A long-time reader messaged me a few weeks ago with a dynasty question, but not the kind I normally get:
"I’m the commish of a two-player keeper in its third year, and the league just voted in having reverse-order-of-standings for draft order. How do I deter teams from trading away their studs midseason for picks and tanking to get the top pick next year, essentially turning the second half into a 5-6 team race?"
I used to be in a dynasty fantasy baseball league: five keepers, $200 annual budget, every player under contract for up to five years with $5 salary increases per year for long-term contracts, etc. After a couple seasons I moved on, partly because the FF4W site was becoming a bigger daily time investment, but mostly because I felt the entire dynasty concept--at least as it was constructed in this league--was flawed. Every season, nearly half the managers would tank by June, and most of the other half would compete to grab their best players. One time a tanking manager traded his eight best players (in NFL speak, think the equivalent of Philip Rivers or Alshon Jeffery) for Mike Trout. So the tanker now had arguably the top hitter for the next five seasons. And the other guy added eight top-50 fantasy scorers, making him a near shoo-in for the title.
Managing a fantasy sports team in no way mirrors real sports team management. There are no hometown fan pressures. Our players don't demand trades. And so on. But what's always drawn me to fantasy sports is the strategy--that if you do really good research, draft really well, and manage your team really well (sit/start effectiveness, savvy waiver adds, etc.), you can win. It's far from guaranteed, but it's doable.
Wide-open dynasty leagues, at least in my experience and what I've heard over the years from some of you, require much less strategy. If you're in a 12-team league, and the tanker wants to trade you his/her good players for an elite dynasty chip, you're in luck. If that tanker decides to e-mail someone else, you're out of luck.
A few years ago I came up with a league concept I've never tried to implement because it has some big kinks, but still want to try to figure it out. The draft would be normal, and game-play during the first part of the regular season would be normal. But right after Week 7, everyone would swap rosters. The first-place team would trade with the last-place team, the second-place with the second-to-last place, and so on. Then game-play would continue for weeks 8-14. The top four teams would compete in the playoffs in weeks 15-16. Each of those teams' rosters would expand to include the players now rostered on the team they swapped with earlier.
So suppose a team (managed by "Nancy") that was in fifth place after Week 7 swapped players with the eighth-place team (managed by "Bob"). Then Nancy qualified for the playoffs after Week 14. She would have access to not only her players, but also Bob's current players for her playoff run. (If both Nancy and Bob qualified for the playoffs . . . well, I haven't figured that out.)
The whole back-story to all this is that I want to compete in leagues that reward strategy. It's why I hate (and I don't use that word lightly) being in leagues where somebody stops trying midseason, because then everyone that guy plays against the rest of the season has a better shot at an extra win. The ideal strategic situation is where everyone enters the draft on equal footing, everyone manages their team the best they can, and the manager with the best skill (and obviously luck) wins it all.
My as-yet-unrealized concept tries to take that to another level by rewarding managers who know how to manage. I drafted James Conner in the middle rounds of both my leagues last year. Fair? Sure. But he was integral to getting me to the postseason in both. So suppose midway through the season I inherited a sub-par team and was able to build it back up to relevance? That would say a lot more about my fantasy skills than merely drafting Conner. And conversely, suppose I inherited the best team and ran it into the ground? No more complaining about bad drafts or lamenting early-season injuries. Throughout the season every manager will, on balance, have both more competitive and less competitive rosters. It's what we do with those rosters--and how we re-make them--that separates the skilled from the truly skilled.
Anyway, there are infinite ways to devise and implement a fantasy league. But in my opinion, a great league is one that rewards smart strategic thinking. And I have yet to hear about a dynasty league that doesn't turn into a mid-year tank extravaganza, at least in cases where every manager's active.
So help me understand, and help this reader with his conundrum: How have you seen dynasty leagues work well?
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"I’m the commish of a two-player keeper in its third year, and the league just voted in having reverse-order-of-standings for draft order. How do I deter teams from trading away their studs midseason for picks and tanking to get the top pick next year, essentially turning the second half into a 5-6 team race?"
I used to be in a dynasty fantasy baseball league: five keepers, $200 annual budget, every player under contract for up to five years with $5 salary increases per year for long-term contracts, etc. After a couple seasons I moved on, partly because the FF4W site was becoming a bigger daily time investment, but mostly because I felt the entire dynasty concept--at least as it was constructed in this league--was flawed. Every season, nearly half the managers would tank by June, and most of the other half would compete to grab their best players. One time a tanking manager traded his eight best players (in NFL speak, think the equivalent of Philip Rivers or Alshon Jeffery) for Mike Trout. So the tanker now had arguably the top hitter for the next five seasons. And the other guy added eight top-50 fantasy scorers, making him a near shoo-in for the title.
Managing a fantasy sports team in no way mirrors real sports team management. There are no hometown fan pressures. Our players don't demand trades. And so on. But what's always drawn me to fantasy sports is the strategy--that if you do really good research, draft really well, and manage your team really well (sit/start effectiveness, savvy waiver adds, etc.), you can win. It's far from guaranteed, but it's doable.
Wide-open dynasty leagues, at least in my experience and what I've heard over the years from some of you, require much less strategy. If you're in a 12-team league, and the tanker wants to trade you his/her good players for an elite dynasty chip, you're in luck. If that tanker decides to e-mail someone else, you're out of luck.
A few years ago I came up with a league concept I've never tried to implement because it has some big kinks, but still want to try to figure it out. The draft would be normal, and game-play during the first part of the regular season would be normal. But right after Week 7, everyone would swap rosters. The first-place team would trade with the last-place team, the second-place with the second-to-last place, and so on. Then game-play would continue for weeks 8-14. The top four teams would compete in the playoffs in weeks 15-16. Each of those teams' rosters would expand to include the players now rostered on the team they swapped with earlier.
So suppose a team (managed by "Nancy") that was in fifth place after Week 7 swapped players with the eighth-place team (managed by "Bob"). Then Nancy qualified for the playoffs after Week 14. She would have access to not only her players, but also Bob's current players for her playoff run. (If both Nancy and Bob qualified for the playoffs . . . well, I haven't figured that out.)
The whole back-story to all this is that I want to compete in leagues that reward strategy. It's why I hate (and I don't use that word lightly) being in leagues where somebody stops trying midseason, because then everyone that guy plays against the rest of the season has a better shot at an extra win. The ideal strategic situation is where everyone enters the draft on equal footing, everyone manages their team the best they can, and the manager with the best skill (and obviously luck) wins it all.
My as-yet-unrealized concept tries to take that to another level by rewarding managers who know how to manage. I drafted James Conner in the middle rounds of both my leagues last year. Fair? Sure. But he was integral to getting me to the postseason in both. So suppose midway through the season I inherited a sub-par team and was able to build it back up to relevance? That would say a lot more about my fantasy skills than merely drafting Conner. And conversely, suppose I inherited the best team and ran it into the ground? No more complaining about bad drafts or lamenting early-season injuries. Throughout the season every manager will, on balance, have both more competitive and less competitive rosters. It's what we do with those rosters--and how we re-make them--that separates the skilled from the truly skilled.
Anyway, there are infinite ways to devise and implement a fantasy league. But in my opinion, a great league is one that rewards smart strategic thinking. And I have yet to hear about a dynasty league that doesn't turn into a mid-year tank extravaganza, at least in cases where every manager's active.
So help me understand, and help this reader with his conundrum: How have you seen dynasty leagues work well?
---
Sign up for Pre-Draft Top 300 Rankings: http://www.fantasyfootballforwinners.com/
Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/_FF4W