keeper system

got stoned and came up with this. we could go in any direction, but this one sounds good. read on, more notes at the bottom:

Keeper System

Everyone has a budget of $24 (imagenary). There are only 2 types of players:

Rookies: anyone with less than (x#) of MLB service days: $4

Studs: anyone else you would keep: $8

You can keep a max of 5 players.

Each player kept counts as a draft pick. (not totally sure what rounds keepers should count for yet)

So, under this system, you can keep 3 studs, 2 studs and 2 rookies, or 1 stud and 4 rookies to spend your entire budget. You could also keep 1 stud, 3 rookies, and draft in the open draft one round sooner than if you kept the max of 4 rookies. You could keep no one and draft the first 3-5 guys in the open draft. Lots of possibilities.

At first I was trying to figure out a middle category of player for $6, but it’s not really worth it. This is simple and I think it still meets all of our criteria. The number of days that qualify a rookie need to be established. I think it should be over one year, but not by much. Find out how many days of service some young guy has who played parts of two seasons that may add up to a little more than 1 year, but the player is still a speculative keeper.

With prior knowledge of this, no one should be allowed to keep rookies this season. With an open draft, I let Pence go; I would not have if I had know this was keeper under this system. If I go get him now, it’s only because I knew the plan changed before everyone else. That’s probably not fair. I don’t really mind, and I doubt u will either.

So maybe this year everyone can keep 2 or 3, all same value, and next year the rewards for cultivating rooks take place. I just don’t see any other way around this pence example.

Brian and I were working on the draft pick compensation for keepers too. Which rounds keepers should count for, and that rookies should take a much lower round than the studs. Also, we should discuss limiting the number of years you can keep someone and/or making it progressively more expensive to keep the same person year to year.

Damn, i keep thinking of more stuff. maybe each year you keep someone, their keeper price goes up $4. Then each year you keep someone, he becomes harder and harder to keep until he either eats up your whole keeper budget or you throw him in the draft pile. if you trade a keeper, his price stays the same until he hits the draft. so if i trade you a-rod next year, he will cost you $12 to keep for 09. if no one keeps him in 09, he can be kept in '10 for $8 again. this promotes keeper turnover and strategy.

A lot could change for next year, as we have a good core group to build around. it would be nice to have 8 serious guys to thin the talent pool out a bit. Maybe we make big changes like this yearly, not all at once. i know justin is trying to get a contracts/salary cap system worked into the league. that could be cool too, even if it's not next year.

we can also talk about exploring roto for a year, making the draft an auction, doing it in person, and of course tinkering with roster size and scoring catagories.

if you didn't finish this post because it's dorky you should probably get out now