Support for keeper leagues - building a directory

In addition to any help- 3 free games for the commissioner for each league-- small token of appreciation -

Hate to be negative here but...

I doubt this will materialize.

I do think this is a great idea, but I suspect they don't have the capability to do this.

I agree with most here, nice to have, but unlikely to gain much traction, doesn't hurt to ask about it.

I think the problem is in part how leagues and their spreadsheets/google docs are setup. I have been in enough leagues to see what works and what could be improved and tried to implement that in the league I run.

Things that help:
1. Draft grid
2. Player available list for FA draft (regardless if carded or not)
3. Using carded-only players
4. Format of players names (last name, first name)
5. Dependable managers who regularly check the boards, we all know this is a hobby and all have our own personal lives and things come up and SOM takes a backseat for periods of time.

Things that are time consuming/unresolved issues for some leagues:
1. The so-called combined players tab, that probably takes the longest to update, though also the best when looking for trades.
2. The dreaded cannot trade 10th round FA pick/cannot trades picks that you do not own seems to come into play a few times each year. I think there are ways around this, but not many have tried to address this one.

League spreadsheets all have their variations, keeping them updated during Oct-Mar is easy, its Mar-Sep where some additional time is required to have a league run smoothly.

Having a spreadsheet now of who played in previous year in addition to L/R splits, etc. helps, and then when SOM puts out their ratings guide, to be able to merge together (with some work of course) helps me get things going for the upcoming season.

That is a great primer on setting up a KL, Dave. I agree with most of it. However let's keep this thread to thoughts on getting some KL support from SOM so we don't have to use google.docs or Excel.

I'm willing to help with the KL Support. SOM should be able to develop a program just for KLs with our "Minor League Players" & Prospects in this day and age, if they want to get involved. They should as there are a lot of members that play in KLs. They made the offer, let's hold them to it. I think if they can work with CBS Sports .com who has excellent detailed Stats on Hitting, Pitching & Fielding, SOM could come up with a program combining CBS' Baseball Stats with SOM's different Player Listings. That could help with KLs & Commissioners in lessening the load. I'm not a computer Guru or programmer, but looking at what CBS Sports.com puts out in their Baseball Stats for a number of years, the technology is there. SOM Programmers can look at those detailed stats & put something together to help KLs.

On another note, I like the Idea of Credits for commissioners as well.

Dave, you have some great points. Maybe you can provide Commissioners some details how you do your Admin things in your leagues as a start. Maybe Ernie(Edub1969) Woodward can provide some inputs as well.

Tim K

I'm in 9 Keeper Leagues but only the commish over the USKL. I've been asked numerous times to commish other Keepers, but it does take a lot of time. For those of use working 50-60 hour work weeks, monitoring drafts, updating spreadsheets, etc. can get tiring.

I'm in 9 Keepers. That is 18 leagues per year (about $360 per year). When extrapolating that out over all of the Keeper participants, I have to imagine it represents a good percentage of total leagues. I believe our collective participation via the Keeper Leagues should be significant enough to get SOM attention. If there were tools created by expert programmers to make it easier and more fun to be in Keepers, the whole Keeper League concept could really take off. The incremental keepers leagues could quickly offset the cost to develop the program.

Kev

like.

If it weren't for the keeper leagues, my SOM spending would be way down.

As a vet and a commish, I'd volunteer my involvement and opinions

-Cal

agreed

Take a look at stratdraft.com. We use if for NLD (non keeper) drafts and I was in a netplay league for a while that was using it more for transactions etc. Customer support there is ok as well.

Thanks to all who are participating in this thread. After I started it last week, Bob and I were chatting about the different ways keeper leagues could be automated. Among other things, that could include:

- After the commish populates a league, subsequent draft picks are placed on the manager's team automatically

- Managers post their drops on the new platform resulting in their deletion from the team

- Trades are posted and automatically reflected on the 2 teams

- Leagues can track 40-man rosters, with active vs. inactive, as in the Windows version

- Automatic lists of available players are updated from season to season

- Timed drafts with proxies are allowed, as at StratDraft

- Logs are maintained of future draft picks traded and un-carded players held

- There is either a prospect database or prospects can be entered manually, as at StratDraft

And if they wanted to get fancy, they could also play minor league seasons, too, if teams had expanded rosters. For example, there've been a few card sets in the past where I ran 3 x 12-team leagues, where every card in the set was used, at Major - Minor - Instructional levels.

I think we could help them scale up to higher volume and an improved bottom line, right?

I am not currently commish for any leagues because I found it too be a big time commitment, and between work and kids it's too much for me. It seems like there are a lot of great ideas already listed.

Assuming that SOMO doesn't want to put resources into this my lowest hanging fruit are:

1. Provide the ability to export active rosters off of SOMO.
2. Expand maximum roster to 40 in game. Leagues could cap voluntarily as we do now, and with an export function, keeping track of players becomes much easier. With different caps it makes me believe the coding for different roster sizes shouldn't be too onerous, but a simple set expansion should be fairly easy.

We're the core audience for this product, so it would make sense to cater some to our needs. But the reality is that unless we stop playing the financial incentive isn't there.

Copy of email sent to 365support@strat-o-matic.com:

I'm currently commish for 6 keeper leagues and am finding it tiring to keep up with all of the administrivia needed to keep them going. Like others recently, I'm feeling the need to back off on some of my Strat commitments, because the admin tedium gets in the way of the fun.

Several years ago, the Strat tech staff said they might consider providing support for keeper leagues -- 40-player roster management, annual drafts, trading future picks, etc. -- but that help has not yet materialized.

Would you be willing to consider working with a group of Strat veterans to add such support to your offerings?

Anybody interested in seeing if we could make this happen?

Have you gotten a response to your email yet?