Dynasty vs redraft on Sleeper

In a redraft league everyone starts again each summer. In a dynasty league you keep your whole roster year after year. That one difference changes how you draft, trade and use the waiver wire.

Sleeper offers three league types: redraft, keeper and dynasty. This guide explains what each means, then the three features dynasty players lean on most: the taxi squad, injured reserve and rookie draft picks. The numbers come from the league behind the sample report, a 12-team redraft league, to show how much a roster really changes in a single season.

The three league types

Redraft. Every roster is cleared after the season and the league drafts from scratch the next year. All that matters is this season's points.
Keeper. Like redraft, but each team keeps a small number of players into the next season, set by the commissioner. Leagues often charge a price for a keeper, such as the draft round he was taken in.
Dynasty. Teams keep every player from one season to the next. The only new players come from a rookie draft each off-season, plus waivers and trades. When a dynasty league renews on Sleeper, rosters and future draft picks carry over.

How much a redraft roster changes

It is easy to assume a draft sets your team for the season. In the sample league it did not. Over the season the 12 teams made 379 adds from waivers and free agency, about 31.6 per team. By week 14, the last week of the regular season, the median team still had 54% of its week 1 roster. The range was wide: Team 6 kept 29%, while Team 5 kept its whole week 1 roster.

The starting lineups tell the same story. Of the players started in week 14, 59% had been on the same team in week 1. The rest arrived during the season through waivers or trades. In a redraft league the draft matters, but in-season moves decide a large share of who actually plays.

In dynasty the balance shifts. A player you add in October is still yours next September, so every move is also a bet on future seasons. That makes managers slower to drop young players and quicker to trade older ones.

Taxi squad

A taxi squad is a set of extra roster spots for young players, usually rookies and second-year players, that do not count against your active roster. Players on the taxi squad cannot be started. The point is to let dynasty teams stash prospects without cutting useful veterans.

The commissioner chooses how many taxi spots there are and how many years of experience a player can have to be eligible.
Sleeper has a taxi deadline setting: after it passes, players can no longer be moved onto the taxi squad for that season.
To start a taxi player you promote him to the active roster, which usually means dropping someone. In most setups he cannot be sent back down afterwards, so promote only when you mean it.

Redraft leagues rarely use a taxi squad, because there is no future season to stash players for. The sample league had none.

Injured reserve (IR)

IR spots hold injured players without using a bench spot. Both redraft and dynasty leagues use them, but they matter more in dynasty, where an injured star is still worth keeping for next year.

The commissioner decides which injury designations make a player eligible: Out, Doubtful, suspended, not active and so on. The sample league had 2 IR spots and allowed only players listed as Out. When the season ended, 7 of its 12 teams had someone on IR. If a player on IR is no longer eligible, for example because his designation was lifted, Sleeper will not let you make other roster moves until you move him back to the active roster or drop him.

Rookie drafts and traded picks

A dynasty league holds a rookie draft each off-season, usually in reverse order of the standings so the weakest teams pick first. Those picks are an asset in their own right. When the league allows pick trading, teams can trade future rookie picks, often two or three seasons ahead, as part of a deal. The sample league, being redraft, had pick trading off.

Picks are hard to value because nobody knows yet who will be available with them. A late first round pick in a strong rookie class can be worth more than an early one in a weak class. That is a judgment call; no fixed number settles it.

How strategy changes

Age. In redraft, age matters only if it affects this season. In dynasty, a 22-year-old receiver and a 30-year-old running back with the same points this year are not worth the same.
Trades. Redraft trades are about this season's lineup (see judging a trade without charts). Dynasty trades are often between a team trying to win now and a team rebuilding for later, and both can be right.
Waivers. In dynasty the waiver wire is thinner, because good young players are rarely dropped. FAAB still matters, but the big bids are rarer; see FAAB bidding basics.
Lineups. Weekly start/sit decisions work the same way in every league type. Bench tax counts in dynasty exactly as it does in redraft.

How Shoulda Started handles taxi and IR

Sleeper's public data shows a roster as it is today, not as it was in past weeks. So a player who is on your taxi squad or IR right now is treated as unable to start in every past week, unless you actually started him that week. If you moved him off taxi or IR later, the best lineup for an earlier week will not include him, and that week's bench tax can come out lower than what you could really have scored. The lineup efficiency guide covers the rest of the bench tax method.

What it cannot tell you

One redraft league's turnover is one example. Leagues with deeper benches or more active managers will change more; quiet leagues will change less.
Weekly reports judge each week on its own. They cannot say whether keeping a young player on your bench was a good dynasty decision, because the payoff comes in later seasons.
The rules described here are Sleeper's settings as commissioners commonly use them. Your league can change any of them, so check your league settings before you rely on one.