Farm Futures: RotoWire Dynasty Invitational and Top 300 Rankings

For those of you who don't use Twitter, I started the RotoWire Dynasty Invitational this offseason. We are almost done with the 40-round slow draft. You can follow along and reference the results here

Here are the team GMs and their affiliations:

1. Eddy Almaguer, Fake Teams
2. James Anderson, RotoWire and Ian Kahn, TURN: Washington's Spies
3. George Bissell, Baseball Prospectus
4. Chris Blessing, Baseball HQ
5. Ryan Bloomfield, Baseball HQ
6. J.P. Breen, Milwaukee's Tailgate
7. Craig Goldstein / Ben Carsley, Baseball Prospectus
8. Josh Katzenstein, The Times-Picayune and Nick Shlain, 2017 SKL2 Champion
9. Ralph Lifshitz, Razzball
10. Clay Link, RotoWire
11. Melissa Lockard, Oakland Clubhouse / The Athletic SF
12. Justin Mason, Friends With Fantasy Benefits
13. Matt Modica, CTM Baseball
14. Bret Sayre, Baseball Prospectus / The Dynasty Guru
15. Rob Silver, 2016 NFBC Main Event Champion
16. Matt Thompson / Mike Werner, Friends With Fantasy Benefits
17. Tom Trudeau, The Dynasty Guru and Greg Wellemeyer, Baseball Prospectus
18. Derek VanRiper, RotoWire
19. Chris Welsh, In This League
20. Matt Winkelman, Phillies Minor Thoughts

1) Rosters will be filled via a 40-round slow draft this season.
2) Scoring is standard 5x5 rotisserie with weekly lineup periods.
3) 23-man active rosters (1 C, 1 1B, 1 2B, 1 3B, 1 SS, 1 MI, 1 CI, 5 OF, 2 UTIL, 9 P), 7-man bench and three injured reserve spots.
4) At least 10 players on each roster must be designated minor leaguers. To be eligible for a minors slot, a player must either still have their rookie eligibility* or they must be in the minors. Owners are expected to move unqualified players out of their minors positions by the beginning of the next transaction period.
5) In each ensuing season, owners will be required to keep 35 players from their roster, with the remaining five roster spots being filled via a five-round non-snaking offseason draft.
6) The order for the offseason draft will be determined by the reverse order of the previous season's standings. The only exception to this is that the top three picks will be determined by lottery and all teams in the bottom half of the previous year's standings will be eligible. The 20th place team will get 10 chances, 19th team will get 9 and so on until the 11th place team, which will get one chance.
7) Any player who signed a contract with an MLB organization after the start of that current season's draft is not eligible to be picked up off waivers. The only way a new player enters the player pool is through the offseason draft.
8) There is no limit to the number of minor leaguers you may hold on your roster. However, every owner is expected to field the best lineup they can. For example, if a team has a minor leaguer or injured player in their starting lineup, there should not be a healthy big-league option on their bench. There may be legitimate exceptions to this, but the commissioner will hand out strikes if it is obvious that an owner is simply trying to tank for better draft odds. There will be a three-strike policy on this front, and after the third strike you will be booted from the league.
9) Draft pick trading is allowed after the initial draft.
10) Only players who have signed an MLB contract are eligible to be rostered in this league.

* To qualify for rookie status, a player must not have exceeded 130 at-bats or 50 innings pitched in the major leagues, or accumulated more than 45 days on the active roster of a major-league club or clubs during the 25-player limit period, excluding time on the disabled list or in military service.

DETERMINING DRAFT ORDER - THE INVISIBLE HAND

For a league like this, with a snake draft and no limitations on how long an owner can keep a player, it would be unfair to just randomly determine draft order for the initial draft. To determine draft order, we used the Invisible Hand system, pioneered by Bret Sayre in his TDGX league.

Here is how it works:

1) Each team is allowed to bid 2018 keeper slots to acquire a draft slot of their choosing for the entire snake draft. For example, a team may bid eight keeper slots on the #1 draft slot. This means that the team will only be able to keep 27 players, instead of 35 at season's end.
2) A team can bid on as many slots as they want, and will be awarded their highest winning bid.
3) Any price in keepers paid for a draft slot only applies to the first season of the league.
Bidding for draft slots is entirely optional.
4) All draft slots not won by bid will be determined by random draft order, and all tiebreakers in keeper bids will also be broken by the random draft order.
5) Teams who lose keepers at the end of 2018 will need to fill their remaining roster spots via waivers after the 2019 offseason draft is complete. (This is different from TDGX).
6) Keepers spots are only lost for winning bids. If you bid and you lose, you stay at 35 keepers.
7) There is no Vickrey system here. If you bid 10 spots and the next bit is four, you lose 10 keeper spots.

If you would like to see a breakdown of how The Invisible Hand played out, Eddy has a good writeup here.

We are using CBS for RDI, which is the best platform for dynasty and keeper leagues in my opinion, as it is very user-friendly when it comes to keeping minor leaguers.

I welcome anyone looking to start a dynasty league to use this blueprint, as I believe the 20-team/keep forever format is the best game out there.

Now, with dynasty leagues in full swing, I would be remiss if I did not provide dynasty league rankings. Here is my top 300, intended specifically for the RDI format.

Leagues these rankings are NOT intended for:

Points leagues.
Shallow keeper leagues with only a few minor league slots.
Deep keeper leagues with 10 or fewer keepers and no minor league slots.

Contending/Rebuilding Qualification:

These rankings are highly flexible with regards to whether a team is contending or rebuilding.

For a PDF version of the rankings, click here.

(Player age as of 4/1/18)

Feel free to ask league-specific questions in the comments section or on Twitter: @RealJRAnderson