What’s a Keeper?
Keepers are players who were on your roster at the end of a season (no matter how you got them: draft, trade, or free agency) that you want to keep for the next season. The rest of the players on your roster get released into the draft.
You want to keep players who are inexpensive to keep vs their free market value.
Example: You draft Henry Rowengartner as a rookie for $5 and he wins the AL Cy Young. His free market value would be significantly higher (let’s say $30) than the price for which you drafted him. You can keep him for $5 in the following season. After that, he gets a little more expensive because you have to give him a raise (rules).
Draft Advantage: You start the draft with $260 minus the price of up to three keepers. If you keep Rowengartner then you start the draft with $255 ($260 – $5) and Rowengartner. The market value of your team is higher because Rowengartner would be worth $30 if you drafted him in the auction.
How to Set Your Keepers
Start by reading the league Keeper rules.
Open a Yahoo! tab with last year’s draft results
- Visit your Yahoo Fantasy Dashboard
- Find the menu item draft > last season’s rosters
Scroll down to your team to see who you can keep and approximately at what price.
Anyone with a “-” or a value less than $5 can be kept for a minimum of $5.
Open a tab with last year’s Baldelli’s Keeper spreadsheet
To get the exact dollar amount, you also need to check if the player gets a raise. To do that, open the league keeper spreadsheet and scroll right to the latest season. The first year you keep a player they do not get a raise. The second and third years you need to increase their salary by $5 respectively. After the third year a player cannot be kept.
You start the auction draft with $260 draft dollars (fake money), which disappears at the end of the draft. Email me when you know your keepers and I will confirm the prices. You must email me the keepers or they will not be kept.