The trade last Friday that sent Cubs pitchers Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel to the AL West leading Oakland Athletics did a lot more than make the A’s clear favorites to win the division and increase their chances of getting to the World Series.

It also created huge bidding in AL-only leagues where competing teams had a chance to dramatically improve their pitching staffs without trading away any players.

Here are two AL-only keeper league examples where the difference in price is determined by league rules which may be very similar to your league. If you play in an AL-only redraft league, you may want to look at the bidding in LABR’s AL league and the Tout AL league posted in MastersBlog.

In my 11-team AL keeper league, we did have lower FAAB balances than we normally do when several of the teams tend to save their FAAB dollars for interleague trades which might deliver stud crossover players from the NL. There were only three teams that had more than $63 available last Saturday, two of those being contending teams this year and one being a team that has already sold off expiring players and rebuilding who would have no interest in a crossover player who couldn’t be traded or kept for next season. There would have been a third team, a contender that normally hoards FAAB, but they had spent $68 to acquire Kendrys Morales when he was signed by Minnesota.

There was also a contender who had $59 left, so the two contending teams both correctly bid $60 on both Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel. The funny thing was that one has Samardzija first while the other preferred Hammel, so they both got the pitcher they wanted.

Now in this league, players traded from the NL as well as players like Morales or Stephen Drew, or even Tony Sipp, who weren’t available in either the auction or minor league draft are not eligible to be kept next year or to be traded within the league for the balance of this year.

Crossover players don’t have the typical free agent salary against our in season $300 cap of $5 but are assigned a salary based on their FAAB price as shown below:

a. FA Bids $1-5 $5 (like normal Free Agents) 
b. FA Bids $6-19 $X (the bid amount) 
c. FA Bids $20+ $20 against the cap

But some leagues like Don Drooker’s AL Bowling League use the original “Rotisserie League Handbook” rules where the crossover player’s FAAB amount is their salary (against a $310 cap) and their contract for 2015 if they are kept. In addition, winning bids over ten dollars guarantee a two-year contract at that price (unless bought out).

In that league, the winning bid for Samardzija was $29, with underbids of 26, 23, 19, 15 and 10. The winning bid for Hammel was $20 with underbids of 19, 15, 13, 10, 10 and 7. Also in that league, normal free agents are $10 against the cap instead of the $5 my league uses and are acquired as weekly callups, so FAAB is only used for crossover bids or players like Morales.

Hopefully, this helps you judge prices in your league, whether for the new Oakland pitchers or for future players traded from the National League. {jcomments on}