Mastersball Fantasy Forum

I've been running keeper leagues for many years, and over the course of that time we've tried a number of approaches to expansion. Most of them centered around the current owners keeping some limited number of players, letting the new team(s) then pick from those not kept, then allowing more keepers, and a final pick by the new team(s). This inevitably drew negative comments from the owners who had a lot of good keepers, and lost some of them, and if the initial cut was a pretty high number, it was very tough for the new owner(s) to field a competitive keeper list.

We tried a different approach in one of my leagues a couple of years ago, and it has worked out well. We give the new owner (expansion or replacement) the option to go into the auction with $15 of "discount". The first 3 players that they buy for $15 or more get their winning bid amounts (and resulting salaries) reduced by $5 each. $15 in reduction may not be the right number for your league. I chose it because that's about the average of "keeper value" in this league. This option is mandated for expansion owners (ie it isn't an option), while replacement owners can take over an old team, or choose this option.

Of course, the auction software that you use (if you use software) has to handle adjusting salaries of acquired players during the auction. We use ESPN, and it has handled it fine.

Comments?

Interesting to give them the discount - is this in addition to getting some number of players from a disbursement draft as well?

The owners with great/lots of keepers need to look at the BIG picture - they aren't doing the league any favors by putting new owners into non-compettive situations

I did see one other try for two new owners coming into an existing league - they were given three minor league draft picks before the upcoming season and then had the same number as the rest of the teams. This was in addition to getting three ML players from a disbursement draft - each of the existing teams could protect only three players and could only lose one player.

Another thing to do with the disbursement players is to give the new teams an extra year for those players with the existing prices.

The discount is standalone - i.e. they get that, and nothing else. Another way to do it could be to give them extra $ to spend in the auction, but that has 2 disadvantages - 1) we use a salary cap, so they'd be behind other teams with respect to that and 2) the discount gives them 3 guys who presumably could be worth keeping the following year (we use a $5 bump).

The amount of the discount and number of players on which to spread it would be league-dependent. I think setting the total amount roughly equal to the average of the keeper values of the returning teams makes sense, in that it puts them middle of the pack in terms of keeper value. In many keeper leagues, the top keeper lists have quite a bit of value (because those owners dumped, or have a couple of "super-keeper" studs who they got cheap), while the bottom ones have little value. So the new owner would be at a disadvantage to the strong keeper teams, and have an advantage over the weak keeper teams. Last year the new guy who did this finished 4th, out of 14 teams.

I agree with you, Perry, on the big picture. Too often owners are short-sighted and look only at the impact of rules on their own team and situation.