Redraft Mode: One-Season Leagues Now Get One-Season Answers

announcement · feature · redraft

If you play redraft alongside dynasty, you have run into this. You open a one-season league in a dynasty tool and every number is quietly wrong. A 29-year-old gets marked down for age in a league that ends in January. A 2027 first-rounder shows up as a tradeable asset in a league that will not exist in 2027. The advice tells you to sell and rebuild when there is nothing to rebuild toward.

Redraft mode ends that. Open a Sleeper league set to redraft and the app reframes around one season: this one.

It Switches Itself On

There is no setting to find and no toggle to remember. We read the format off the league itself, so a redraft league gets the redraft lens automatically and your dynasty leagues keep the dynasty one. Open a dynasty league, then a redraft league, in the same session on the same account, and each gets treated as what it actually is.

Values Counted In This Season, Not In Asset Prices

On the Rosters tab, a redraft team's headline number is its projected total points for the season, and the Starters and Bench lines underneath are sums of points above replacement. Both units are labeled right on the page, because they are genuinely different scales and reading one as the other sends you somewhere wrong. If you want the full version of what that number counts and how your own scoring and lineup settings set the baseline, we wrote it up in What Redraft Value Means.

On the Calculator, redraft trades are priced against the redraft market rather than a dynasty asset price, and the column says Market value so you always know which scale you are looking at. When market coverage is not available for a league, the calculator falls back to this season's projections rather than quietly borrowing your dynasty numbers.

Trade Grades That Answer "Does This Win Me Games?"

In a redraft league, one question outranks everything: does this trade win me more games this year? So in redraft the Projected Wins Added block moves to the top of the trade summary, above the assets, instead of sitting further down where it does for other formats.

The number is exactly what it says on the panel: the games each team is projected to gain this season by making the trade, from simulating the rest of the season with and without it. Both sides get their own figure, so you can see a deal that helps you 0.4 games and helps your partner 0.6, and decide whether you still want it. Once a season finishes, the same block replays the completed year instead of projecting it. Projected Wins Added is a Premium feature; free accounts see the block in place with the values obscured, so you can tell there is a real answer behind it before you decide to pay for it.

Your Standing, Read Off The Odds

Dynasty tools describe a team by where it sits on a multi-year curve: contending, retooling, rebuilding. None of that survives contact with a league that resets in five months. In redraft we label teams off this season's simulated odds instead, in four steps:

  • Contender, meaningful championship equity.
  • In the Hunt, strong playoff odds.
  • Bubble, still genuinely alive.
  • Long Shot, alive on paper.

Those labels ride along wherever a team's situation matters: on trade suggestion cards, on the trade calculator, and on the partner profile you see before you send an offer. Before any games are played the labels fall back to standings position, so preseason reads stay neutral rather than pretending to know something.

The League Assistant knows the difference too. Ask it about a redraft team and it will talk about odds, not about a rebuild path, because there is no rebuild path here.

Waivers Ranked By The Same Number

The waiver wire is where a redraft season is actually won, so it uses the same currency as the trade grades. Under Waivers:

  • Pickup Targets ranks the best available free agents by Projected Wins Added: the games each one is projected to add to your starting lineup this season, from simulating the rest of the year with and without them. A player only scores if he would actually crack your lineup, so depth pieces honestly show +0.0. If your league uses FAAB, each target gets a suggested bid sized off your remaining budget; if it uses waiver priority, each one gets a claim-or-wait call instead. This view is Premium.
  • Available Players is the unfiltered list, free to everyone. Once the season is under way, relevance is floored on live per-game scoring in your league's own settings, so kickers, defenses and streaming candidates rank on the same board as everyone else. A Market 30d column shows which players the redraft market has been moving on. Nothing is hidden: sort and filter and go find your next pickup.

What Redraft Mode Takes Away

Some of the best work here was deletion. In a redraft league:

  • Draft picks are not offered as trade assets. The calculator does not build a pick inventory for a league that has no future draft to trade into, so there are no phantom picks to accidentally include in an offer.
  • "Build for Future" is gone from the trade suggestion rankings. Not greyed out, not sorted last: the option is not there, because it does not mean anything.
  • Age disappears from the roster view. Age is a dynasty timeline concept. In a strictly redraft league we skip the calculation entirely rather than showing you a column you should be ignoring.

Where The Edges Are

Stated plainly, so nothing here oversells:

  • Redraft market coverage is skill positions only, roughly the top 200 quarterbacks, running backs, receivers and tight ends. Kickers and defenses are ranked on the waiver board, not on the trade market.
  • The market history is young, so the 30-day trend column will read close to flat until it has more days behind it.
  • Mock drafts are still rookie and startup only. A redraft mock draft board is not part of this release.
  • Projected Wins Added and Pickup Targets are Premium. Everything else described above is free.

Try It

Look up your Sleeper username on the home page and open a redraft league. There is nothing to switch on. Head to Manage Team → Calculator to grade a deal in games won, or Manage Team → Waivers to see who is actually worth a claim this week.