The Super Bowl is over and done with, it’s time to move on to more important things in the sports world - baseball, and more specifically, fantasy baseball. There are a number of good active leagues going on the SDMB each year, and there’s always a little bit of turnover. Please feel free to use this thread to post about a league you’d like to promote, toss your name out as a potential team manager looking for a league, or anything else you might want to talk about (though let’s leave fantasy news, strategy, and such to a different thread).
The Melting Pot
This AL-only SDMB league is losing a manager this year. The Melting Pot is a 9 team 6x6 AL-only keeper league, established in 2003. The other owners are all (mostly?) current or former SDMB posters, but that certainly isn’t a requirement if you know someone who’d be good. We use Yahoo, and draft live. This is an active league, and we have all gotten to know each other quite well - we would want a good-natured veteran who shows a good amount of sportsmanship. Dislike of the Yankees would be a positive factor in your application. Some specifics:
Keeper Rules
5 players are kept a year
players may be kept 3 years in a row, then lose eligibility
6x6 Categories
Hitters:
Runs, Home Runs, RBI, Stolen Bases, AVG, OPS
Pitchers:
Wins, Saves, Strikeouts, ERA, WHIP, K/BB
Positions
C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, OF, OF, OF, Util, Util (162 games max)
SP, SP, SP, RP, RP, P, P, P (1400 IP max)
5 bench spots, 2 DL
Team to be acquired (we have not drafted yet)
Willy Adames
Jose Altuve - kept once already
Melky Cabrera
Welington Castillo - kept once already
Matt Chapman
Zack Cozart
Chris Davis
Teoscar Hernandez
Matt Joyce
Josh Reddick
Mallex Smith
Giancarlo Stanton
Mike Trout - kept twice already
Danny Valencia
Cody Allen - kept once already
Danny Duffy
Nathan Eovaldi
Sonny Gray
Felix Hernandez
Nate Jones
James Paxton - kept twice already
Danny Salazar
Tyler Skaggs
Adam Warren
SDMB Big League
So I’ve just renewed the Big League, which has been around since 2003. I sent out invites manually rather than doing the auto-renew function - if anybody didn’t get their invite, let me know.
Over the years the format has stayed pretty constant, with the # of teams varying between 15 and 19 (we were at 16 last year, which made the pickings feel a little deeper than in the past). Run on Yahoo, this is not a keeper league.
Pretty sure we have at least one not renewing, and since we were below max last year we’ll have plenty of room for new blood.
These are the settings:
Roster Positions: C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, IF, LF, CF, RF, OF, Util, SP, SP, RP, RP, P, P, P, BN, BN, BN, BN, BN, BN, DL, DL
Batters Stat Categories: Runs ®, Home Runs (HR), Runs Batted In (RBI), Stolen Bases (SB), On-base Percentage (OBP), Slugging Percentage (SLG)
Pitchers Stat Categories: Wins (W), Saves (SV), Strikeouts (K), Holds (HLD), Earned Run Average (ERA), (Walks + Hits)/ Innings Pitched (WHIP)
So OBP & SLG instead of AVG, and Holds added to the pitching side; and rather than generic OF we have a LF, RF and CF spot (plus an OF spot).
Draft tends to be long - I’ll find a draft time when we get a few teams to join.
I’ll note that the Big League is the first fantasy baseball league I ever joined. It can be a lot of work - especially prepping for the draft. But if you’re looking to get into a league, it’s very accessible. It it’s also very active, so you’ll want to be committed through the season.
Big League - I set the draft time to 8:45pm Eastern on Monday, March 18th. That gets the draft in before the OAK-SEA series in Japan on March 20th.
We could move it a week later and skip those games, but I’d prefer not to.
This is a snake draft, right? I’ll have to do it from my phone.
People should join the big league. A 15 team league is just a slightly enlarged normal league while 20 teams you have to start scouting Marlin utility infielders. I prefer the latter. Holds are still stupid though.
Also, I run an auction league that could use a couple more members. This isn’t a Doper league but has one other current Doper member as has had others over the years. The draft takes a while, but it uses weekly lineups, so you don’t need to log into your team daily. There are limited keepers, but new members get extra draft cash to offset. Message me for more info.
If you can’t find anyone else, I’d be interested. My thing is I would only commit to doing it for one year, reason being my waning interest in the business of professional sports. (I always stay committed to managing my teams though!) Expressing interest because I’ve always wondered what it would be like playing in an AL-only or NL-only format. I’ve never played roto or with keepers in baseball either, but I have in basketball leagues so I have a grasp on how it works.
I think that’d be great Covfefe. Sorry for the delay in responding. Send me a PM with your email address. Would it okay to say if we find someone expressing more long term interest, they’d get priority? (But I honestly think you’ll find it to be a great league to be in.)
Absolutely. In fact, afterward I had thought of following up my post saying such a person ought to be given priority. 
PM sent.
Hi, Covfefe - I’m the Commissioner of the Melting Pot league. I just sent you an email. Confirm your interest in joining, and I’ll set you up with the team!
We’re still just at 9 teams in the “Big League”. Would love to at least get it up to industry-standard 15 teams. Is anyone out there thinking about joining, but has some reservation they’d like to be talked out of?
We got to 10 today. In the next day or two I’ll start checking in to see who hasn’t renewed, figure out what their SDMB user names are, and send them PMs here (as well as sending a reminder via Yahoo).
I know Omniscient hasn’t renewed, he usually joins late.
If anyone else reading this wants to join the league, speak up!
Hi, Wilson!
(Not expressing interest but you’re the one name I see that I recognize from the football Big League from the past 2 seasons… :D)
A bump for the Big League - we’re now at 11 owners, I still have to figure out who hasn’t renewed and pester them. Since this league works much better with more owners, I’m going to move the draft back till after the Japan series. Probably Tuesday the 26th; if folks would prefer the 25th or 27th let me know.
Anyone out there reading this who wants to join a fantasy baseball league, speak up! We’ve got plenty of room!
Big League is drafting tonight! 845pm Eastern.
We got up to 13 owners; two of the non-renewers I couldn’t figure out what their SDMB name was to contact them through the board. So we won’t be quite as deep as last year; but the draft won’t be as long.
Anyone reading this who wants to join, PM me or post here. I think I could invite up till about an hour before draft time.
Thanks for the reminder, I’ve done zero draft preparation for this league, but I have done two 12 team money league drafts so I think I’m prepared for a 13 team draft.
I’m at work, I’ll be drafting from my phone. It’s been slow so let’s hope it stays that way. I’ll keep my queue full of guys in case I have to go to autopick.
That was a great draft last night. It moved along pretty quick, there weren’t any major mistakes, we didn’t even have to pause things! I thought the auto-drafters did a decent job as well, which was always frustrating. The only complaint was how bad Yahoo’s applet moved - I think it was freezing up for a lot of people. I’d love to do a write up, but I don’t have time, and am headed for vacation this weekend for 10 days.
BASEBALL!!
Haven’t seen or heard anything about this league for this year. I had to drop as commissioner last year, and I ended up missing the draft as I was dealing with health issues with my wife, but would hate to see it disappear — we’ve been going for as far back as Yahoo maintains records (2001) and I think we might have been around a year or two before that. If I need to take back the reins as commish I guess I can, but would rather not as I’m going to be traveling out of the country for a couple of weeks in June.
I’m definitely in for the big league this year.