Delinquency

Today’s post was supposed to be about the weird keeper position I find myself in my home league. That will have to wait until tomorrow because three owners failed to select their keepers. One of them has yet to pay. I’m grumpy about it, but I decided to put off being really grumpy until tomorrow. I’ve extended the deadline one day.

Some people legitimately enjoy running leagues. I am not one of those people. I commissioned at least one league every year since I was 12, mostly on Yahoo. My so-called home league – which features only three of the original owners including a guy who left and came back – is the only one I run now. I’ve been trying to offload it for years. Every year, my patience for cat herding dwindles.

The commissioner of a keeper league has three main duties.

1. Harass people into agreeing to a draft day
2. Harass people into paying before the draft
3. Harass people into making keeper selections before the keeper deadline

Ultimately, it’s about harassing your fellows. What do you do when the cats wander off and don’t complete those three tasks? Like many leagues, I use Doodle to set the draft date and time. Owners who fail to participate don’t get a say. One such owner can’t make the draft. Too bad. Don’t worry, I’m getting him a surrogate.

I take a similarly hard stance on late payments. In the past, I’ve worked with owners who’ve said “you’ll get your money today, tomorrow, soon” for weeks and weeks. Then their draft goes poorly and *poof*. The owner who didn’t pay me this year said he’d submit it yesterday (the deadline). I’m giving him until the end of today. Then he’s getting replaced. Over the years, I’ve grown very aggressive about replacing owners for any number of reasons.

As a fantasy writer, I have an advantage when it comes to replacing owners. I have a deep pool of colleagues and readers to draw upon. Many of you may be more constrained with your replacement options. My recommendation is to cultivate a short wait list.

The third type of delinquency is the trickiest. It’s tempting to take a hard line – if you fail to meet the keeper deadline, you don’t get any keepers. However, that really screws with competitive balance. It’s also a good way to create a spiteful troll. Today, I brainstormed a few penalties for my league. Yours will probably be different.

First, a brief explanation of our keeper mechanics. We have a $310 budget for standard two catcher deep rosters. Any number of players may be kept at a price of previous auction price plus $7. Those are the broad strokes.

Since most teams keep an average of 10 players, I enacted the following new rule for owners who miss the deadline.

To better facilitate competition, owners who miss the keeper deadline will have the option to manually email me the names of up to 5 keepers prior to 3 days before the auction. Missing the deadline means you may NOT keep more than 5 players.

It’s not perfect. There may be scenarios when an owner with fewer than five keepers decides to wait until after the deadline. I’m not married to sticking with this option, but it is what I’ll use for this spring. The goal is to keep spacebrained owners from rioting because they lost their cheap Kris Bryant due to a scheduling technicality.

Instead of limiting the number of keepers, a penalty can be applied to an owners auction budget. For example…

Owners who fail to make keeper selections before the deadline will be docked $10 from their auction budget per day. They will be replaced if they do not make selections within 3 days of the deadline.

Or, if you prefer a real financial penalty…

Owners who fail to make keeper selections before the deadline will be assessed a $10 fee which will go towards the prize pool. Failure to pay the fee and submit keepers within 3 days will result in the owner being replaced.

In my experience, owners who miss deadlines eventually need to be replaced. You’ll have occasional one-off mistakes, but it’s usually a signal that the owner is either not engaged enough to be an asset to the league, or they think they can get away with advantageously acting late. Seeing all other keepers before making your selections is a huge advantage. And wouldn’t you love to see the outcome of your draft before deciding to pay?

Who else has developed their own techniques for handling delinquent owners?