Trading: Keeper League Tips
This is article six in a seven-part series on fantasy trading. To read the introduction, click here.
1. Long-term Relationships
This is the main difference between keeper and redraft leagues. If you get deep into talks with an owner and do something to piss them off, your chances of dealing with them in the future are diminished. In keeper leagues, you should be much more diligent and explain why you are rejecting every deal.
2. Buy Low More
I touched on this in my “On BABIP and Buying Low” article a couple of weeks back, but I’ll elaborate more. When you sense some regression is on the horizon, you have a much better chance of getting a good deal in keeper leagues. In redraft leagues, the player may never regress, and your stuck with a guy you have no use for. However, if you are certain the player is better than he’s shown, you have a much better chance to cash in if you’re in a keeper league. Even if they don’t return to normal during the current season, you could always hold onto them and wait for next year.
3. Weighing Next Year vs. This Year
I lied, this is a bigger difference than #1. While redraft leagues only have to worry about what the player will do the rest of the season, keeper league owners need to weigh a players current performance, their future performance, and draft pick value. For example, if you can make a deal to get a player you find to be almost as valuable this year, but will be cheaper to keep in the future, you need to pull the trigger. Don’t get carried away and deal everyone away for cheap keepers, but keep that factor in mind when accepting a deal.
Zach is the creator and co-author of RotoGraphs' Roto Riteup series, and RotoGraphs' second-longest tenured writer. You can follow him on twitter.
In redraft leagues, the player may never regress, and your stuck with a guy you have no use for.
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What? Regression doesn’t “take time” to happen. If a player is a true-talent .380 wOBA hitter and has a .330 wOBA due to unlucky BABIP, then there’s no reason that the rest of “this” season he will continue being unlucky, whereas next season he loses all his “unluckiness.” That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
It makes perfect sense, actually. Regression DOES take time: it’s possible for a player to sustain freakishly bad or good luck for an entire season. That’s how Alex Rios managed a .247/.296/.395 season (2009) sandwiched between years in which he hit .291/.337/.461 (2008) and .302/.354/.510 (this year). The same thing seems to be happening with Teixeira this year, but I’d still trade for him as a keeper.
I’d argue the answer is somewhere in between what you guys are saying. The expectation for regression is that it should happen right away, since past performance doesn’t impact anything from the point in time that you receive the player in question. However, knowing that you’ll have that player for a longer period of time (as in a keeper league) means that the value you get from the player is less likely to be influenced by hot or cold streaks, since the longer the period of time that’s measured the more likely the player is to regress (upward or downward) to his “true” talent level.
Agreed, and better put than what I said. Regression, as a concept, is instantaneous. If a player is playing above or below his true talent level, you expect him to start playing at his true talent level right away. What I think Zach meant to say (or what I meant to say) is regression’s effect on a player’s overall numbers is not instantaneous. It’s going to take 2 months of straight-up ass-whoopin’ for Tex’s stats to come close to his career averages. Like bikozu said, though, he doesn’t need to match his career numbers by the end of the season to be a valuable second-half acquisition; he just needs to start playing like Mark Teixeira. And as you said, over a period of 2-3 years, his overall stats should reflect his talent and won’t be affected by hot-and-cold streaks.
Let’s not forget that what we are calling “luck” is really an error term that is probably primarily but not completely due to actual luck. Somewhere in there might be an actual skill related thing that comes out looking like luck.
Something I think could have added is the timing of a trade in a keeper league, with regard to who the “buyers” and “sellers” are. Also, what’s the price of keeping a player? That’s going to effect the trade market dramtically. I know there are many permutations of keeper rules but I think it’s important to address these issues in some way.
In my keeper, we keep players based on where they were drafted – or if kept multiple years, based on their previous year’s ranking. So I keep Pujols, I lose a first round pick. I keep Carlos Santana (who I grabbed off of waivers) I lose a 25th rounder. We are also allowed to trade draft picks in the next season’s draft, which happens often as the buyers and sellers separate themselves in the standings.
So here’s a trade strategy that I’ve followed this year – try to make my deals earlier in the season, as opposed to waiting until the deadline. It may be tougher, but it saves me a big headache the following season. In previous years, I (and other owners in the league) mortgaged the future, trading picks for useful players to make my playoff push. It worked last year as I traded picks and young, keeper-worthy players for older, less desirable (as keepers) vets and ultimately won my league. One move for instance involved sending Longoria and a mid round pick to a losing team, in exchange for Sandoval (who was C eligible at the time) A-Ram and Andrew Bailey. Great short term, bad long term. Now I’m in the middle of the pack with a flailing Panda (who I kept at the cost of a 12th rounder I believe) and my opponent sits in first place with Longoria on his team.
Most of the contending teams in this league do this as well and the following year, it makes our draft is even more challenging, since we are drained of multiple picks. When this league became a keeper, the dumping practice was somewhat controversial and some owners balked. Now at year four of this league, we’ve come to see it as a natural part of the season’s progression – just like in the real game.
So yeah. IDing the buyers and sellers and what they are trying to accomplish is very important in a keeper. Wouldn’t my making Posey (another 25th rounder if kept – that I acquired for his keeper trade value) available be more attractive to the team that’s in rebuild mode, rather than a guy going for the title this season, who might aim higher for veteran talent (like V-Mart say) this year?
Anyway, food for thought. Keep up the nice work.
That’s a cool concept and one I might have to introduce to my league. I’m also in year 4 of my league and took Pujols #1 overall and Hanley in the 5th round (I think) after his rookie season. I then took Lincecum with my first overall pick in 2008 after someone ditched him in favor of Johan, and my keepers for this year were those 3 + Halladay.
I’ve wanted to redraft because my team is laughably good, but perhaps a change in the keeper policy could have the same effect.
We actually have a pretty cool keeper policy for our league. It’s a $260 per team NL-Only auction league, and the only limit on keepers are that you have to add $5 to the value at which they were drafted last year. So a team could hypothetically keep an entire 25 man roster, assuming the total inflated value of those players comes in at or under $260. This also prevents players from staying on the same team for too long, since adding $5 to a player’s cost each year means they can’t be kept forever.
The only problem arises when an owner has multiple top level players – In that case, the players loses the next round’s pick up to the third round. To mitigate some of the inequity that might be found, an owner is limited to as many as three (out of five total keepers) 1st – 3rd round value players. It’s a little awkward and we’ve only had that case come up once but it hasn’t created any serious issues in the four years of this league’s existence.
I would actually prefer a keeper format more like Rob’s as outlined below and have pushed my league to adopt an auction format with similar inflation rules. Aside from my enjoying an auction more than a snake-draft, I believe placing monetary value on players makes it easier to rank them and adding inflation keeps players moving, giving owners a chance to own different top-caliber players over time – even though I’ve owned Pujols for the past three years, mind you.
While I’ll work our rules to my team’s best interest, I think it’s more advantageous to the health of the league in the long run, if players are not kept for many years.
By the way for some context, I entered this year’s draft without first, fourth, eighth, ninth, 12th, 14th and 21st round picks – due to keepers and trades and managed to add a few in the late rounds (15th, 20th, 22nd).
Makes for a VERY challenging draft. If I can win again this year though, it’ll ultimately be even more satisfying as I’ve had to work harder than ever to compete with last year’s sellers who were flush with early picks in the draft.
Rob, I have a similar league. It’s $310 for a 29 man roster and $7 above draft cost to keep with unlimited keeps. Most of the rosters I look at shouldn’t keep more than 3, although I’ve stashed as many as 12 headlined by very cheap contracts on Strasburg ($8), Liriano ($4), Posey ($8), and Carlos Santana ($1).
My keeper league just switched to a new format where we keep players at their previous draft + 3 spots, with no lower than a 20th (so, 25th becomes a 20, 23 a 20, 20 a 17, 10 a 7, etc) and four keepers. Its a new format, so we’re feeling it out, but it has made those late round guys a huge plus, as you can potentially keep them for several years before it costs you a top pick.
About #1, I feel what you saying and that can apply, but I think only insensitive idiots carry something on long to the point where things become hard to work out. I remember the first year I played with one person in this keeper league we are in (this is the third year), and somehow the first year I grew to pretty much despise this guy on a fantasy level. He just rubbed me the wrong way for reasons I can’t remember; I know I said something probably negative to him when he hit me up in a trade and I’m pretty sure he threw a shot back and me and wasn’t feeling what I had to say either. Long story short, by some point in year 2, we came to respect each other even more than we did before, and now we always have thorough trade talks when it comes to it.
Generally tho, people get too mad at lowball offers too fast. Its one thing if all someone sends is lowball offers, those people never change and you probably wouldn’t end up trading them anyway, but sometimes people take so much offense to the first lowball offer they see that they miss out on trades with certain managers just because of that.