What does inflation look like in keeper leagues? It is a question that most fantasy players do not know the answer to. They know it is a lot because generic player values do not match anything they see in their actual drafts. As a result, fantasy teams just accept that those dollar values are worthless and only look at the rankings of the players to get an idea how good a player is expected to be.
While that offers a good enough work around, there are programs that will do the calculations if you are willing to enter the data on salaries of kept players. Baseball Prospectus offers this service as part of its subscription. It is the Player Forecast Manager and utilizes current PECOTA values to make the projections.
I took that time for my AL-Only 4x4 keeper league, and these are the results. My first reaction was, "WTF! $67 for Alex Rodriguez and for Carl Crawford?" My next was to reexamine whether Carl Crawford should be kept at his current salary of $50. Did I make an erroneous assumption thinking he would be thrown back at that salary?
| PLAYER | POS | TEAM | $$$ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rodriguez Alex | 3B | NYA | 67.57 |
| Crawford Carl | LF | TBA | 67.16 |
| Sizemore Grady | CF | CLE | 54.66 |
| Upton B.J. | 3B | TBA | 52.03 |
| Cabrera Miguel | 3B | DET | 46.4 |
| Ortiz David | DH | BOS | 44.97 |
| Guerrero Vladimir | RF | LAA | 44.45 |
| Rivera Mariano | RP | NYA | 39.42 |
| Street Huston | RP | OAK | 35.91 |
| Ordonez Magglio | RF | DET | 34.98 |
| Swisher Nicholas | 1B/LF | CHA | 32.13 |
| Gomez Carlos | CF | MIN | 31.87 |
| Young Mike | SS | TEX | 31.53 |
| Wells Vernon | CF | TOR | 31.16 |
| Morneau Justin | 1B | MIN | 29.5 |
| Mauer Joe | C | MIN | 28.44 |
| Thome Jim | DH | CHA | 27.85 |
| Dye Jermaine | RF | CHA | 27.2 |
| Ryan B.J. | RP | TOR | 26.77 |
| Bradley Milton | RF | TEX | 26.7 |