whitley, but that was a nice first outing and a starting pitcher you can add at this point is silver, if not gold, if they pan out.
Weekend before May 26 – Stephen Drew may be available this weekend, if not the next. (Note I don’t think he is as good as others do, but he is better than many of the players that AL-only owners have in their SS/MI slot).
Allegorically, I added at least one of those players each week and have moved from 11th place to 8th and if I just add a point or two each week, I will end up in the money in a very tough AL-only league.
Save a dollar for each week left to play. Or better yet, get your league to allow zero dollar bids after you use all your FAAB – you won’t get the best players but will always be able to add a catcher to replace an injured player or a middle reliever to use, and this really lets all the teams in the league compete all year long.
5. Trade for What You Now Need - if you do a good job with #4 early when trades are harder to make, you are much better positioned to make both minor and major trades to bolster weak positions in your lineup or bolster a specific category. Some of these early pickups may not be the players you need for the finish but may look much better as keepers to the teams you need to trade with.
6. Trade to Take Points Away – the column in the archives is Addition by Subtraction (if you can’t find it, don’t worry, it will be the subject of next week’s column).
Do every single one of these things and I guarantee you more fun in managing your team. I can’t guarantee you finish in the money, but you will have a much better chance to do so if you play hard.
Look, you can’t win every year. Your team is often not as good as you thought at the end of the auction, but you can always manage aggressively and try and contend. And in a keeper league, you always have the fallback option of trading assets to the contending teams in July to bolster your 2015 roster. {jcomments on}
Not all leagues are the same, so while in fact I say should have been picked up, I am for the most part referring to non-mixed leagues. But, if you play in big money mixed leagues, I am going to suggest you would be much better with in-season pickups if you played in one of each mono league.
The reason is that with much greater penetration into the player pool, you are actually watching every time the Minnesota Twins change shortstops – okay, you aren’t going to bid on everyone, but the point is that being that familiar with the AL and NL player pools would put some potential mixed league free agents on your radar before you need to bid on them in the mixed leagues.
Let’s look at some free agents who were picked up last weekend who I hope are already on your teams or that you will consider adding this coming weekend.
Robbie Ray, SP, Detroit Tigers – Ray was the key minor leaguer that the Tigers got from Washington in the Doug Fister trade. Not highly regarded as a pitching prospect, the Tigers had played against him in 2013 and not fared well, which put him on their radar. Their trading for him should have at least made us question what they saw, and his start this year at Triple-A Toledo – 3-2 with a 1.59 ERA with just five walks in 28+ innings while striking out 21 batters gave them the reason to bring him up last week for his first major league start, filling in for Anibal Sanchez. Ray performed pretty well in that game, giving up just one earned run over 5 1/3 innings while striking out five, walking one and getting the victory. That was good enough to get another start on Sunday (six scoreless innings giving up just four hits and a walk while striking out two), and while there were several who might not have added him last weekend, I tried to, believing he would get one more start this week. And even though he will likely be sent down after that, it is an AL-only league where he will be reservable, and he will be back. By the way, while many of you play in leagues where he would not have been a legal pickup on Sat-Sun May 3-4, others are not, and in a 16-team mixed league where minor leaguers can be added, my team did just that with not many starters available.
Steve Pearce, 1B, Baltimore Orioles – Pearce was back on the Orioles' active roster on May 1, so I added him that weekend in an AL-only league and he rewarded my team with three home runs. Yes, he may have a tough time finding at-bats with Chris Davis back. No, I am not suggesting you would have added him over C.J. Cron in mixed leagues. But, we do need to be aware of some of these quick fixes.
Jake Odorizzi, SP, Tampa Bay Rays – Odorizzi was dropped in many mixed leagues and in some AL leagues where I would have suggested more patience if he was reservable or if you had better options on your free agent list or your roster. But, he did respond very well to the threat of losing his spot in the Rays’ rotation and left last week’s game against the Cleveland Indians leading 2-0 with a chance for the W after giving up only five hits and two walks in those five shutout innings while striking out a career high 11 batters. Of course, that many strikeouts forced him to throw a lot of pitches, which led to his early exit, but you still have to like the effort and look at the possibility he may be worth the add.
Danny Santana, SS, Minnesota Twins – Santana was just a 23-year-old infield prospect coming into spring training this year, and while he had improved his batting average each of the last three minor league seasons, it was his 30 stolen bases that made him worth a note. Santana was only hitting .268 at Triple-A Rochester with no home runs, seven RBI and four swipes. But, he was hitting .384 in his first five games when I bid on him Saturday in an AL-only keeper league. Admittedly, while I will play him only as long as he keeps hitting or stays up, with that speed he could be a keeper in that league if he were the starting shortstop for the Twins next March. I don’t see him as a mixed league add unless he starts running a lot for Minnesota, but even then, you would need a pretty weak SS/MI slot to roster him.
James Jones, OF, Seattle Mariners - Jones is back up for his second tour with the big club after Seattle sent Abraham Almonte to the Minors to see if he could get fixed. Jones, meanwhile, gives the Mariners a better defender in centerfield and adds his best tool, speed, to the lineup. Jones has stolen 20+ bases in three of his last four minor league seasons, usually with half a dozen home runs. He was claimed this week in both keeper and redraft AL leagues but would not be a candidate for mixed leagues.
Frank Francisco, RP, Chicago White Sox – Well, those with leagues running FAAB on Saturdays were denied the opportunity to add potential closer Francisco as he wasn’t in some databases or wasn’t updated to reflect his callup. Those on Sunday had access to him in many leagues. As I said on the message board, Frank Frank was very effective in his limited appearances at Triple-A Charlotte but hadn’t given up a run and had a 6/1 K/BB ratio when I looked. Matt Lindstrom certainly isn’t going to keep Francisco from getting a shot and Nate Jones will be out for quite awhile longer. {jcomments on}