Inflation in Keeper Leagues (Position Scarcity and Category Needs)

[DJBeasties]

Ugh. No I didn't assign it for all 322 so that may be an issue within itself. I pulled the dollar values from HQ but I had a feeling something was wrong.

[Judge Jude]

I think that unless you're confident in your skills, estimating inflation can be more trouble than it's worth.

Simplifying: If your keeper league allows 11-13 freezes, free agents and rookies are 10 units, FAAB players can't be kept or not amazingly cheaply, and so forth, you shouldn't have massive inflation.

Basically, if there is nothing odd about your rules, then inflation is liable to run in the 20 to 30 pct range. Higher if it's easier to have bargains, lower if it's tough AND you have few keepers. And so on.

Thing is, a 25 pct inflation rate mostly just mirrors what you tend to see in the actual bidding - a guy HQ values at 36 goes for 45 - a 25 pct markup. A 10-unit guy goes for 12 or 13. And so on. It's mostly coincidental, but it often works out that way.

If you have a strong freeze list and either a well-rounded roster or it's easy to trade, consider bidding every single player at least up to his "list price" if he's a healthy, experienced veteran (McCann, Loney, Zimmerman, Theriot, Victorino, Oswalt, Lillly, etc.). Getting those reliables at an uninflated price is generally a good deal in that circumstance (not so much if you're rebuilding, as the upside is now less for many of them and you need to gamble more).

By far the greatest value to calculating inflation, I think, goes to those leagues that let free agent pickups be 1 unit, or dynasty pricing where one owner can have Pujols at 5 forever or something. In the extreme cases, bids of 60+ dollars can then be wise investments (otherwise you'll just end up with money on the table anyway).

Recognizing that inflation is bound to exist in keeper leagues, and that refusing to ever go above the list price will simply mean you have a fairly-priced roster - and a bunch of wasted units at the end, is half the battle. At least.

[DJBeasties]

So I just want to thank everyone for chipping in here. I'm just going to roll because I'm confident in my research and I think I am just going overboard with this stuff. It's just that it's my first season in a 14-team, 12-keeper league and I inherited a team so I want to do well right off that bat, but I'm driving myself crazy.

[RSF]

That is not true. When factoring in inflation each HR is worth the same dollar value. A HR hit by catcher is no more valuable than one hit by an OF. The value of a stat line of .280/90/24/100/15 is the same no matter what position it is attained at.

You can adjust your dollar values according to positional scarcity, but that doesnt factor into inflation.

Keep in mind that the value of a player at a position (e.g. catcher) is a function of who is kept and who is available, so the two steps you describe (inflation + position adjustment) end up impacting the valuations as if they were the same thing.

[AbPow]

Speaking of inflation , our 5x5 11-team NL-only league was running at about 35% inflation today, so I was pleased to land Pujols ($55), Rollins ($32), Victorino ($31) and Dempster ($13) at high but still-cheaper-than-their-inflated-value prices (in Dempster's case, probably a real bargain). In-draft inflation actually started approaching 50% once the big names weren't going for their full inflated value.

As a result, we had one owner who kept clinging to his money waiting for bargains that never came. Even when we broke a little more than halfway through, he insisted that he wouldn't pay through the nose for players, saying he'd rather keep the money. And that's just what he did, leaving about $30 on the table (really effectively more than that because he got run up on some end-gamers).