Final Keepers due today!

Just a reminder that I need your final list of keepers today!

Preliminary List of Keepers

Here is the preliminary list of keepers. Please note that you may update your final keepers until NOON CST, Saturday, March 27th. The draft status will be set to ready sometime on March 28th, so pre-rank your players (if you choose to) now.

Player	Round Drafted
deus ex machina (Jordan)
Ichiro Suzuki	2
Joe Mauer	6
Felix Hernandez	9
Yovanni Gallardo	11
Josh Johnson	14
charisma (Adam Nehring)
Manny Ramirez	1
Alex Rodriguez	4
Nick Markakis	5
Jacoby Ellsbury	6
Troy Tulowiski	7
Lyin' Cty Reformers (Don Baker)
Chase Utley	3
Roy Halladay	4
Cliff Lee	5
Derek Jeter	10
Kendry Morales	24
Arlen's Marlins
Evan Longoria	1
Derek Lowe	7
Denard Span	16
Andy Pettitte	24
Soi Disant (Lyndsey Baker)
Ian Kinsler	1
Jimmy Rollins	2
Bobby Abreu	8
Matt Cain	10
Shin-Soo Choo	12
The Cocos (Grant Baker*)
Albert Pujols	1
Dan Haren	6
Javier Vazquez	9
Pablo Sandoval	19
Ben Zobrist	24
Seal Beach Dreamers (Cathy Baker)
Mariano Rivera	5
Jayson Werth	13
Ubaldo Jimenez	18
Aaron Hill	23
Jason Bartlett	24
TeamLA (Dean Baker)
Mark Teixeira	1
Andre Ethier	2
Jose Valverde	11
Justin Verlander	12
Rajai Davis	24
Lucky13's (Chase Baker)
Matt Kemp	5
Derrek Lee	10
Zack Greinke	13
Brian Wilson	15
Chris Carpenter	18
CVMom (Corrine Baker)
Hanley Ramirez	1
Ryan Braun	3
Justin Morneau	4
Jair Jurrjens	16
SD THUNDER IS BACK (Jon Manson)
Tim Lincecum	1

* Denotes League Champion, bearer of the cufflinks.

Draft Day

Draft status to “Ready” on March 28th

Draft Day is fast approaching so get your keepers in today. Last year, there was a bit of tension with regards to when the keepers were announced. So this year, there is a deadline of THURSDAY MARCH 25th to e-mail me your keepers. I will post everyone's keepers and you may then review who everyone picked. If you wish to make changes to your keepers, you will need to send me your revised list by Saturday, March 27th. However, in order to have any keepers, you must send me at least one player to keep by March 25th.

Check your position in the draft here.

Check the rules for keepers here, but basically, you get 5 keepers this year. You will retain your keeper during the same round you picked them up last year.

Rules for Keepers

There’s been a lot of talk about keeper rules for the upcoming season (okay, so not really) and rightly so, the rules are still a bit murky and unformed. Here, I’ll try to bring some clarity to the confusion

What’s a keeper?

A keeper is a player from your roster last year who you want to keep on your team for the next season.

How do keepers work?

You select keepers by sending me an email with the players you want to keep

What is the purpose of keepers?

For our league, I want to give people a reason to keep playing even if they don't have a realistic shot at winning this season. Keepers allow players to trade for next year and allows everyone to think of their team as a multi-season investment.

What are the rules for keepers?

I want to make the game fun for everyone involved and so I want to reward players for picking up good, but latent talent, yet at the same time I don't want one team to dominate the league year after year. To this end I came up with this rule last year:

3 keepers can be chosen with any Yahoo O-Rank. These players will be added to your team during the first 3 rounds of the draft. 4 additional keepers can be selected with an O-Rank of 100 or less and would be added to your team for rounds 9 through 12. If you choose not to have keepers, you will receive draft picks in these slots instead.

However, after thinking about it some more, I see that a major weakness of this strategy is that for some players, it is far more advantageous to select no keepers and take the draft picks instead. I want the keepers to have value for everyone, so I have changed the rule to the following:

Each team may keep up to 5 players from their last roster. Each keeper will be added to your new team during the round where they were drafted last season. If they went un-drafted last season, the player will be added as your last pick. If two or more of your keepers were not drafted last season, they will be added as your last picks.

Also, take a look at last year's roster and last year's draft results to start preparing your team for this year's draft.

Draft Order for 2010

Hello everyone, here is the draft order for the 2010 draft. It will be a snake draft which means that during the first round, it will go in the order below but during the second round, it will be in reverse.

1. sorbet d'arc-enciel | Mich
2. Lucky13's | Chase
3. Soi Disant | Lyndsey
4. LA Dodgers | Tyler
5. Charisma | Adam
6. Mitchell Mudhens | Paul
7. Seal Beach Dreamers | Mom
8. Lyin' Co. Reformers | Dad
9. Team LA | Dean
10. SD Thunder is BACK | Jon
11. tropical bakers | Jordan
12. The Cocos | Grant

Also, please visit your 2009 team to begin thinking about keepers.

The 2010 Happier Family League is Here!

Head over to http://baseball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/league/thf to sign up today! As I mentioned in the email, we're hoping to do a Draft party at my parent's house in Doon, IA sometime near Easter. I welcome your suggestions. For those of you who can't make it, I'd love to Skype you in or call you so you can submit your draft picks. Rules about the league are the same as last year, although I may have to switch to Rotisserie scoring if we get an odd number of people. I'm hoping everyone comes back from last year, though, so sign up today! http://baseball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/league/thf

PowerRanks: Week 22

The Playoffs are different

I don't know how reliable these numbers are anymore as I've added in the playoff numbers. When a team has a bye week, I have to estimate those numbers. So, take these ranks with a bit of salt. But so far, the best team in the playoffs is the SD ThunderCrack. However, since they had a bye week in the first week of the playoffs, those numbers are estimated and come out quite good. Unfortunately for him, it didn't transfer to a good performance this past week against tropical bakers.

So the championship game will be a replay of the 2007 championship game. That time Jordan took the game 6-4. Jordan and Grant were the number 1 and 2 team that year, this year, Grant is number 1 and Jordan ranked 6th, barely edging into the playoffs this season.

Week 23 PowerRanks

Weekly Rankings
Rank	Last Week	PR+	Team
1	2	131.2	Lyin' Co. Reformers
2	1	129.2	Iger's Tigers
3	5	116.1	Soi Disant
4	3	113.6	Charisma
5	10	111.3	Lucky 13's
6	7	96.7	tropical bakers
7	11	96.5	LA Dodgers
8	9	95.4	Mitchell Mudhens
9	8	94.5	Seal Beach Dreamers
10	4	77.9	Team LA
11	6	74.7	SD ThunderCrack
12	12	62.9	sorbet d'arc-enciel
Yearly Rankings
Rank	Last Week	PR+	Team
1	1	137.1	Iger's Tigers
2	2	113.5	Seal Beach Dreamers
3	4	112.4	SD ThunderCrack
4	3	108.5	Lyin' Co. Reformers
5	5	100.2	Team LA
6	8	96.6	tropical bakers
7	10	96.5	Mitchell Mudhens
8	6	94.4	Soi Disant
9	9	93.2	LA Dodgers
10	7	90.1	Lucky 13's
11	11	87.2	Charisma
12	12	70.4	sorbet d'arc-enciel