waivers.md

How Yahoo default waivers work

• waivers clear tuesday morning
• each player has a waiver priority, which is initialized to Inverse(Draft Order Position)
• each waiver request includes [Player to Pick Up | Player To Drop]
• if multiple managers request to pick up the same player the player goes to the manager with the highest priority
• each time a waiver succeeds, the priority resets to 14 and all other managers move up (called 'rolling' priority list)

How waiver auctions work

• waivers clear tuesday morning, as per normal waiver rules
• each player has an annual waiver budget of $100
• each waiver requests includes [Player to Pick Up | Player To Drop | Price]
• if multiple managers request to pick up the same player the player goes to the manager who made thei highest bid
• if your bid succeeds, your waiver budget is reduced by the bid amount
• if your bid fails, your waiver budget is unchanged
• a manager may bid $0 for a player. in this case, he will only win the waiver if there are no other non-zero bids
• waiver auction ties are broken by rolling priority list (similar tot he 'standard' waiver system)

Examples

1. In week 1 Roddy White catches 2 touchdowns. Holy shit it's 2009 again! I bid $100. I win the waiver. My auction budget for the rest of the season is now $0 and I can only make $0 bids
2. In week 1 I decide I hate the Carolina defense and want to pick up the Jets. I bid $0. Nobody else wants the Jets, so I win the waiver.

The Important Thing About Waivers That The Default Format Gets Wrong

In the standard waiver format, picking up the Jets has the same impact on my waiver "priority" as picking up Roddy White. In both cases, if I win the waiver, I move down to the lowest priority for subsequent weeks.

This is completely idiotic, as it creates an invalid equivalence between a high-value waiver pickup and a low-value waiver pickup.

More importantly, the Yahoo default system actually rewards fantasy football laziness. A passive user who does nothing for 5 weeks will typically end up with the highest waiver priority. If there is then e.g. a major injury to e.g. Jamaal Charles and a high value waiver opportunity for e.g. Knile Davis, and that passive player manages to catch the news on ESPN, he will be able to pick up the high value waiver replacement.

Contrarily, active and sensible roster management (making small roster moves and rostering upside players with small waiver bids) is feasible and profitable in a waiver auction system; the auction budget creates a new dimension of strategy -- do I really think Roddy White is going to repeat his performance? Do I want to blow half my budget on this? Do I want to save some budget for a playoff run? etc

In a deep (14 team) league, waiver activity is crucial. The standard Yahoo system penalizes active roster management and rewards laziness / passiveness. This is stupid.

I move to create a waiver acution system (built into Yahoo, nothing hard has to happen) to address all of these concerns.