Thursday, August 12, 2010

FAAB and Variations Thereof

Although most Rotisserie Leagues use FAAB at this point, there are a few that still haven't taken the plunge:
My leagues have never used FAAB and we are considering this, however, we don't know what various leagues are doing i.e. what the various rules are. Any idea how we can find out the options so we can see what fits best for us?
AJ Mass over at ESPN.com put together a pretty comprehensive summary of FAAB back in February, so I won't reinvent the wheel. As far as various options that I've seen:

$0 bids?: Some leagues allow $0 bids; in most others the minimum bid is $1. Having a $0 bid allows an owner who spent all of his FAAB to keep bidding, although the chances he'll get a desirable player are poor.

$100 cap or not: One hundred dollars is the "standard" cap for FAAB. Some leagues use more or less. Obviously, the more money you have to spend, the higher the bids are going to be on the top players.

FAAB and Salary Caps: Most leagues apply FAAB bids to the salary cap, but I've seen a few that suspend the cap at the Major League trade deadline so that FAABed players can be traded without hitting the cap.

Forced Keeps: Some leagues force you to keep a player FAABed over a certain price...or pay a stiff financial penalty if you elect not to do so.

There are certainly other variations. Any reader who can think of anything that I omitted is welcome to add on to this admittedly cursory list.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

We have a $100 cap, and allow $0 bids, but any player FAAB'd for $0-$5 gets his salary assigned at $5 for protection, any player FAAB'd above $5, that's his salary. Players coming over from the AL aren't eligible for protection for next year, so it's only the hot youngster that's contributing that gets a high salary. Example: it's $32 to protect Travis Wood next year.

We disregard the salary cap after the draft (otherwise it would hinder trades), and there's no forcing to protect any FAAB'd players. We do have a deadline of July 15th to add a minor leaguer to the roster to be eligible for protection in the minors (MLB "rookie" rules apply), and August 15th for trades that involve keepers.

Anonymous said...

In addition to the no contingent bid rule (discussed previously), our FAAB is $100 but FAAB-acquired players may neither be traded nor kept for next year. All, I am told, as a sop to avoid ugly machinations.

Ross said...

The Vickery system comes to mind. For any readers unfamiliar: Vickery works like standard FAAB expect the winning bid is shrunk to be 1 unit greater than the runner-up bid. I recently noticed that Ron Shandler has been heavily crusading against FAAB w/o Vickery. I've read a couple of his pieces on the issue but just can't seem to get too worked up about it. I prefer FAAB with Vickery but playing in a league with FAAB w/o it does not strongly alter my strategy.

Gypsy Soul said...

thanks, man, for addressing my question.