My favourite time of the year is coming up, Keeper-League Time! It’s actually some variety of a dynasty league, that’s been around for about 10 years now. The scoring system is fundamentally sound, and it’s a point system rather than a roto or head-to-head league. Many hours were spent examining statistics from previous years, and creating a fair scoring system. Barry Bonds and his ridiculous walk totals lead us to undervalue walks.
We keep around half of our roster, and the league is about as deep as it gets. In order to keep a player, he must have appeared on the Yahoo Player List at the start of the year. This is generally pretty hit-and-miss, because someone like Longoria showed up on the player list without ever having played a game but as a general rule, a player only appears on the Player List if he’s assured a roster spot or has played previously.
How To Master A Dynasty League
Life Expectancy
Most Keeper and Dynasty Leagues are bound to fail. It’s almost impossible to get 6 guys together every year, let alone 12. This is why the first thing you should do when joining or creating a Dynasty or Keeper league is examine it’s potential staying power. Nothing will impact your draft more than how long you think the league will stick around for.
In order to start taking chancing on prospects and young guns who haven’t started producing, you’re league is going to have to have a really good shot of at least making it to the five year mark. If your league doesn’t have potential of making it to the five year mark, realistically there’s no player that you can’t draft. Even 28 and 29-year old players will continue to produce at a very high-level until they’re 34 or 35 years old. With anyone under 30 keeping their value, is there really a point of drafting Justin Upton over Ryan Braun? Upton’s almost 4 year’s younger than Braun, but he hasn’t shown high-level talent yet, so is it really worth the risk?
It is if you think you’re league is going to be around for another 10 to 12 years, but for 5 years, 7 years? Nope, there’s probably no benefit, at all, to selecting Justin Upton over Ryan Braun.
Staggering
If you’re doing an initial draft and you expect it to last a while, the key to winning consistently is staggering your talent by age. In the post-steroid era, players will undoubtedly revert to the typical age-determined production patterns. Players hit their prime around 26 or 27 and play at a high level for a couple years before they begin a somewhat predictable decline.
Refusing to stagger your talent will result in a championship or two, but it will not breed consistency. Older players will slide down draft boards further than they should, especially players on the end of their prime. You can draft an entire team of 28-to-30 year olds, and dominate your league for a couple of years. Unfortunately, when they start falling off you’re going to have to spend 5 years rebuilding your talent.
Drafting a young team is incredibly dangerous. The players could all develop into what the scouts see them as, but more often than not, they end up underwhelming. For every Mark Texiera there’s a Hank Blalock, and for every Tim Lincecum there are infinite amounts of top-100 pitching prospects that fail and fail hard. If your team does come together, you’ll dominate for a very, very, long time. You’ve got a 1% chance of that happening, though.
So for every Gordon Beckham you draft, it makes sense to draft someone like Michael Young. Michael Young will do a fine job for the two years you’ll have to wait for Gordon Beckham to become rosterable.
When you do your prospecting, scour the internet for their ETA. Many prospect lists will combine all levels of MiLB into one big list. You’ll get players from A ball being ranked much higher than someone who’s slated to open the year in AAA. The further away from the majors they are, the more that can go wrong. Matt Bush was once an elite prospect, remember?
This will also help you find a decent stop-gap. If you only need a year or two for your prospect to step up, Miguel Tejada is a perfectly fine replacement. Almost no one is going to look at Tejada as anything more than a last-round pick, considering his age and his production.
Realistically, you’d like your infield to look like something like this:
1B: 29-Year Old Kevin Youkilis
2B: 26-Year Old Ian Kinsler
SS: 35-Year Old Jimmy Rollins
3B: 23-Year Old Evan Longoria
Each year you’ll have to worry about a different spot, and it’ll be fairly clear what you need to pick up. With this line-up, you know you’ll have a year or so more out of Rollins, 3 years out of Youkilis, 6 years out of Kinsler, and 9 years out of Longoria.
Yah Dig?
Players Get Moved
Understand contracts, and understand who’s locked up and who’s not. A players value largely depends on the ballpark and the line-up. Kinsler in Texas is a lot different than Kinsler in San Diego. This is just common sense, but I figured I’d point it out.
More importantly, never pay too much for position eligibility. Ryan Braun and Miguel Cabrera are great examples of this. Both were first round picks as third basemen due to position scarcity. They then got moved to your typical smash-killing positions of OF and 1B, and ended up losing at least a couple bucks off their price tag.
B.J. Upton was never going to be a second basemen, and everyone knew that one day Alfonso Soriano would be moved to the outfield. These two middle infielders lose the most value when they get shifted away from SS or 2B.
Most Importantly: Hitters are about 1000x more predictable than Pitchers. Prospect for Hitters, Draft Pitchers. All the standard fantasy baseball caveats apply. Pitchers get hurt a lot more than hitters, and drafting someone like Mark Prior over Joe Mauer has probably cost you quite a few championships.
Anyways, I wrote this up because I need to prepare my keeper sheets in the next couple days — and I’ll share them. I wont be justifying ridiculous selections, or doing a write up for every player.
