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Post by Commissioner (Athletics GM) on Sept 12, 2012 15:15:00 GMT -5
I am looking for suggestions on how to use the league's host site to help ease some of the transactions and moves.
We currently use Yahoo, but it is not customizable enough to allow for the use of minor league rosters. Ideally, if we were to switch host sites, I would really like for that host site to handle all of the following items:
- Salary Cap ($120, as opposed to $260 which is standard for most auction leagues) - Majors and Minors rosters (Only allow players on Majors rosters to receive stats for a given day, and only if in Lineup).
Any suggestions anyone has as to whether these are possible or not on a site are greatly appreciated. Just because it may cost money doesn't necessarily eliminate it either, so please include any sites that do if you think they will fit the bill.
My overall goal is to have a lot of the manual work of the league automated a bit more so that people don't have to add posts about promotion/demotion, free agency, etc, if we don't have to, and to have one site where almost all league activity occurs.
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Post by bretsayre on Sept 12, 2012 18:03:59 GMT -5
CBS will do all that, but it's not free. It would work out to about $9 an owner for the season with a 16tm league.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 12, 2012 18:10:01 GMT -5
I love CBS, but Im in highschool and therefore I have no money to pay...
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Post by pooptallica on Sept 12, 2012 22:11:40 GMT -5
Get a job, deadbeat!
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Post by Commissioner (Athletics GM) on Sept 12, 2012 22:23:41 GMT -5
I'm not necessarily for or against having a fee for the site, but I am absolutely against having to manage that myself. I'm not familiar enough with CBS (I will check it out), so I don't know if that is something that can be done with that or not.
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Post by Texas Rangers on Sept 13, 2012 5:37:34 GMT -5
Fantrax will do all of that, and it's not free, but the fee is negligible (I think it's $60 no matter how many people you have). The best part about the fee is that you can set it up for everybody to pay their own part. I'm the commissioner of another dynasty league, and we moved there this season. I think the feeling is unanimous - it's miles ahead of both Yahoo! and ESPN. Let me know if you have questions about the settings, etc.
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Post by Commissioner (Athletics GM) on Sept 13, 2012 14:57:16 GMT -5
I'm playing around with Fantrax, and it definitely appears like it can do a number of things. Does the league you are in now use salaries, and would it be possible for you to send me a link to view the page (if that is possible in Fantrax)?
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Post by Texas Rangers on Sept 14, 2012 5:46:30 GMT -5
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Post by Commissioner (Athletics GM) on Sept 14, 2012 16:12:49 GMT -5
So I've been playing with a Fantrax league, and here's what I've seen so far:
Salary Cap:
- We can set the salary cap to match our league's current setting of $120. We can also have it work with the quarter dollar increments we already have.
- Based on the way the salary cap can be setup, we can remove the need to demote/promote players from the minors in order to keep rosters at a maximum/minimum size. For example, I demoted Brad Peacock to the minors because I needed the bench roster spot. I would not need to do this on Fantrax, because the limitation of the roster would be set based on salary cap.
- Since only the players who are considered "Active" earn statistics, the above has no impact on the day-to-day operations of your team.
- We can set minor leaguers to a salary of $1 (as is technically the case with all minor league draftees), but not have it counted against the salary cap unless you remove them from the minors.
Transactions
- Based on the way we currently process transactions, it is not possible to have Fantrax do them in this manner. (Where the winning bid must sit for 24 hours). To continue to do them in this manner would require them to be processed outside of the Fantrax system.
Contracts and Contract Extensions
- It can be used to administer contracts, but based on what I am reading, we would still have to manually handle contract extensions. The use of contracts is a premium feature, which would require a fee of the league of $59.95 for the league as a whole.
Operational Concerns
- I can set up multiple commissioners to help administer the league (which will likely be necessary).
- Fantrax can handle the payment of the league fee directly through their own site, so it appears I would not have to handle this directly myself.
- There is a message board feature which appears to work similarly to our Proboards page. It does not allow us to sort things out, but based on what I am seeing from the overall league pages, a number of the boards we are currently using to house general information would not be necessary.
I have sent an email to their customer service department asking some of the questions I have regarding specific functionalities and features that we would be interested in having. Overall, it seems like this would work pretty well for a number of the features of our league, and will let you know what I find out when they respond.
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Post by pooptallica on Sept 21, 2012 23:57:16 GMT -5
I'm a fan of Fantrax. I'd even be willing to cover the site fee portion for one (only one!) of our younger, less financially solvent players.
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Post by Commissioner (Athletics GM) on Sept 23, 2012 15:02:26 GMT -5
So here is what I received back from the Fantrax support department:
1. We currently process free agents via a bidding system where the highest bid has to stay as the high bid for 24 hours. Based on what I am seeing in the FAQ and settings, this is not a possible setting for a league. Am I correct? Is it possible to have this customized into a league?
Sorry, such an option is not available at this time.
2. We use contracts in our league, and I know that this is a premium ($) feature. Is it possible to see a league where this feature is already in use, as I do not wish to pay for the service before I can make a determination of whether this will be able to handle our current league configuration effectively.
No sample leagues are available, however you can create your league for free, with premium features, and don't have to pay until 3 weeks after the start of the season.
3. Within contracts, one of our rules is that we have a tiered cost system for extensions based on percentage of salary. For example, if I were to sign a player to a 1 year extension, their salary would increase for the extension year by 50%. This percentage decreases by 5% for each year, to a maximum of 5 year extension at 30% increase in annual salary. Is this something that could potentially be customized into a league, or would we need to process these manually?
You would need to manually adjust those salaries.
4. We are a salary cap league ($120 max), but do not have a FAAB budget. Based on the settings I am seeing in the Claims/Drops tab of Transactions, it requires a FAAB budget. Owners currently are able to bid up to their remaining salary cap toward a player, so their FAAB budget technically is whatever is remaining under their salary cap. Is it possible to set this feature in this manner, or is there a good work around to it?
You would have to manually set each player's FA budget to their team salary cap, which can be done via Commissioner --> Team Administration.
5. We also institute a penalty for releasing a player. For each player released, the owner is penalized for half of the amount remaining on the contract. For example, if a player has a salary of $2 for this season, when they are released, $1 is freed up, and $1 remains attached to their salary cap as a penalty. Is this something that can be customized into a league, or would this be something that would have to be managed manually?
You would have to manage that manually. One workaround would be to create a "dummy" player on each team, and that player would have the cumulative salary of all penalties of that type.
6. We have a minor league draft each offseason where only players who have not made their major league debut are eligible. Is it possible to have this done on the site directly, or would that be something that would have to be entered after the fact?
You can run your minor league draft on the site.
7. If we move to Fantrax, it would be to start our offseason and into the 2013 season. If we were to pay the $59.95 for premium settings, when would that fee be good through? Would it run through the 2013 season, or would it end at some point during the 2012 calendar year?
2013 MLB Commissioner will be available shortly after the current regular season is over, and you will then be able to pay for that league. In the meantime, we can waive the premium league fee for you for your 2012 league, simply let us know which one.
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Post by Commissioner (Athletics GM) on Sept 23, 2012 15:09:57 GMT -5
Based on what I received back from them, here's what we would have to do if we wanted to switch to Fantrax:
- Free Agency would have to either be managed completely off the host site (as it is now), or would have to adhere to their guidelines for free agency. To be honest, I don't really like how their free agency is handled, so I would probably prefer to keep it on the Proboards page.
- Contract extensions would basically have to be handled by the commissioner/administrators, as the system cannot handle doing those itself.
- Penalties for released players would have to be managed manually, either through the use of a "dummy" player with that salary, or with commissioner/administrators reducing their salary cap each time this occurs.
Overall, I still believe that Fantrax could be a very good new host site, and it is extremely customizable. That said, I would want either some of the current administrators or some of the other owners to help me with the management of this.
Once we have commitments from more of the remaining owners, we can move this toward a rule change.
The biggest concern I would have is that there may be unforeseen issues simply because we are moving to a new system, but I think those can be addressed as needed.
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Post by Commissioner (Athletics GM) on Oct 25, 2012 14:40:12 GMT -5
I am opening this item up for discussion as a rule change.
Here are the key points:
- We are debating whether to move from Yahoo to Fantrax, or a different host site. - Based on our league format, Fantrax would require a fee for the entire league of $59 in total. None of this money would be returned each season in the form of a prize. - The $59 fee, which translates to around $4 per person, can be handled either by me paying for it and having people pay me back via Paypal, or can be handled directly through the site itself. Thankfully, if we decide to go this way, we have until mid April to pay, so we can try it out (I believe) until then. - Free agency and contract extensions would need to be handled through the Proboards page manually as they are done now, as Fantrax cannot handle those items as our rules currently indicate. - Promotion/Demotion rules for moving players off of the Major League roster would no longer be necessary on Fantrax, as it is possible to have custom roster sizes for each team as necessary.
Based on this, I still believe that this will likely be a better fit for our league long term, and am looking to find out if anyone else agrees on this point.
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