TSM Fantasy Baseball 2008

[Krankor 0]

Alright, I've got everyone but 3 managers to confirm they are going to be back this season. Iggymcfly, Fökai, Will Scarlet, and Razazteca. Iggy and Will have both been on in the past week. Fökai was last on mid-December. Razaz hasn't been on since September so I think its fair to say he won't be back. I believe we also had to toss him from the TSM Basketball Keeper league because he never showed up.

 

I'm more than willing to give Razaz until Saturday to show up. After that I'm going to give his spot to VX.

 

Keeper length will have to be addressed for sure. Once we get these last 3 people signed up, I'm going to make up a little survey that we all can vote on the topics so we can make this as diplomatic as possible.

[Krankor 0]

I'm in. I am bitter that I lost in the finals.

 

Stephen Joseph

Alex Rodriguez (Round 1)

Chris Young (Round 3)

Dan Haren (Round 4)

Matt Holliday (Round 7)

 

Jimmy Rollins (Round 2) Kept by Razazteca

Prince Fielder (Round 6) Drafted by Vern traded to Me, Kept by Me

 

The change is that Carlos Beltran is not kept

 

Stephen Joseph still needs 2 more keepers since 2 of his that he changed weren't on his team. Your final roster consisted of these players:

Rich Aurilia, Jeff Baker, Carlos Beltrán, Craig Biggio, John Buck, Matt Holliday, Geoff Jenkins, Brandon Phillips, Álex Rodríguez, Richie Sexson, Matt Cain, Kiko Calero, Matt Garza, Kevin Gregg, Dan Haren, Jason Jennings, Mike Pelfrey, Scott Proctor, Chad Qualls, and Chris Young

 

Also Precious Roy, Brandon Webb was originally drafted in round 3 not round 4. That's been corrected now.

[MarvinisaLunatic 0]

Joe Nathan (Round 2)

Erik Bedard (Round 4)

Javier Vazquez (Round 8)

Jose Valverde (Round 10)

Brian McCann (Round 18)

Corey Hart (Undrafted) (Round 19)

Ryan Braun (Undrafted) (Round 20)

 

fairly easy decision..replace a closer off a career year for a playoff team going to a not so great Houston team for a potential 30/30 player in Hart and a 19th round draft spot.

[Precious Roy 0]

Also Precious Roy, Brandon Webb was originally drafted in round 3 not round 4. That's been corrected now.

 

Yahoo results say rd. 4....

 

[Krankor 0]

You're right Round 4 is correct. The results thread from last year had a round labeled wrong. It had the keepers round for Round 4 listed as Round 3. Webb is Round 4.

[Krankor 0]

It looks like we will have at least 2 spots opening up in the league this year. Razazteca hasn't been on since September and Iggymcfly pm'ed and said he won't be participating this year.

 

Vitamin X is getting one of the spots and we'll need someone else to take up the vaccancy that Iggy is going to leave us.

 

Will Scarlet and Fökai haven't been on the board yet, but I'm willing to give them more time.

[Der Kommissar 0]

Sorry. I haven't had internet access for the week.

 

Anyway, I'll return.

[St. Gabe 0]

Id like to take one of those empties. Thanks.

[Stephen Joseph 0]

Stephen Joseph

Alex Rodriguez (Round 1)

Chris Young (Round 3)

Dan Haren (Round 4)

Matt Holliday (Round 7)

Matt Cain

Carlos Beltran

 

Rich Aurilia, Jeff Baker, Carlos Beltrán, Craig Biggio, John Buck, Geoff Jenkins, Brandon Phillips,, Richie Sexson, Matt Cain, Kiko Calero, Matt Garza, Kevin Gregg, Mike Pelfrey, Scott Proctor, Chad Qualls, and

[Vern Gagne 0]

I just looked and people started selecting players exactly a year ago.

[Krankor 0]

Derek Jeter was the first pick and it happened on Feb 6th.

 

We're still doing ok on time...

 

Also, I'm going to get some questions and stuff posted sometime tonight that we need to vote on.

[Krankor 0]

Ok guys, it’s time for the much anticipated pre-season survey since we have 19 out of 20 teams confirmed we can get the discussion rolling. I would like to start getting the drafting going by Feb 4th. It’s a Monday.

 

I’m splitting this into two parts in two separate posts.

Part 1 is all the general league settings and needs to be hashed out before we draft. Part 2 is all about keepers and we need to come to a general consensus by the trade deadline.

 

PART ONE

 

1.) Last year's roster positions. Is everyone good with keeping last years set up?

 

C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, OF, OF, OF, Util,

SP, SP, SP, RP, RP, P, P,

BN, BN, BN, BN, DL, DL

 

2.) Last year's stat categories. Is everyone still fine with all of last year’s stats?

 

R, HR, RBI, SB, OBP, SLG,

W, SV, K, HLD, ERA, WHIP

 

3.) Waiver Time. Last year it was 2 days. There were some suggestions to make it 1 day. What do you think?

 

4.) Minimum Pitched Innings Requirements. Last year it was 28. There have been some suggestions to lower it slightly. What do we want to do with this?

 

We’re not getting rid of it because we use weekly rosters in this league. The lowest I think we should lower it is to 26 and I don’t think it will really help many people out. If your pitching gets screwed over with injuries or starters getting rocked I don’t think 2 innings is going to really be the deal breaker.

 

5.) This was a general rule we started using during the draft last year, “If a player is not listed in the yahoo free agent pool, than he is not eligible to be drafted.”

 

I assume everyone is still cool with this rule. If so I’m going to put it in the league rules and make it official.

 

6.) I'm going to leave trade veto as commish like last year. Pretty much all fair trades will get accepted. If everyone generally hates a trade, post in the thread about it and the managers making the deal can plead their case. If they have logical arguments it'll get accepted. Is everyone still fine with this method?

[Krankor 0]

PART TWO

 

These next three points don’t need to be resolved prior to drafting, but they do need to be hashed out prior to the trading deadline. These rules wouldn't come in to effect until the fantasy baseball off-season, which would start immediately following the completion of our championship game.

 

7.) I would kind of like a specific date for us to have keepers in by. We have done this before I believe. We just didn’t have one last year. So let’s just put it into the rules. I think it’d make getting the league started go a little smoother. We will still do the traditional every manager confirms they want to be a part of the league to start the new thread and season off in mid January. How about something like 1 month after the MLB playoffs are over all keepers should be in. By then we should know if anyone is retiring. I also know someone will argue what if someone blows out an arm or has Tommy John in the off-season? No you won’t be stuck with the guy unless you want him. Every team should post a 1st alternate and a 2nd alternate keeper incase something happens.

 

What do you think? Yes we should? No we shouldn’t?

 

8.) Keepers. This current season we have it so every manager keeps 6 keepers. No more, no less. Last year we had 4 keepers per team.

 

Do we want to change it so a manager can keep a minimum of 4 players and a maximum of 5 players? Or just keep it 6, no more and no less.

 

9.) Keepers. What do we want to do about the duration a single keeper can be on our roster? There were suggestions of making it so each manager can only have a keeper for 3 consecutive seasons. Currently we do not have any cap on the duration of a keeper can be kept.

 

I do think we should change this rule so teams won't just stay stagnant.

 

Here are some options I've thought of that we can select from to resolve the keeper length issue. Some of these options get a little complex but I don’t think its anything to difficult to keep track of from season to season.

 

Option A: All players can only be on a roster for 3 consecutive years. After the 3rd year that player is no longer eligible to be kept by the manager that has had him for 3 consecutive years.

 

The purpose of this option is so that a team can't be stacked with 5 or 6 guys that were kept during their rookie seasons and have draft values of an undrafted free agent for their entire career. This is the simplest option to keep track of.

 

Option B: All players can only be on a roster for 3 consecutive years. After the 3rd year if a player is wished to be kept by the manager, his draft round value is re-evaluated based on what number he is ranked in the yahoo end of season standings compared to every player in the yahoo player pool. The number that the player is ranked at the end of the season would be divided by 20 to determine what round he would be worth in our 20 team draft. Example Micah Owings ends the season ranked 130. 130/20 would equal 6.5 which would put him as having a draft value of round 6 as opposed to his previous undrafted value of round 20. Any manager wanting to re-evaluate a keeper at the end of the season needs to indicate that while the yahoo player pool is still up at the end of the season. We typically start the drafting before yahoo gets the player pool and the new league page setup.

 

This essentially would become the players new draft value for the next three seasons if the manager wishes to keep him for that long and still deems him still a good value after his draft round value is reevaluated.

 

Option C: Keepers that have a draft round value between rounds and 11 and 20 can only be kept for 3 consecutive seasons by a manager. Keepers with a draft value between rounds 1 and 10 do not have a cap on the duration they are to be kept.

 

If you’re keeping a guy with a round one value and want to keep him its not like you’re getting away with highway robbery. I sort of arbitrarily picked the rounds. If we like this option we’d have to play around with the rounds to get it correct instead of just cutting it down the middle like I did.

 

Option D: Each roster can designate 1 or 2 players long term keepers. These keepers can be kept for double the amount of time a regular keeper can remain on a roster. If a manager wishes to keep him past that time his stock is re-evaluated and he is no longer listed as a long term keeper. The catch… If a player listed as a long term keeper is traded after the regular keeper duration of 3 seasons to a new team, than at the end of the season, if the manager that traded for him wishes to keep him, his draft stock is immediately re-evaluated.

 

Option E: We come up with some sort of hybrid/combination of these other options together that we like better than the options individually.

 

10.) IF we choose to pick one of the options or another keeper option someone else comes up with, we need to clear up this potential loop-hole I already thought of.

 

What happens to a keeper if he is traded after 2 seasons of keeper eligibility? For example, Hanley Ramierez is traded. He has a draft value of Round 20 with 1 year of eligibility left at that value. Does that 1 year of eligibility roll over to the manager accepting the trade, essentially like a player’s contract in real life? Or does the eligibility revert to having 3 years eligible at that Round 20 spot for the new manager that just received Hanley?

 

I really like the idea of having a duration that keepers can have at their draft values. It makes it like signing a guy to a 3 year contract at that draft round value. If you trade a guy or it doesn't pan out and you cut him during the season and someone else picks him up they are essentially picking up that contract. It seems pretty cool like it adds some extra strategy to the off season game of keepers. It could also be fun because at the end of the 3 years a team could essentially trade away some players that would have ‘expiring contracts’ to a team trying to make a playoff push and just needs guys for the stretch run.

 

Anyone else with any ideas on keepers that I didn’t come up with feel free to submit them. Like I said earlier, the keeper stuff doesn’t need to be settled until the trade dead line.

 

[treble 0]

We should keep the stats the same. I didn't like it last year when they were changed after we put in our keepers, even though it didn't end up being a huge deal.

 

I think there should be some limit on keepers, but I'm not too concerned about all the details. 3 years seems about right.

[the pinjockey 0]

All the settings from last season are fine with me to just keep.

 

I think we should have keepers before the end of the leagues playoffs, with a couple alternates in case of injury.

 

I think any think any trades should result in picking up the player's existing "contract".

 

I don't like the idea of judging anything by Yahoo's rankings, because half the time they make no sense.

 

If people don't want a three year limit (my preference), one kind of hybrid system I was thinking of was increasing the "cost" of a keeper. For example, anyone with a draft value of rounds 1-10 would result in a 3 round penalty the next season, anyone with a draft value of rounds 11-20 would take a 5 round bump. That way you can keep a player forever, but after 5 years he would cost a no.1 pick so he better be worth it.

 

One other rule request: no processing trades after noon on Sundays. I believe it was King along with myself who got burned by that last season not being around to get the rosters set after a late processed trade.

[Vern Gagne 0]

Derek Jeter was the first pick and it happened on Feb 6th.

 

We're still doing ok on time...

 

Also, I'm going to get some questions and stuff posted sometime tonight that we need to vote on.

 

I was talking about the supplemental draft the new owners from last year had.

 

 

[MarvinisaLunatic 0]

On keepers..

 

Say we go 3 years max. Team A has player X for 3 years but has to drop him the 4th year and Team B drafts Player X. Can Team A trade back for player X in season 4 from Team B and get 3 more years (supposing that Team B would go for such a trade) or would that be forbidden limited in anyway?

 

similar scenario..Team A drops player X during season 3 and Player X is picked up but not designated a Keeper by team B, could Team A draft player X again in year 4 and would they get 3 more years?

 

Im actually in favor of option B. Option C seems reversed to me if having limits on keepers makes any sense. I have to drop a low tiered player after 3 years but I can keep a 1rst round draft pick indefinitely?

 

 

[Krankor 0]

I think we are going to just nix the supplemental draft.

 

In the TSM Fantasy Basketball league, we have 3 madness rounds. Those rounds are for teams that didn’t want to keep the max of 3 keepers or new managers. The madness round draft order is determined randomly, that way new and old managers have a fair crack at any potential free agents. Madness rounds seem fair and balanced but the way we did the supplemental draft does not.

 

I really hate the idea of a supplemental draft. It seems like it handicaps the new teams to the fodder from the couple teams that left. I went back and looked at those rosters and those are some crappy end of season rosters. Raza is the only one that even remotely had some good players. There are only 2 guys worth building a team around and that’s Pujols and Soriano. More than likely those guys are going to be drafted with the first and second pick anyways.

 

New managers shouldn’t have to be forced to take on players from only a select few rosters from the exiting managers. One of those teams was seriously horrible. I don’t think the new managers should have to build the rest of their draft around the scraps, some good and some bad, that they had to take on from those old teams.

 

I think the new teams will be more than fine with building their teams through the draft themselves. That way they can assemble their team the way the want to and if they do good or bad it’s all on how they formed their team. The 2 new managers, possibly 3, are automatically going to get the first 2 picks in the draft anyways. So they are going to have the best draft spot to pull in the best talent available.

 

[Krankor 0]

If people don't want a three year limit (my preference), one kind of hybrid system I was thinking of was increasing the "cost" of a keeper. For example, anyone with a draft value of rounds 1-10 would result in a 3 round penalty the next season, anyone with a draft value of rounds 11-20 would take a 5 round bump. That way you can keep a player forever, but after 5 years he would cost a no.1 pick so he better be worth it.

 

One other rule request: no processing trades after noon on Sundays. I believe it was King along with myself who got burned by that last season not being around to get the rosters set after a late processed trade.

 

I really like that hybrid system. I like the cost idea a lot. We'd have to adjust it a little instead of just 1-10 and then 11-20 but I think its a good possibility that we should consider.

 

No doubt, that's going in the rules. No trades are getting processed on Sunday after 12 pm, noon. That was not ideal at all when that happened last year. Unless there are protests trades usually go through pretty quickly. I think the commish gets to click accept or reject and the trade goes through immediately once that happens. I'll put a 3 day wait period on the league settings once yahoo has the page up. That way we still have time for discussion if a trade is first accepted on a friday. More than likely, the trades will get pushed through in the first 24 hours like they normally are.

 

On keepers..

 

Say we go 3 years max. Team A has player X for 3 years but has to drop him the 4th year and Team B drafts Player X. Can Team A trade back for player X in season 4 from Team B and get 3 more years (supposing that Team B would go for such a trade) or would that be forbidden limited in anyway?

 

similar scenario..Team A drops player X during season 3 and Player X is picked up but not designated a Keeper by team B, could Team A draft player X again in year 4 and would they get 3 more years?

 

Im actually in favor of option B. Option C seems reversed to me if having limits on keepers makes any sense. I have to drop a low tiered player after 3 years but I can keep a 1rst round draft pick indefinitely?

 

First question, I would say trading for that same player would be perfectly legal. The player was no longer kept after 3 years, a new team got him at a new draft value, then they traded him back to you. I see no problem with that.

 

Second question, I think player X is fair game for Team A in year 4. He would have to be re-drafted so essentially everyone would have a crack at drafting him. So you would in theory could re-draft him at a different round for another 3 years, as long as you can draft the person before someone else gets them.

[HarleyQuinn 0]

I'm in support of keeping the rules from last year.

 

7.) I would kind of like a specific date for us to have keepers in by. We have done this before I believe. We just didn’t have one last year. So let’s just put it into the rules. I think it’d make getting the league started go a little smoother. We will still do the traditional every manager confirms they want to be a part of the league to start the new thread and season off in mid January. How about something like 1 month after the MLB playoffs are over all keepers should be in. By then we should know if anyone is retiring. I also know someone will argue what if someone blows out an arm or has Tommy John in the off-season? No you won’t be stuck with the guy unless you want him. Every team should post a 1st alternate and a 2nd alternate keeper incase something happens.

 

I like the idea of announcing the keepers 1 month after the MLB Playoffs are over. I'm not big on the alternate keepers mainly because that kind of situation could strike any team. Also, most injuries that require off-season surgery are known by the end of the season/into the playoffs. If a manager doesn't realize that Player A, who missed the final 2 weeks of the season, may need off-season surgery than that's his fault for not being aware of such an issue.

 

8.) Keepers. This current season we have it so every manager keeps 6 keepers. No more, no less. Last year we had 4 keepers per team.

 

I kind of like the idea of a concrete number actually. It forces managers to make tough decisions, like a real GM. Do you cut the 37 year old guy who hit 45 HR for the 28 year old 2B who had 10 HR and 25 SB? As far as total numbers, I like the idea of 6 keepers. There are still a ton of good options in the FA pool even with teams keeping 6 players this season. It's just a matter of knowing where to look.

 

9.) Keepers. What do we want to do about the duration a single keeper can be on our roster? There were suggestions of making it so each manager can only have a keeper for 3 consecutive seasons. Currently we do not have any cap on the duration of a keeper can be kept.

 

Option B: All players can only be on a roster for 3 consecutive years. After the 3rd year if a player is wished to be kept by the manager, his draft round value is re-evaluated based on what number he is ranked in the yahoo end of season standings compared to every player in the yahoo player pool. The number that the player is ranked at the end of the season would be divided by 20 to determine what round he would be worth in our 20 team draft. Example Micah Owings ends the season ranked 130. 130/20 would equal 6.5 which would put him as having a draft value of round 6 as opposed to his previous undrafted value of round 20. Any manager wanting to re-evaluate a keeper at the end of the season needs to indicate that while the yahoo player pool is still up at the end of the season. We typically start the drafting before yahoo gets the player pool and the new league page setup.

 

Maybe after the 3rd year, if the manager wants to keep a player for the 4th year, he could based on the re-evaluated draft round but than he'd have to dump the player after the 4th year. Kind of like the NFL's "Franchise Tag" where the owner has to decide if the risk of 'paying' Player A a high draft round is worth keeping him for that 1 year.

 

10.) IF we choose to pick one of the options or another keeper option someone else comes up with, we need to clear up this potential loop-hole I already thought of.

 

I really like the idea of the contract rollover. As you said, it makes it a lot more like MLB where teams "take on" the contract, etc.

[Guest]

Whatever you guys decide is fine with me, so I'll get out of the way.

[CanadianChris 0]

I like Krankor as commissioner already.

 

I have some thoughts, which I'll get to by the weekend. One thing I just thought of -- when are we starting the draft? I'm going to be in the Caribbean from January 31 to February 11, and I'm going to need to know where I'm picking so I can start thinking of draft lists to submit before I go, as I'll have very limited internet access, if any.

[Krankor 0]

I'd like to start drafting on Monday, Feb 4th. We could push it back a couple of days so that it'll help Chris out from missing a lot of the early round action because Round 1 is going to go quick compared to the other rounds because there are 8 Round 1 keepers.

 

This would be the order of round one based on how we finished out last season, according to the yahoo standings. Some of you have first round keepers so this doesn't really apply to you. This is just the general order each round will go in. If you have a keeper that round your work is already done. Obviously we do the serpentine style of drafting and all even numbered rounds would go in the opposite order.

 

With Fökai.

1. VX or St. Gabriel (will be determined randomly)

2. VX or St. Gabriel (will be determiend randomly)

3. Cartman

4. HarleyQuinn

5. Krankor

6. Precious Roy

7. Fökai

8. King

9. Vern Gagne

10. MJ Styles

11. Will Scarlett

12. bored

13. CanadianChris

14. the pinjockey

15. Cena's Writer

16. Stephen Joseph

17. treble

18. Marvinisalunatic

19. Cuban_Linx

20. Deep_Thought

 

Without Fökai.

1. VX, St. Gabriel, other new manager (will be determiend randomly)

2. VX, St. Gabriel, other new manager (will be determiend randomly)

3. VX, St. Gabriel, other new manager (will be determiend randomly)

4. Cartman

5. HarleyQuinn

6. Krankor

7. Precious Roy

8. King

9. Vern Gagne

10. MJ Styles

11. Will Scarlett

12. bored

13. CanadianChris

14. the pinjockey

15. Cena's Writer

16. Stephen Joseph

17. treble

18. Marvinisalunatic

19. Cuban_Linx

20. Deep_Thought

 

Chris your first pick won't come until pick 8 of Round 2 since you've got Jeter as a round 1 keeper. So at most you'll only have to send a list of players for that 2nd pick. Anyways an official round by round draft order should be up by Tuesday/Wednesday of next week. I'm going to use the same style of setup like MJ used last year because that worked out nicely. The first post in this thread is just going to turn into the draft round board. Post 2 is going to turn in to the alphabetical list of all the taken keepers. If Fokai hasn't replied back by Sunday night, the search for a new manager is on. That shouldn't take too long either.

[Cheech Tremendous 0]

If Fokai doesn't show up, I want in.

[Krankor 0]

Sure thing. If he isn't back by Sunday night it's all yours.

 

EDIT: It's Sunday night and Fokai hasn't showed up... so the final spot is officially yours.

[Brett Favre 0]

I like Krankor as commissioner already.

 

I have some thoughts, which I'll get to by the weekend. One thing I just thought of -- when are we starting the draft? I'm going to be in the Caribbean from January 31 to February 11, and I'm going to need to know where I'm picking so I can start thinking of draft lists to submit before I go, as I'll have very limited internet access, if any.

 

Where in the Caribbean?

[CanadianChris 0]

My wife and I are going on a cruise through the southern Caribbean. We're stopping in the Dominican Republic, British Virgin Islands, Antigua, Barbados and St. Lucia. We arrive back in Miami just in time for us to see the Lakers beat the Heat.

[Brett Favre 0]

Nice. Have fun.

[CanadianChris 0]

1) Fine.

 

2) Fine.

 

3) I'd support dropping waiver time to one day.

 

4) I'd be OK either way with minimum innings.

 

5) Excellent idea.

 

6) That's fine.

 

7) I'm OK with this. Maybe a hard deadline of November 30. I like the alternate idea, but we'd need to spell out under exactly what conditions someone can replace a keeper -- i.e. retirement, season-ending injury, or something else along those lines.

 

8) I like the 4/5 idea better than exactly 6. With such a large league, it can be hard sometimes to find six guys worth keeping. Using my team as an example, the only reason I kept Oliver Perez and Dmitri Young is because I needed a fifth and sixth guy that wouldn't cost me a high pick. If I had the choice, I would've only kept four, because they were really the only four worth keeping.

 

9) I would favour Option B out of all the options presented. I was also intrigued by thepinjockey's idea. I'm OK with the idea of keeping players past three years, as long as their value is adjusted somehow...it makes it seem a lot more realistic. A major league team wouldn't be signing Hanley Ramirez for the league minimum for the rest of his career, and that's not what should be happening in this league.

 

10) I would go with a hard cap on the number of years a player can be held at a particular draft value, regardless of his movement within the league. Same reasons as above.

[Krankor 0]

Ok, the first 3 spots were determined by a random number generator I downloaded. Largest number possible is 1000 and the lowest number possible is 0. The team with the lowest number wins the first pick in the draft out of the new managers. The order of the lottery was determined via order of signing up.

 

Vitamin X ends up with 8. St. Gabriel of Djibouti ends up with 826. Cheech Tremendous ends up with 417.

 

So... VX will draft first, Cheech will draft second, and St. Gabriel will draft third.

 

Round by Round draft order is posted in the first post of the thread now.

 

Post 2 has the alphabetical list of keeper players.

 

Post 3 has the rules and the team by team list of each teams keepers.

 

So everything is good to go for us getting this thing started on Monday, Feb 4th.