2023 Kickoff: To Modernize, or Not to Modernize?
The Floored Family grew by one more this offseason. Brian
and Cassie welcomed baby Finn into their world. Baby Fever is rampant; watch
out, Meyer.
Every February, Floored is awash with that new season smell.
There are no standings. There are no busts. Max hasn’t missed the 30 innings
pitched mark yet. Expectations are endless.
This February is a bit different, for me at least. Work has
been a mess and my kids don’t appear to like to sleep very much, leaving next to
no time for fantasy baseball writing. Keepers are weird this year with our 11th
round best first keeper status and 30 round draft. The incentive to really dive
in and kick the tires on Floored has been minimal.
That changes now. It’s time to get this year going.
Draft Date/Time: The final Sunday before the regular
season is March 26th, so we’ll target that day for the draft. I have
one request in hand to not have the draft overlapping with 7 PM ET, and I’d
like to be done by 5 PM or so, so let’s plan for a 3:00 ET draft. We can be flexible
here. Speak now if you need another time or date.
Keeper trading: Haven’t seen any keeper trades come
across yet. The deadline to come to an initial agreement before bidding wars
before the keeper deadline will be one week before the draft, whatever day that
ends up being. I had a few offers out there, no nibbles yet.
Rule Changes: Yes Yes Yes, I know. Arthur doesn’t
want any rule changes. I thought long and hard about whether or not to put on
the table the keeper-push-back rule, but it’s only for a vote, so the league
can feel free to make their collective voice heard. Here are the rule changes for
consideration this year:
1. Draft Picks can be traded in season.
The For case: Max has wanted this for years. We were wary of
throwing off a future draft’s balance of power by putting picks on the table.
What we can do, though, is maintain our off-season keeper trading pick rules.
This will prevent any contending team from throwing away a chunk of their draft
for a commodity that is near worthless to them at the time to another non-contending
team. This opens up apples to apples keeper (or non-keeper) trades in-season.
No more of the “you think Alek Manoah is worth WHAT?!” text messages. That
should be enough in and of itself.
The Against case: allowing people to trade away commodities that
have different time-sensitive values to each person leads to unequal trades.
2. Keepers will be started to be kept in round 19, instead
of round 11.
Explanation: We added 8 roster spots last year, we should
add 8 keeper rounds as well. The numbers of keepers (three per team) won’t
change, the two-round-per year escalation won’t change. This just pushes back
the undrafted keeper round to round 19. Note, now any player drafted in or
after round 21 would be kept in the 19th round. All players drafted
in 2023 between rounds 11 and 20 would still fall under the two-year-escalation
rule. There will also be no change for the players-being-kept-a-maximum-of-three-years
rule.
NOTHING WILL CHANGE FOR MARCH 2023’S DRAFT. For 2024’s
draft, all 2023 keepers will add 8 rounds of value to their value. I.e.
Dave’s Marcus Semien is going to be kept in round 9 in 2023, meaning he would
be keepable in round 7 in 2024; under this rule change, he would be eligible to
be kept in round 15 in 2024 instead; Arthur’s Julio Rodriguez will be kept in the 11th
round in 2023; next year, instead of being kept in the 9th round in
2024, he would be eligible to be kept in the 17th round in 2024.
The For case: keepers are relatively worthless now, compared
to their value just two years ago. Keepers used to be fun items to analyze and give
us something in the off season to talk about that was specific to OUR league. As
rules stand, I can’t imagine people caring very much about 5 rounds of value for
Bo Bichette or Devin Williams in a 30-round draft. As for a complicated rule
change, there will be an adjustment period, but it will be second nature to the
league’s math and analysis in no time.
The Against case: the rule is too big of a change and hard
to understand. Keepers may be worth less than they were two years, ago but 5 to
10 rounds of value is still worth SOMETHING. Keepers are annoying and the
league was more fun before them. Keepers give an advantage to more active
league members that is unfair to the rest of the league. This will add an extra stress to in season keeper trading as teams will now have more incentive to acquire keepers which will throw off in-season competitive balance.
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