I understand your concerns..."gaming the game"....How about this...
You must Auto Draft at least 10 Franchise Players. It does not matter if they are scrubs or high priced.
This will give you an opportunity to autodraft great players (I have no problem with that).
Then, you will have the Waiver Claim period to set your team up. Again, you must have a total of 10 Franchise Players on your team (it may be the same 10 from the autodraft or 10 different players).
Here's the catch...After the Waiver Claim...All Players are available to everyone. So if you leave a Stud Franchise Player off of your team after the Waiver Claim period, that stud is up for grabs. You are still responsible for keeping 10 franchise players on your team.
No one can autodraft a player from another franchise and if you end up with one of those players after the autodraft, you must immediately drop that player. However, you can pick up other franchise players after the waiver claims.
Here's an example of how this works...Let's say, I leave Boog Powell off of my Autodraft Team and I Autodraft W. McCovey. Let's say I get Willie McCovey in the Autodraft. Then I would have to make a decision during Waiver Claims to keep McCovey or Claim Boog back to play 1B. No one else can Claim Boog during waiver claims....However, right after waiver claims, if I leave Boog or Willie in the FA Pool, they are fair game....make sense?
This way, no one can keep untouchable studs in the FA pool and burn others during the autodraft by picking up upgraded studs. In short, you can not autodraft or Waiver Claim Players from other franchises...but after the waiver claim ends, all free agents are up for grabs.