Keeper League Rules

Everyone loves keeper leagues, yet there are a plethora of wonky setups and mistakes that are frequently made in their construction and rules. The intent for this piece is to help you set your keeper league the proper way and avoid the inevitable trouble that often arises.

BE VERY CAREFUL WHO YOU INVITE TO PARTICIPATE.

This is the foundation of everything. In this day and age, it seems like all our leagues are online. Question for you – how many folks in your league do you actually know? We all have a “home league” that we grew up playing in so we know those fellas. We know that Ted is a louse, Rebecca drinks too much and Franklin has no idea what he’s doing at the draft. We also know they all show up and play until the last day of the season. Make sure you find out everything you can before you invite someone to participate in your league. Don’t be afraid to inquire a bit with those folks you don’t know to check out their bonafides.

HAVE AN AGREED TO CONSTITUTION WRITTEN UP BEFORE THE SEASON BEGINS THAT ALL AGREE TO.

This is an absolute must. Period. You have to have a constitution. You don’t want to be scrambling in-season, taking votes, having people argue back and forth incessantly since there are no rules in place. Set the rules you can think of right from the start (here is an example of a simple constitution to start with). It’s fine to add rules moving forward, in fact you should have a period every offseason in which you do adjust/amend the document, but note that you should do everything you can to avoid making changes in season. It’s not fair to change the rules mid-game, so do your best to put a lot of thought into the constitution before a single game is played.

UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A KEEPER AND DYNASTY LEAGUE.

Let me be clear. No one is in a dynasty league, even though I hear from folks every day that they are. Let me clearly define the setup for both leagues.

A dynasty league means that you keep your entire roster.

A keeper league is everything else. That means if you keep one, three, 12 players, whatever it is, you’re in a keeper league.

At least, that’s how I see it.

DECIDE HOW MANY PLAYERS TO PROTECT.

There is no standard here. You can hold as many, or as few players as you want. It’s totally up to you. Some options to consider.

Keep 1-3 players. This setup should preclude someone from having a great draft leading to a dynasty. It also helps with league retention as it allows the majority of players to be available in the following season for everyone to draft.

Keep 5-10 players. This is probably the “happy zone” that most folks sit in. This is a big enough group of players that people feel good about building something substantial while at the same time allowing there to be plenty of movement at the draft table.

Keep more than 10. Things are getting serious now. Note though that the more players that are protected the more likely “dump trades” will occur. A “dump trade” is a deal in which one team deals away a bunch of young/cheap players in return for a star or two. You know, the ‘I’ll give you Yoan Moncada, Kole Calhoun, Nick Castellanos, Mike Moustakas and Austin Meadows for Joey Votto type of deal.’ It’s much easier to do this type of deal if you’re keeping 10 guys. If you’re only keeping four players you would be keeping the best player, Votto, and have zero interest in guys like Calhoun/Castellanos/Moustakas since they would never qualify as a keeper.

An aside. Make sure your keeper plan includes how to handle a team if an owner leaves the league (obviously, this should be listed in the constitution). The simplest, and fairest way, would be to allow the new owner to simply take over the existing team with no changes whatsoever. Also put something in the Constitution about how things will work if you add a team (how you will handle the supplemental draft as it were).

ENSURE SOME FORM OF INFLATION.

A sample question of the type that I receive daily.

‘I’m in a keeper league that holds three players. Which three of these four should I keep: Mike Trout $41, Trea Turner $1, Anthony Rendon $2 or Chris Sale $7.’ How can you be in a league where Trout is at $41 and Sale is at $7? How can Turner, who had the best season in baseball in the second half last season, only be worth $1? How is Rendon, a very solid player, costing you $15 less than he should reasonable cost on draft day? The problem relates to a lack of inflation.

Another typical question. ‘Ray, which two of these three should I hold on to: Manny Machado as an 11^th rounder, Mookie Betts as a 22^nd rounder or Corey Kluber as a 27^th rounder?’ How can you properly evaluate the value of players when Betts costs only half as much as Machado even though both are first round selections this season? You need to build in some type of inflation in all keeper leagues. Here are some options as to how to do just that.

Waiver-Wire Cost: If a player is added of waivers in-season, most leagues say that guy is a last round player, or a $1 guy in an auction league. This is completely wrong. Anyone that is being kept off waivers blew up the previous season and is obviously way more important/valuable than a last round player. At the same time, you do want to reward people that were ahead of the game and added a future star off waivers. I would suggest that if you’re in a league with rounds you turn free agent into a mid-level pick the following year. If your league has 30 players on a roster the FA guy would become a 15^th round keeper. If you’re in a league with 25 players on a team you make the FA guy a 12^th round pick. If you’re in a dollar league the FA guy becomes a $10 player.

Round Option: You can’t be in a league where Kluber is a 27^th round keeper since he’s been a top-10 pitcher the last three years. If you’re holding on at 27^th round cost the value is totally out of whack with reality, and it’s just plain stupid if I’m being honest. I would suggest a yearly inflation. You can play with the numbers however you like, but here’s a potential option. Remove five rounds per season. Kluber is taken as 27^th round in 2014. He would be a 22^nd in 2015, a 17^th in 2016 and a 12^th in 2017. That would reward the person who discovered Kluber to this day. In fact, if he pitches like he did the last three seasons he would still be a solid value in 2018 as a 7^th round keeper. This also means that the elite players will be on the board year after year since any player taken in the first five rounds would be ineligible to be held which would allow all the teams in it year after year.

Dollar Option: I’d like to do the same thing in this setup as in the round league. Easiest way is to simply add $5 to players just like the round call above. You take Sale for $7 in 2012. He would then be a $12 arm in 2013, $17 in 2014, $22 in 2015 and $27 in 2016. If that was the case, you really wouldn’t have a tough decision to make with Sale until 2017 since that he would cost $32. Seems totally fair to me.

The Year Option: You can add the year option to the rounds or dollars if you want to get fancy. You can also just go with the straight year option. By that I mean you set a number of players to keep, let’s use five in this example. You get to keep five guys for, let’s say, three years. After three years the player then goes back into the player pool for everyone to draft. An important thing to note in this setup is that the contract travels with the player. That means if Sale signed a 3-year deal in 2015 his contract runs out at the end of the 2017 season. You can’t deal him to someone else and restart the clock meaning he could be kept until 2019. The contract travels with the player.

You can modify any of these rules as you wish of course. The above is just a general guide to set a baseline and get you thinking about it.

HAVE TRADE RULES OUTLINED EXTREMLY CLEARLY.

At a minimum, you must set a trade deadline to avoid a final month “dump trade” that wins someone a championship. I would suggest using the major-league trade deadline in your fantasy league makes a lot of sense. In a keeper league I like that one. You can be aggressive and set a later date like September 1^st, but that’s pushing it for me.

Have an in-season rule in place for the value of a team. An example. If you’re in an auction league with $260 you don’t want a team to be able to pull off five trades and get $390 worth of players. I would suggest that you limit any team to a maximum of about $320. I could be persuaded to go to $340, but that’s a pretty big number.

You also need to decide what your veto rules are. Will a single commissioner determine the validity of all deals or will trades be put to league vote to either approve or disapprove of trades.

CONSIDER AWARDING A MONTHLY WINNER TO KEEP ALL INVOLVED

If you’re cheap, like me, then maybe do a first and second half winners work better, but there is nothing wrong with incentivizing the league by awarding something on a monthly basis. That would still give everyone something to shoot for, even those teams that have little shot at finishing at the top of the league.

HAVE A LOSER CLAUSE

This can take on a couple of forms.

If a team finishes in the bottom third of the league, or quarter or whatever you determine, then they lose a late round draft pick, FAAB dollars or auction dollars the next season.

The other way to enforce the loser clause is to monetarily penalize folks. Reach into their pockets and take out some of that hard earned cash as a penalty for sucking wind or failing to simply care later in the year.

This will help to make sure that everyone plays the full six months of the big-league season.

COLLECT ALL FEES BEFORE THE SEASON STARTS.

This one should be obvious since we all know ‘that guy’ who is always late in paying his bills. Collect the league fees before the season begins. That way someone in last place isn’t going to be tempted to simply slither away without paying. You can have the commish hold the funds or even use something like LeagueSafe to hold it for you.

So, there you have at it. Keeper and dynasty leagues are a tremendous amount of fun. Just make sure you have rules in place that are fair and reflect reality. At least that’s the type of league I’d want to be in.