Writing a post has become an annual tradition.  I'll write it once sometime during the late spring or summer, and then we'll forget about it until next year.  But this year I'm inspired in early May - which, surprisingly, is actually earlier than last year if you'd believe that - to write a post because I'm in a weird position.

I'm league champion.  

I've avoided talking about it to pretty much anyone since I won because I know the way I did it rubbed some people the wrong way (foreshadowing!), and I recognize that fact.  It's not the best path to travel, but it's the path I chose nonetheless.  And because of that, there's two things I get to do as league champion: pick who I play in Week 1, and pick the name of the last place team in the league.  In this case, that's Brock.

Choosing who you play in Week 1 is something I instituted in the league to reward the league champion, and it's a fun little wrinkle for me when setting up the schedule.  Unfortunately I don't get to pick divisions.  That distinction goes to the division winners from the year prior, so Dan and Danny will draft those, and then pick their division names (foreshadowing!).

But honestly, between you all and me, I never imagined myself in this position of getting to pick who I play in week 1.  And, just because I'm me and have spent years breaking down stats, I don't think there's a more appropriate way to choose my opponent than using stats.  So here's what I want to do.

1. Take Week 1 points scored for the last four seasons
2. Rank all players by those points scored
3. Pick either the best or the worst points scorer

And here's what the results yield, in reverse order:

10. Jeff
9. Jose
8. Katarya
7. Sean
6. Tim
5. Danny
4. Baron
3. Bryan
2. Dan
1. Joe

Surprised?  Baron has slowly been moving back to his winning ways, but the fact that Joe has had the best scoring average over the last four seasons in opening games might surprise you.  Well I'm not one to back down to a challenge.  I see you Joe.  Week 1 it is!

As for Jeff's team name, only one thing made sense: making the dumbest pun I could using LoL terminology.  Therefore, next year Jeff your team name will be: Rekklessly Gank My Bottom Lane.  Logo to come. I also reserve the right to change that before the season starts.

Hope you enjoy it!

Now onto the business end of this post.  

Since this last season ended, I've been giving a lot of thought to what we can do, as a league and using ESPN's tools/rules, to reduce two big things that have been bothering people:

1. Tanking
2. Creating super teams by trading money away

Seeing the reaction a lot of people had in GroupMe chat after I made those trades with Tim and Joe was probably the most reaction I've seen from our league as a whole in quite some time.  So it's a sensitive subject and something I think people would want to see addressed.  

We've already discussed moving the trade deadline up, and that's been universally agreed upon.  It's a definitive measure to try and combat possible tanking by forcing league players to make a decision earlier in the season whether they'll be buyers or sellers - and would conceivably make decisions like mortgaging the future for this year (or vice versa) harder to come by.  

However, I look at that as just one thing that could be done to prevent crazy tanking or money trades.  Because, if I'm being frank, it wouldn't totally deter me from trading money.  All I would do is make the decision to say I'm either all in or out earlier in the season.  If you want me to be totally upfront with you, the bulk of my thinking these last five or so months has been: How do I prevent myself from doing what I've been doing?  

And so I've come to two suggestions that I would like to propose we look at and try.  I want to preface this by saying that I've spoken to about half the league to try and vet out some wrinkles with these proposals and to get general feedback.  I'm going to frame the rule changes into four parts - what the current rule is, what the proposes rule is, what the factual consequences will be, and what my hopeful and desired consequences will be.  Without further adieu:

• 4 teams make the playoffs
• Playoff matchups are two weeks long
• Playoffs begin Week 13 and end Week 16

• 6 teams make the playoffs
• Top 2 seeds get a bye
• Playoff matchups are one week long
• Playoffs begin Week 14 and end Week 16
• Higher seeded teams are given a point advantage

• Regular Season matchups extend to Week 13 instead of Week 12
• Playoff matchups decrease from two weeks to one week
• A bye week is added for the top 2 teams to qualify for the playoffs
• Higher seeded teams go into their matchups with a point advantage

• Increasing playoff entrants means more teams involved for a spot until the end of the season
• This would potentially lead to fewer trades for future money/assets as more teams would consider themselves contenders later into the season
• One week playoffs could additionally prevent owners from trading money if they view a one week playoff as too risky to mortgage the future on
• Having bye weeks would also mean that owners are competing for a top two spot, thereby adding a layer of incentive for owners late into the season beyond making the playoffs
• Giving higher seeds a set point advantage rewards teams that performed the best in the regular season
• A longer regular season allows for more opportunity for owners to play later into the regular NFL season before their season ending

What you get when you type "keeper" into Google Images.

                                     

Basically, my system uses an either/or clause and two equations to determine how much a player's price will go up each year.  One is simply a flat percentage of what an owner paid in the prior year.  The second, takes    in to account the difference in value between the current year and what you paid before designating a contract. Using this two-equation system it does less to strongly favor one end of the price spectrum.  For bad/unproven players you pay less, for good/proven players you pay more.

Additionally a contract system has been worked in.  An owner can decide whether to do a 1 through 5 year contract.  As the contract length increases, the price of keeping the player decreases, but the penalty for breaking the contract increases.  Furthermore with a longer contract, obviously there is greater risk of the player not living up to the increasing price.

I believe that this will allow owners in our league much more strategic room.  If you want to risk a big penalty to lock in a low rate for that value stud, go for a 5-year contract.  If you want to minimize risk, go with a 1-year. You can also lock in a speculative play at a low rate.  You may end up throwing draft money down a pit, but you could hit big once in a blue moon.  Of course you always have the option do split it right down the middle too.

The calculator in the link (below) explains the system pretty well, so go ahead and check it out, play with some numbers and see how it feels.  Let me know if you have any questions, constructive thoughts, concerns, etc.


2 Questions:
Are you in favor of enacting the Richter Scale for determining keeper costs?

If we do adopt the system, for players currently in the 2nd year of their 3-year contract, do we:
             a). Convert said contracts into contracts using the new system.
                                  (calculate for a three-year contract, but only use first two numbers)
             b). Void all current contracts
             c). Other.

• I think our keeper prices should increase based off of percentages instead of flat rates, so that we don’t skew toward high priced keepers.  This way we could keep low-mid value picks at a reasonable rate, thus increasing owners strategic options.
• Someone who drafts a player for $5 and gets $60 production is similarly as lucky as an owner who picks up a player with free agent cash and gets big production.  Thus I don’t think we should discredit them.   The above suggestion does temper the luck factor as well (read long version for more details).
• Disclaimer: I haven’t discussed 3-year contracts here, we can figure something out for those or just get rid of them, but that’s a different convo.

I believe that our current system of flat rates of increase unduly  favors high priced keepers.  It isn’t possible (or at least reasonable) to keep low-medium price players at a value rate (a player you spent $10 on last year who is going for $15 this year).  Really it removes flexibility in keeper strategy, unless you got an unbelievable deal in previous years, you have limited options.

To fix this I propose we use a system in which your price increases according to x or y, whichever is higher.  In this equation, x would be a fixed percentage of what you paid last year, while y would be a fixed percentage of the difference between what you paid last year and the average going rate on espn 7 days before the start of the NFL season.  Don’t be too put off, it’s really not that complicated.  Example (x = 20%, y = 30%): Last year, Dan drafted Jordy Laforge for $10, this year Jordy is going for $30 a week before season start.  If Dan keeps Jordy it will cost him $16 (20% of 10 = 2, 30% of 30-10 = 6).  If Jordy was only going for $15 on average this year, Dan could keep him for $12 (20% of 10 = 2, 30% of 15-10=1.5).  So it isn’t over complicated, all that we need to do is figure out what percentages we want.

What this does is brings players up to market value faster if there is a giant discrepancy (that doesn’t mean it has to be “fast”).  Someone can still get very good value for a pick who outperformed his prior year draft position.  Also, it makes it possible to keep low-mid “value” keepers without being charged an unproportionate sum.  If you drafted someone for $10 last year and they are going for $15 this year, I feel you should have a reasonable option to keep him.  The other thing this does is temper the effect of keeping a wire pick-up who is all of a sudden valued at $50.  In my mind we would use the 50% baseline and then apply our keeper system.  We just need to figure out what numbers we want, i.e. how fast we want the gap to close/how many years we want certain keepers to be kept.  

On the topic of pick-ups, there is enough luck in drafting in the first place that it seems silly that pick-ups should be so severely discriminated against.  In the draft there are plenty of random names that people get lucky on when they blow up. Most picks are in the $1-$15 range, and if a player blows up from there it’s similar luck to a well executed waiver pick-up.  Waiver pick-ups are an integral part of the game, and they often require a good amount of thought and foresight to grab a high potential pick.   I’m all for cutting out some of the giant benefit by creating the 50% baseline, and doing the percentage based increases but everyone gets an equal shot at every pick up and limiting people in that way limits people's ability to strategize.  We could even do something crazy like not do secret auctions.  We could have the option of putting up any player up for a live-ish auction (i.e. post on an auction page).  If there is a lot of interest we could have a facebook multi chat to settle it.  It could get pretty intense, maybe even have live deals being done, “Billy Noname is at 65! Shit I only have 64 dollars! Jose I’ll give you MJD for Johnny Knox and $100 Free Agent Cash right now!”.

So in the interest of getting things done, I’m going to ask two very straighforward yes-no questions that everyone should be able to answer without too much thought.  We then can move on from there to actually accepting specifics.  

Question #1

Should we be able to keep pick-ups to some degree?

Question #2

Should we move away from the flat rate keeper pricing in favor of a simple percentage based system?