fantasy baseball conversations 2015

[metsmarathon]

i have a draft tonight, of a long-time league that recently enacted new keeper rules, in the interest of keeping things interesting.

the rules are, essentially:

a) up to 3 players may be kept from the preceding year
(edited) the first year a keepr is kept, his draft slot is the slot he was drafted in. if a keeper was kept in the prior season, his draft slot will be the average (rounded down) of the prior year's draft position and hte current year's ADP
so a player selected in the 10th round last year, will be kept at the 10th round this year.
and next year, if he has an ADP in the 2nd round, his draft slot for the following season will be (10+2)/2 = 6th round.
c) no player with a draft slot in the first 3 rounds may be kept the following season.

so, having made my keeper picks already, and i think i'm happy enough with them... my dilemma becomes...

how early do i draft kris bryant and noah syndergaard?
with a full 600-at bats, bryant projects to be a 4th round value. with 500 at bats, he's a 10th rounder (assuming his value to be spread evenly thru the year). is it crazy to think of taking him as early as the 10th round? and the other consideration is, the longer i wait on him, the longer i would be able to keep him, as a lower draft slot would take longer to ascend into the 3rd round. but then, how long is too long...?

last year, tanaka went in the 9th, and jose abreu went in the 10th round (to me). is it reasonable to think that bryant would go sooner or later? in the same draft, billy hamilton went in the 4th round....!

[Ceetar]

I don't get too worked up about rounds. If you have a 3B hole and think he's worth it, try to grab him.

I guess the goal would be to make sure you could keep him if he's really gold, so no earlier than the 6th round to guarantee that extra year if he's a top guy. 11th to make it two years. (11+1/2 is 6th round keeper, 6+1/2 is 4th round keeper

It really depends on how valuable you think he'll be. Average round on Yahoo is 12.7. That's 17th of 3B (including behind Daniel Murphy) I'd probably take him 8-11 depending how I was happy filling out other positions to that point if you want him.

[metsmarathon]

well, bryant went early in the 8th, three picks after i'd selected degrom. i was very tempted to pull the trigger there, but it felt too early. i was hoping he would last until my next pick at the end of the 9th. oh well.

i had an interesting draft. i had the 11th pick in a 12-team league, and my first two picks were tulo & cano. i never have a solid middle infield, and didn't quite know what to do with myself. by the middle rounds, i was hunting and pecking throughout my pre-draft rankings, looking for potential values and good fits, and stressed out as the players i wanted disappeared right before my pick.

in the late rounds, i think i was a little too focused on picking up future talent that i mightn't be able to keep, and which mightn't play much this year anyways. i have syndergaard and carlos rodon sitting on my bench. they are joined there by a pair of aces recovering from injuries who should help mid-season in jose fernandez (spaztastically selected in the 14th round) and garrett richards (keeper, 23rd round). once the season starts and they hit the DL, i'll be able to back-fill the couple of holes i have.

if all goes well, i'll have a juggernaut in the last half with more keepable aces than i can shake a stick at. if, that is, i survive the first half...

c d'arnaud (19)
1b abreu (k-10)
2b cano (2)
ss tulo (1)
3b alvarez (18)
of hamilton (3)
of yelich (6)
of jd martinez (7)
ut zobrist (11)
ut baez (13)
b pearce(15)
b arcia (17)
b semien (21)

sp scherzer (k-4)
sp shields (5)
sp degrom (8)
sp pineda(16)
rp cody allen (9)
rp joaquin benoit (12)
bp-dl fernandez (14)
bp syndergaard (20)
bp rodon (22)
bp-dl g.richards (k-23)

[Ceetar]

Any of you that aren't in the Ottoneu league with us feel like filling in for someone in the draft tonight?

[seawolf17]

Shit. Did I get bumped from our league? I thought I paid.

[smg58]

So the draft is happening next Friday now?

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

hey what the hell. We had months to prepare for tonight

[Ceetar]

seawolf17 wrote: Shit. Did I get bumped from our league? I thought I paid.

uh, yeah. didn't you? I didn't even realize you weren't there.

I saw Stonybrook and didn't even pay attention that the email wasn't you.

If you are indeed paid up, I'll bump that guy for you. He hasn't responded to any of my emails anyway.



I'm sorry..it sucks that we didn't draft tonight. But 2 people canceled on me and an auction draft with 2 no-shows and a season with 2 handicapped teams is not ideal. This seemed like the best idea to me. Please fill out the doodle I sent and hopefully we can make this work.

[metsmarathon]

Was Wolfe one of the 2 teams or were there in fact three teams unavailable?

[Ceetar]

metsmarathon wrote: Was Wolfe one of the 2 teams or were there in fact three teams unavailable?

I popped in briefly at 9 and didn't see the Devil Toads, so yeah, probably 3 teams. I copy and pasted the emails from the site without really reading them so C-Wolf hasn't been on the thread.

When he's ready I'll kick the non-responsive squatter.

I'm trying, desperately, to find a date that works.

This Doodle blocks out the next week and a half. So far there are exactly 0 days that work for everyone so I don't even know.

http://doodle.com/ph8fr789tz8vrh86

[metsmarathon]

if it makes you feel better, if the draft were tonight, i would've been royally fucked. i'd forgotten to send myself my latest spreadsheet, though i think i recreated the missing bits. but teh biggest issue is that my internet was shit. i was on the draft with my freaking nook. i think my pc likes my network now, but its hard to say... regardless, i was not in good shape for tonight, so it worked out well enough for me so far.

but still, boo on the guys who couldn't make the draft. we should dock them salary or something.

[seawolf17]

I was there, but I was out of the league so I wasn't there. I must not have paid.

Shoot me a FB message some time today and we'll time it out so you can bump him and I can pay and claim the team right away.

[Ceetar]

seawolf17 wrote: I was there, but I was out of the league so I wasn't there. I must not have paid. Shoot me a FB message some time today and we'll time it out so you can bump him and I can pay and claim the team right away.

Looks like they've made it easier. I just have to add your username, which I did, presuming that's actually you.

[seawolf17]

Score. Renewed. We're good.

[TransMonk]

Do you guys know how much it virtually costs to have a virtual jet on standby to pick up a virtual Robinson Cano to fly him to a virtual press conference to announce that I had virtually signed him to my virtual team, but that I had to virtually cancel this morning?

Virtually nothing. But my virtual fans are pissed.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Otoh I had to unexpectedly actually travel for work this week but scheduled flights so as to accommodate this event only to be dicked over myself. Meantime peeps take 6 weeks to play a scrabble game. Let me know when the Draft is -- maybe I'll show up.

[smg58]

I have a suggestion. If no night works for everybody, why not just bypass the draft and have a blind auction on every player like we do with waiver-wire players during the season? We can limit the bidding to 20 players at a given time, and 24 hours per auction, and by the time the season starts we'll all have functional rosters.

[metsmarathon]

i don't think we can adjust the timescale on the waiver wire auction unless we take it completely offline.

this is a very interesting suggestion that i think could work.

there are 200 roster spots that need to be filled, and 10 viable auction days (asuming we start on monday 23 march and run until april 2nd, allowing hte final auctions to close before the first official game on april 5th).

if each day, we allow teams to nominate two players for the auction, we should be able to get it done in time.

it will be a very weird auction, and some teams will surely get screwed and make colossally bad decisions, and some players will go for insanely reduced rates, but it beats the alternative of having one or more thoroughly uncompetitive teaams because of a missed draft.

i'd be okay with going forward with this strategy if we can get buy-in from the rest of hte owners, but ovbiously only if the conventional draft option is impossible.

obviously, if a guy is unavailable to participate in the auctions the next two weeks, it all falls apart just as badly.

[Ceetar]

It's a thought. I know we have at least one that can't make that Friday (who's certainly welcome to chime in here!) that seems to be the only mostly available day. We've got 11 for that day, though a few reluctantly, which I certainly understand. Though investing 2 hours Friday night is probably easier than 10-15 minutes every day for auctions.

We _could_ do it entirely off line. I could email out say 20 guys on Monday and have everyone submit a blind bid on them and then manually add to teams. But based on the responses of some I'm not sure that sort of regular work seems acceptable to all.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Ceetar wrote: We _could_ do it entirely off line. I could email out say 20 guys on Monday and have everyone submit a blind bid on them and then manually add to teams. But based on the responses of some I'm not sure that sort of regular work seems acceptable to all.

Let's not do it this way.

[Ceetar]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Ceetar wrote: We _could_ do it entirely off line. I could email out say 20 guys on Monday and have everyone submit a blind bid on them and then manually add to teams. But based on the responses of some I'm not sure that sort of regular work seems acceptable to all. Let's not do it this way.

I mean, it's roughly the same as doing it all via waivers, just without the time constraints.

[metsmarathon]

Ceetar wrote: Ceetar wrote: We _could_ do it entirely off line. I could email out say 20 guys on Monday and have everyone submit a blind bid on them and then manually add to teams. But based on the responses of some I'm not sure that sort of regular work seems acceptable to all. Let's not do it this way. I mean, it's roughly the same as doing it all via waivers, just without the time constraints.

there's also the potential for corruption, tomfoolery, and the appearance of tomfoolery and corruption. there'd simply be no way to be sure that you ever really truly did have the highest bid on a player before opening any of the emails.

[Ceetar]

Another option is a round-robin offline draft over email or whatever, using http://www.fangraphs.com/auctiontool.aspx for pricing.

[metsmarathon]

i don't even know what that means, and that calculator is useless for our league.

[metsmarathon]

It doesn't do hr/9, and I just use hr, it tells me that kershaw should be priced at almost $130!

I mean, it's nice to think Im not overpaying him, but there's no way a full third of a payroll should be tied upon one guy, no matter how good he is.

So, what's the plan?

[Ceetar]

metsmarathon wrote: It doesn't do hr/9, and I just use hr, it tells me that kershaw should be priced at almost $130! I mean, it's nice to think Im not overpaying him, but there's no way a full third of a payroll should be tied upon one guy, no matter how good he is. So, what's the plan?

Normal draft Friday night. lots of people are annoyed at me, LWFS finds someone to draft for him.

I have no faith in trying to get another solution in place. If we did try the waiver wire avenue I feel like too many people would end up being too busy/distracted to participate fully and it'd still be a mess.

I don't think we can start the waiver wire until after the draft either. So it's not like we could do a few rounds that way, and then draft. We could perhaps limit the length of the draft and let it go wild via waivers after that.

What do you all think?

I'll send out an email Monday morning. Barring something extreme like a nationwide power outage, whatever is in that email is what we're doing.

[Ceetar]

metsmarathon wrote: It doesn't do hr/9, and I just use hr, it tells me that kershaw should be priced at almost $130! I mean, it's nice to think Im not overpaying him, but there's no way a full third of a payroll should be tied upon one guy, no matter how good he is. So, what's the plan?

Maybe I did something wrong, but I got $78 for Kershaw.

http://www.fangraphs.com/auctiontool.aspx?type=pit&proj=steamer&pos=2,1,1,1,5,1,1,0,0,1,5,5,0,17&dollars=300&teams=12∓=20&msp=5&mrp=5&mb=1&split=&points=c|2,4,5,6|2,3,4,11≶=MLB&rep=0&drp=0&players=

[metsmarathon]

you're using a $300 budget instead of hte $400 we have (although some allowance should be made for prospects and the like)

regardless, even at $78, he's twice as much as the next highest pitcher.

oh, the problem as i can see it, actually, is that even though you've got hte right number of players identified for all the roster slot and what-not, the calculator is still somehow only calculating 150 hitters and 150 pitchers with positive value, for effectively a 25-man roster, (meaning it has too high a floor for the replacement player), and is therefore spreading too much money across too few players.

it's also not doing the hr/9, though just looking at hr isn't all that far off.

draft friday is fine. i hate to say it, but it's far better to screw over one player than to screw over the whole league. and while it's surely small comfort, lwfs will have an immense advantage in being able to spoil any in-season waiver wire call-ups.

i'd love to start up a separate parallel league where we tried the blind auction waiver-wire draft. it seems like a thoroughly interesting experiment to run. but a great way to fuck up an otherwise perfectly good league.

[Ceetar]

I'm surprised the calculator doesn't reflect the Ottoneu options. seems silly to me.

[metsmarathon]

it also appears to be missing a goodly number of starting pitchers. like sonny gray, michael wacha, yordano ventura.

i haven't looked to see if the hitters are similarly glitched. but regardless of roster size, it does still only show 150 players with positive value, adjusting only for position and budget.

i'm glad i'm not relying on it for anything, that's for damned sure!