This article is part of our The Z Files series.
It won't be long now; the baseball season starts in less than a month. Granted, it'll be just the Seattle Mariners and Oakland Athletics, but still… baseball. Soon after that, all 30 teams will be in action.
Hopefully, you've begun your fantasy prep, especially in keeper and dynasty leagues. Some leagues have already had an initial cutdown or dispersal draft for new teams entering the league. Today, we're going to discuss some of the thinking behind generating a freeze list.
Before getting into the process of determining keepers, the terms keeper and dynasty are often juxtaposed. There should be a distinction. Unfortunately, with infinite league iterations, there can't be a definitive definition for each. In fact, many leagues feature characteristics of both.
It's an oversimplification, but the primary difference between keeper and dynasty formats is the frequency of player pool turnover. In keeper leagues, expiring and cost-prohibitive contracts avail a generous supply of top-end talent each season. In dynasty formats, the draft or auction consists primarily of back-end roster filler as well as prospects.
As mentioned, many leagues are a hybrid where there is some, but not a lot, of elite players available each season. In most cases, this is due to contracts being renewed on a year-to-year basis, with a small escalating increase. Often, players drafted as a prospect can enjoy a solid 10-year career with their original fantasy team and never be available in the regular auction or draft.
With respect to planning, there are two chief strategical
It won't be long now; the baseball season starts in less than a month. Granted, it'll be just the Seattle Mariners and Oakland Athletics, but still… baseball. Soon after that, all 30 teams will be in action.
Hopefully, you've begun your fantasy prep, especially in keeper and dynasty leagues. Some leagues have already had an initial cutdown or dispersal draft for new teams entering the league. Today, we're going to discuss some of the thinking behind generating a freeze list.
Before getting into the process of determining keepers, the terms keeper and dynasty are often juxtaposed. There should be a distinction. Unfortunately, with infinite league iterations, there can't be a definitive definition for each. In fact, many leagues feature characteristics of both.
It's an oversimplification, but the primary difference between keeper and dynasty formats is the frequency of player pool turnover. In keeper leagues, expiring and cost-prohibitive contracts avail a generous supply of top-end talent each season. In dynasty formats, the draft or auction consists primarily of back-end roster filler as well as prospects.
As mentioned, many leagues are a hybrid where there is some, but not a lot, of elite players available each season. In most cases, this is due to contracts being renewed on a year-to-year basis, with a small escalating increase. Often, players drafted as a prospect can enjoy a solid 10-year career with their original fantasy team and never be available in the regular auction or draft.
With respect to planning, there are two chief strategical differences between keeper and dynasty formats. Because nearly all, if not the entire, active lineup is carried over in dynasty leagues, pitching cannot be ignored. In keeper leagues, many prefer to freeze hitting over pitching, depending on the number of players that can be retained.
The other primary contrasting element is philosophical. Keeper leagues are designed for short windows to both compete and rebuild. Whereas in dynasty formats, the goal is to be competitive for a longer stretch, usually requiring more years to put together a winning foundation. This affects prospects and young players. In keeper leagues, prospects are often pawns, freely traded to a non-contender, getting back talent best suited to help you win now. Trades are needed to win dynasty leagues, but even those going for the flag are more reticent to gut their farm, as it will take several years to replenish their system.
With that as a backdrop, here are some tips for assembling a keeper list:
1. Conventional treatment of inflation is flawed
Inflation is the need to pay higher then projected prices in the auction since there's more money available than there is talent. That is, if everyone paid what each player was worth, there would be money left on the table.
The problem is the routine method applies a linear inflation factor to everyone. The math makes sense, increase everyone by the amount needed to exactly exhaust the available money. However, the elite players incur a steeper price bump than the rest. Sure, it's possible to derive a more dynamic model to account for inflation, but it still entails surmising what others will do. There will usually be someone with the objective of paying what it takes for studs so they can flip them to contenders for future parts. Most auctions have individuals willing to chase top-end talent to put the finishing touches on what they perceive to be a great keeper list.
The key is, inflation is not linear, and it changes with every player purchase. Yes, having a feel for the inflated cost of a player is useful, but don't get married to the number.
2. Don't be afraid to freeze high salaried players
Perhaps the biggest mistake when constructing a keeper list is focusing too much on the single-digit players. In keeper leagues, it's not only about potential profit derived from keepers, it's also the amount of potential one can buy with available budget. The more one has to spend, the less of a return, since it will undoubtedly be necessary to spend on players with bloated prices.
Things are usually more complicated than this, but by means of example, let's say a team is protecting $100 worth of talent for $60, leaving $200 to spend. With this $200, the team bought $170 worth of players, incurring a reasonable 15 percent inflation rate. This team has amassed $270 worth of potential.
Another club opts to keep $220 worth of talent for $200, with just $60 remaining to spend. With such a small amount left, this individual will probably not be bidding for the top players. Instead, they're dabbling in the portion of the auction where prices are at the projected level, or even deflated. If they manage to break even, their total team potential is $280, more than the team with the "better" keeper list.
3. Freezing at the inflated price is not always a good thing
Let's say Mike Trout is a $50 player and you can freeze him for $58. On the surface, this seems like a bad idea. However, based on inflation and league tendencies, if Trout were available in the auction, he'd sell for at least $60, likely $65. Now, keeping him seems reasonable since the freeze price is below the likely auction cost.
There's no cut and dried answer to this dilemma. Whether to keep Trout at $58 feeds into the previous discussion. On paper, you're losing $8 by retaining Trout. What can you do with the $58 if you don't freeze him? Can you get back more than $50? If yes, throw Trout back into the stream, I mean pool.
4. You're not just freezing a player, you're tying up a roster spot
Keeping a player has the ancillary effect of losing a roster spot. The repercussions are linked to roster flexibility and ability to bid on the maximum number of players.
Retaining the likes of Khris Davis or Nelson Cruz could lock in some perceived profit, but it also strips you of having the utility spot open, which gives you the option to bid on every hitter nominated. Sometimes, you're set at corner or middle infield while upper-echelon players at those spots are still on the board. You may not want them, but if you also have utility blocked, you can't even price enforce, or decide to jump on a perceived bargain and place the player at utility. This isn't to suggest you should never freeze a utility-only player, only to weigh the benefits of an open utility spot versus the expected profit.
Similarly, going into an auction with middle or corner locked up can restrict flexibility, since buying one more MI or CI then takes away utility, so you're in the same boat as above. Again, it's a matter of expected profit versus opportunity cost of having the spot open.
In both instances, the best way to mitigate the effect is littering your roster with multiple eligibility players. In fact, as listed in Early Player Pool Observations, there are more hitters with multiple position eligibility than recent seasons.
5. Inflation exists in snake drafts too
The bulk of this discussion has centered around auctions since most relate keeper leagues to that format. However, many snake draft formats are of the keeper variety. Some require retaining players at the previously drafted round, while others advance players to earlier rounds. Regardless, the result is players being carried over at a round later than they would be selected in a redraft format.
One way to gauge keeper viability is comparing the keeper round to an applicable ADP (average draft position). The problem is finding an ADP reflective enough of your league to be viable, especially if non-standard categories are used. Don't worry, there's an alternate method.
Though the names and faces change every season, the array of projected auction prices are quite similar. Sure, the top player might be pegged at $48 one year and $44 the next, but looking at the big-picture, the top-to-bottom prices remain consistent year-to-year.
As such, you can combine the hitting and pitching prices into one list and have each serve as a proxy for a draft pick. That is, in a 12-team draft, the top 12 prices correspond to first round players, and so on. Earlier in the offseason, I posted a grid of prices per round in Historical Draft Slot Values. The table modeled 15-team leagues, however the average price per round, along with the spread from first to last pick in each, transcend leagues of all sizes. This avails a means to quantify how much each round is worth. Given the flaw of calculating inflation outlined above, if you want to invest the time, it's possible to get a numerical feel for inflation in a snake draft league, aiding selection of keepers as well as plotting draft strategy.
