League Design 101: So You Want Everyone to Compete

Redraft leagues are the gateway drug of fantasy baseball. Like other gateway drugs, you could totally stop playing at any time. If you wanted to. You don’t, but you could, and that’s an important thing to know. Once you join a competitive keeper or dynasty league, you’re well and truly hooked. Maybe you can go cold turkey. Maybe…but why?

Continuing the tortured analogy, keeper and dynasty leagues have some nasty side effects. In a redraft, everybody is focused on the current season. It’s pure. If a roster flops, its owner probably just stops managing it sometime in June or July or August. Keeper leagues let a subset of owners focus on future seasons (duh). Some of your rivals – maybe you too – were never trying to win in 2016.

This often serves to condense the player pool. A 12-team league might feel like it’s the depth of an eight or 10-team league. My 20-team industry dynasty plays like a 14-teamer at the major league level. The issue is that future-oriented owners aren’t bothering to field a major league roster.

It’s not a bad strategy.  I used it last year in my home league and now own super cheap versions of Nomar Mazara, Jose Peraza, David Dahl, Dansby Swanson, Andrew Benintendi, Alex Bregman, and Willson Contreras (among others). I almost certainly should have done this. Unfortunately, the decisions I made to compile this roster pushed a lot of talent uphill to a few top contenders.

This process begins earlier and earlier every year. There is a first mover advantage to rebuilding. You can use your trade-able assets to acquire the best possible target. The next guy to sell has that many fewer options. Eventually, you’re in a position where it’s rational to sell actual good players for the fringiest of keepers.

It’s really obnoxious to be one of the teams at the top during these fire sales. Let’s say I have a nice balanced, sane roster. My closest rival trades a couple dubious keepers for two first round talents. Suddenly, I’m forced to join the trading game or else I won’t win the league. The end result is that the best owners at trading finish atop the standings year after year. Then there’s bitterness, recrimination, and a groundswell of support for new league rules.

The classic solutions don’t work. Penalties just drive owners out of the league – without paying the fines. Rewards for competing help the rich stay rich. Attempts to curtail trading under certain circumstances only serve to cripple the league (and take the fun away).

I’ve experienced some small success with what I call incremental standings – every place has a higher monetary value than the last. Last season, in the league I mentioned earlier, I battled my way out of last place to finish ninth. I gained $15 for my September surge. Incremental standings won’t stop a fire sale, but it does give owners and incentive to ensure they don’t throw in the towel prematurely.

In my dynasty league, we have a (very mino)r existential crisis. It’s a 20-team league with most of the current major league talent squashed onto the top eight or 10 rosters. Eight teams didn’t even bother trying to field a major league roster last year. They’re using a wide range of rebuilding techniques which in itself is interesting. Should they be forced to compete?

Every winter, we discuss rule proposals to force more owners into contending. I think all of us want to feel what it’s like to be in a league with 20 actual, competing teams. It would be intense. I know that’s my personal motivation. However, that was never the identity of this league. Except in extreme cases where it’s necessary to save the league, it’s best to put forced competition rules into effect when a league is founded. Make it a part of the cultural identity. Messing too much with a league’s identity will only screw up a good thing.

A Solution

Many leagues use buy-ins so owners will take the league seriously. Everybody is more likely to show up for the draft and manage on a day-to-day basis if there’s something at stake. If you’re trying to create a cutthroat, competitive league, one option is to double the buy-in.

Say it’s a $50 league. It stays a $50 league, but everybody has to pay $100 to join. Now you can actually implement penalties to discourage undesirable behavior. The extra $50 is returned to owners after completing a season in good standing. If the owner was inactive, failed to meet certain minimums, colluded, or flat out quit, some portion (or all) of the $50 goes to the prize pool. Make sure everything is spelled out very clearly in the league constitution.

Even if you prefer a penalty-free league, you can still use a variation of this solution. Charge two or three-years of buy-ins at a time. Clearly enumerate the ways in which an owner can request a refund on future seasons – probably by quitting with sufficient time for a replacement to be found before the next draft.

The purpose here is to force owners to think beyond a single season. The worst keeper league owners are the ones who get locked into a perpetual rebuild. Up the price of admission, and they should try harder. It doesn’t always work that way.

Alternatively, you can treat the multi-year buy-ins as contracts. By paying through 2019 (or whenever), an owner has committed him or herself to managing the team for that period. If they fall out of good standing, they should still be replaced while forfeiting the buy-in. A few exceptions should be made for when reality intervenes.

Multi-year buy-ins should chase away the least committed owners. I’ve talked to some fantasy players who like to have uncommitted owners in their league – it’s that much easier to win. Speaking for myself, any rule that helps to increase the average talent level of a league is a good thing.





You can follow me on twitter @BaseballATeam

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Nasty Nate
7 years ago

I like a format that one might call “modified keeper,” in which, before each season, every team has a chance to win the upcoming season. You accomplish this by limiting the number of players each team can keep, tweaking roster/position settings as needed, and having a mechanism in which surplus keepers can be traded during the offseason. If the format is done right, no team ever has to rebuild over multiple seasons, and the effect of in-season punting is limited.

jcutigermember
7 years ago
Reply to  Nasty Nate

Sounds like some form of socialism. How do you accomplish this, penalize teams that were good the year before? They only get 3 keepers but other bad teams get 4?

Nasty Nate
7 years ago
Reply to  jcutiger

No, everyone gets the same amount of keepers, but it is a smallish number.

JasonJ
7 years ago
Reply to  Nasty Nate

Limiting keepers certainly helps lessen the disparity. Even still, some people just like re-building. Even in money leagues you’ll see guys pay the entry fee and then gut the team.