SOSH Real Fantasy Draft 2015: Interest and Rules Discussion

[Scoops Bolling]

There seems to be some interest in running another draft this year, so I thought I'd open a devoted thread to assess the interest in going through this exercise again. If you are interested, please note as much in this thread; similarly, if you have any rules suggestions, this would be the time and place to note them.

 

[Curll]

Fine. I'll admit, I'm interested. 

 

[MakMan44]

Like I said, I'm in again. 

 

[Snodgrass'Muff]

I'd like to get back in if there's room.

 

[Darnell's Son]

I'm interested.

 

[wibi]

Not going to have time this year.  Feel free to give up my spot to someone else

 

[Just a bit outside]

I'm in.

 

[Leskanic's Thread]

Interested in going again.

 

[StuckOnYouk]

I picked Kluber in like the 6th or 7th round last year. I'm in.
 
Ok that was the highlight of my draft, but still....

 

[SumnerH]

I'm not in for a team, but I'll run the chart again.

 

[Frank Fenway]

Yep

 

[Yelling At Clouds]

Also yes.

 

[The Tax Man]

I vow to not draft the worst team in the league this year.  So I'm in to redeem myself.  

 

[ScubaSteveAvery]

I'm in as well this year. Need to redeem my second round pick of Billy Butler.

 

[Galway Sox Fan]

Im in again

 

[Frank Fenway]

I vow to not draft the worst team in the league this year.  So I'm in to redeem myself.  

I'll win that honor, easily.

 

[MakMan44]

Man, we need more people if we're going to do this.

 

[PrometheusWakefield]

In

 

[grimshaw]

In if room.  Apologies in advance, but could someone direct me to the categories?

 

[Why Not Grebeck?]

I love this thing. Happy to play again!

 

[Frank Fenway]

Halfway there guys, tell your friends

 

[BigMike]

I'm a glutton for this type of punishment.    I am in

 

[PrometheusWakefield]

So I have an idea. It started out as a crazy idea, but the more I think about it the more I think it is workable, and it would make the things that are awesome about the RealFantasy draft (the challenge, the endless debate about the precise valuation of every player in baseball, etc) more awesome while making the things that suck about it (how long it takes, waiting around days for your pick to come up) suck less.
 
Lets do it as an auction.
 
Hear me out. Instead of drafting a player, you nominate them (presumably in a subforum). Teams then have 7 days from the moment the player is nominated to submit bids, with all contracts simple - no backloading, options, team control, etc etc just AAV and years. The moment 7 days are up, whoever has the high bid gets him. Every team gets $100M to start with and every bid has to be in $500k AAV increments. And if every team can nominate, say, 1 guy every day, then we can have many auctions active at the same time, which means the draft could go a hell of a lot faster (notice how right now we're looking at mid to late April before this draft gets done the standard way).

 

[Snodgrass'Muff]

It's an interesting concept, but it sort of alters the soul of this exercise on a fundamental level. By nominating players for auction, the ability to reach for someone you think will break out is minimized and that's a big part of why people like doing this. I'm not saying we shouldn't consider trying it your way, but I think we'd probably lose some people who are interested in it currently by changing it so much. As it stands, we might have trouble finding enough people to make it happen.
 
The thought I had was to actually make this a fantasy league. We'd have to speed up the draft to ensure it was done before the season starts, but we might want to speed it up either way as it does tend to drag at times.We could do the draft here, like always, then set up a league where the draft is just manually controlled to fill out the rosters as they were picked here.
 
If there's no interest in that, but we come up short on participants, maybe we can pull together a league out of the people who were interested and just do it for fun or a small entry fee (like 5 or 10 bucks). It wouldn't be the same as doing the draft here like we do, but it should be a fairly competitive league and maybe we could do a condensed version of this draft for a fantasy league in that circumstance where we draft with 12 or 14 or 18 teams or whatever, but still do it slow pick and discuss the picks that have been made like always.
 
Just throwing thoughts at the wall here.

 

[keninten]

It's an interesting concept, but it sort of alters the soul of this exercise on a fundamental level. By nominating players for auction, the ability to reach for someone you think will break out is minimized and that's a big part of why people like doing this. I'm not saying we shouldn't consider trying it your way, but I think we'd probably lose some people who are interested in it currently by changing it so much. As it stands, we might have trouble finding enough people to make it happen.
 
The thought I had was to actually make this a fantasy league. We'd have to speed up the draft to ensure it was done before the season starts, but we might want to speed it up either way as it does tend to drag at times.We could do the draft here, like always, then set up a league where the draft is just manually controlled to fill out the rosters as they were picked here.
 
If there's no interest in that, but we come up short on participants, maybe we can pull together a league out of the people who were interested and just do it for fun or a small entry fee (like 5 or 10 bucks). It wouldn't be the same as doing the draft here like we do, but it should be a fairly competitive league and maybe we could do a condensed version of this draft for a fantasy league in that circumstance where we draft with 12 or 14 or 18 teams or whatever, but still do it slow pick and discuss the picks that have been made like always.
 
Just throwing thoughts at the wall here.

I like this idea. last year I drafted with a 5 year plan. Realized part way thru teams were drafting for different reasons, some for that year only. After the draft it was kind of a letdown to put the work into the draft then see no results. I guess it was similar to an All-Star game ending in a tie. By the way I`m in if we do this again.

 

[PrometheusWakefield]

What about ottoneu? Could they be the place for something like that?

 

[Galway Sox Fan]

I agree I enjoyed the research on players last season and enjoyed the draft while it happened but in the end it just petered out. Teams were drafting with different definitions of how long the team was supposed to be alive for.

A fantasy league based on the selections with no transactions would be very interesting and also a easy way to compare your teams stats against all of the others.

 

[Yelling At Clouds]

I think a fantasy league might cause some people to alter their strategy in order to have a top-scoring fantasy team. My idea that I haven't really spent too much time thinking about - put our teams into Out of the Park Baseball, which we actually did this year. But maybe rather than simulating the whole season at once, we could go week-to-week or something to draw out the process and even simulate in-season decision-making. And then we can also use this to go beyond 2015 and consider what we'd do for 2016. That might be an interesting additional wrinkle, actually, to simulate the offseason somehow (arbitration, Rule 5 Draft, free agency, trades, etc.)
 
Like everyone else, I'm just throwing ideas out there.

 

[The Tax Man]

The two things that make this draft unique are 30 teams (which forces us to dig very deep) and considering a player's real life value not his fantasy value.  If we switch to a fantasy league we are now looking at offense more than defense and then possibly wins, saves, RBIs, and runs?  I'm down to join a slow pick, massive fantasy league but let's remember why we do this draft.  

 

[Snodgrass'Muff]

Just because most fantasy leagues use those stats, that doesn't mean we'd have to. That said, I think Danny_Darwin is on the right track in using a simulator to get us through the season. It would come closer to playing out a real world roster. We don't necessarily need to do anything with these teams, as the point is more about discussing player value than winning or losing, but I think it would be interesting to put our rosters into practice in some way, even if it's just a one shot season simulation done all at once, or even a batch of something like 100 or 1000 seasons where the averages are used to determine how we did.

 

[Moosey]

Simulating season(s) sounds great and a lot of fun, but I suspect that we are going to see a pretty tight bell curve given that we have no restrictions other than draft slot and who we want.  Probably an awful lot of around .500 teams if we simmed enough.
 
I would keep the idea of OOTP, but for the draft it would be interesting if we could somehow set up a value system and a cash limit.  Not only do you have a draft slot, but you have monetary constraints (or not if you pull the Yankees payroll).  Two random draws.  One determines your draft slot order, the second your budget.  We could use Cots for the budgets and add in a +/- to it for some added fun.  Maybe you are the Astros in terms of budget but really want player X so you go into your +20%.  Each player is worth whatever their salary is upcoming, and that is what you pay.
 
Or, as I am kind of thinking as I am writing this, if having actual budgets favors the guys who pull high on the list too much (which it probably would), then we smooth the payrolls, like everyone gets $90 million, but the player values stay as their contract values.  Kind of building on PW's idea, but keeping it in line with the draft format we have used.

 

[Snodgrass'Muff]

If we are going to include budget, I think having everyone on the same playing field there makes the most sense. No, it's not as realistic as disparity based on market, but someone is going to get stuck with Houston's budget and be really frustrated. If we are going to do simulations, though, then budgetary constraints could make this very interesting. Perhaps we just use auction values from a fantasy platform like Yahoo? No reason to reinvent the wheel. Fangraphs might be a good starting point.
 
http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/2015-steamer-position-adjusted-fantasy-baseball-rankings/

 

[Galway Sox Fan]

The simulation is a good idea and fun but I don't believe that it gives a true value of the current draft. We draft on our expectations of future performance. The player ratings on OOTP are based on past performance.

So I feel that if we were to run a simulation based on last years draft on the 2015 OOTP we would get a more accurate result.

 

[MakMan44]

Sims are great and all, but they're no substitute for real life. I'd have a hard time calling anything OOTP spat out accurate. 

 

[Snodgrass'Muff]

The simulation is a good idea and fun but I don't believe that it gives a true value of the current draft. We draft on our expectations of future performance. The player ratings on OOTP are based on past performance.

So I feel that if we were to run a simulation based on last years draft on the 2015 OOTP we would get a more accurate result.

 
This is an interesting idea. Having simulations for last year's teams just before this year's draft gives us a season of performance adjustments to the rosters in whatever simulator we use. It's never going to be perfect, of course, but this approach is probably better than running a fantasy league with the rosters we end up with.

 

[Moosey]

Sims are great and all, but they're no substitute for real life. I'd have a hard time calling anything OOTP spat out accurate. 

 
Well as it turns out we aren't actually GMs either.  ;-)
 
I hear what you are saying but every year at some point there is a group that wants a more solid measuring stick than the intellectual banter that goes back and forth.  It is just important that whatever we choose as that measuring stick have variability so one GM can go "well shit, that didnt work out like I planned" or "wow, got that guy in the 18th round and look what happened".

 

[Moosey]

Oh, and I guess I am in again.  Fuckers, I was going to sit this one out, but it looks like it might get more interesting and now I don't want to miss it.

 

[MakMan44]

 
Well as it turns out we aren't actually GMs either.  ;-)
 
I hear what you are saying but every year at some point there is a group that wants a more solid measuring stick than the intellectual banter that goes back and forth.  It is just important that whatever we choose as that measuring stick have variability so one GM can go "well shit, that didnt work out like I planned" or "wow, got that guy in the 18th round and look what happened".

Oh no, I've suggested doing OOTP each of the last two times, even though I never actually followed through. 
 
My problems is very, very limited to real life injuries vs OOTP injuries only. If we want to see how the teams stack up in a perfect world, that's cool and I'm interested. 

 

[Frank Fenway]

All of these things make my teams seem somehow worse, so I'm for it.

 

[Curll]

/me rages
 
If fuckin' Shado were ready, we could do this mother fucker on it. But, no.
 
Actually, maybe. We might be able to. There's no trading or anything. Let me check in with my devs, see what they think. 
 
FanTrax is also an option.
 
Edit: No go on Shado. 

 

[Why Not Grebeck?]

I'll be honest, I'd be happy if we ran it on some sort of fantasy site just so there's someone else keeping track of available players. The bulk of the work last time out was in building a spreadsheet with every player in the game and making sure I was checking guys off whenever they were picked. Of course, for some I imagine that hunt is part of the fun.
 
I think it's okay if there's no 'definitive' sim because we all approach this exercise in different ways and there's no winning or losing. I remember that someone came up with an OOTP sim of last year's season and my team had the most regular season wins. Of course, based on actual 2014 stats, my team would have been middle of the pack at the absolute best. Did I win? Lose? Does it matter?
 
That's a long way of saying that if we do this on Ottoneu or some other fantasy site I'd be okay drafting my team without worrying too much about fantasy scoring. It's okay if we play the season out on that site or if we don't - I won't be using fantasy stats to judge results. I wouldn't mind if we used it as a way of keeping track of everything, though.

 

[Why Not Grebeck?]

Regardless of where/how the draft is won, I have a suggestion for how to handle minor leaguers this year.
 
As those of us from last year's draft may remember well, there was always some controversy about selecting minor league players. The rule was that all minor leaguers taken were assumed to be stuck on your major league roster on a permanent basis from then on, but that didn't dissuade people from taking a player who had one inning at AAA and plugging him in at SS or in the back of the bullpen. It's to each his own, of course, but it makes projections/analysis very hard. Here's an option we may want to consider.
 
Before the regular draft - so yes, even before Mike Trout is taken with the inevitable first pick - we have a six round minor league draft. Anyone who hasn't exhausted their rookie of the year eligibility may be taken in the minor league draft, which runs in REVERSE snake order to the standard draft. So whatever chump picks last in the normal draft gets pick of the litter when it comes to the minor league guys. These players are then assumed to be the crown jewels of your farm system and they'll be called up whenever they're ready.
 
At that point, we don't need any special rules about minor leaguers in the standard draft. If someone wants to draft a AA arm for their major league roster who wasn't good enough to get nabbed in the six rounds of minor league picks, we can mock them for it all we want to because it'll be a dumb move all around.
 
The thing I like about this is that the minor league draft will then inform how you draft big leaguers. Have Swihart in your system? Might be okay to wait on a catcher. Draft two solid starters? You might not need to spend a high pick on pitching. This mimics the idea of being a real GM a little more - none of those guys start from scratch, they have an idea of what their future looks like down on the farm and they pick up players based on where they're weak and strong going forward. At any rate, it might shake things up this year.  

 

[The Best Catch in 100 Years]

Won't be able to take part this year, but I'll throw in my two cents on the minor leaguers thing.
 
I think the system last year basically worked fine, but it could be improved--there were a couple features, such as restricting the pool of minor leaguers with no AAA or AFL experience to each organization's BA top 3 (or was it a higher number?), that struck me as not particularly well-motivated. It makes little sense to exclude certain players just because their real-life minor league system happens to be better than another guy's. Also, players go straight from AA to MLB all the time these days. A separate minor league draft might be the best solution, but if people aren't amenable to that I would encourage just setting IP and PA minimums (at AA or above) and not worrying about making a list of exempt players, or top prospect lists. 

 

[The Tax Man]

I'm a huge fan of the minor league draft idea.

 

[MakMan44]

How many are we missing? Doesn't seem like there's a lot of interest this year. 

 

[Just a bit outside]

If we are only at 15 would it be considered if we did an AL only version?

 

[Frank Fenway]

Why does the number of teams matter again?

 

[Scoops Bolling]

Why does the number of teams matter again?

Because that's the idea behind the whole exercise. Given the limited number of people expressing interest I don't think it is worthwhile to run this exercise this year; enough people drop out mid-exercise you'd be left with about 10 people in this.

 

[Eck'sSneakyCheese]

Im a sucker for this stuff so I'm in if it happens. I drafted Yan Gomes and said he'd be a top five Catcher. Suck it bitches!

I also said some other dumb shit that didn't come to fruition but my team was still pretty damn awesome when the dust settled.

 

[Frank Fenway]

Because that's the idea behind the whole exercise. Given the limited number of people expressing interest I don't think it is worthwhile to run this exercise this year; enough people drop out mid-exercise you'd be left with about 10 people in this.

We're at 18, let's do AL only with 3 backups.