SDMB Fantasy Baseball League 2020

The Game Room
1

OK folks, it’s time to talk fantasy baseball! We’ve had a fantasy baseball league here on the SDMB for years - I believe this is year 18.

Historically we’ve called it the SDMB Big League, as we try to get as close to 20 teams as we can, but the last few years we haven’t come close to 20. Last year, we had 13, hopefully we can get everyone back and maybe add some new owners.

The league is run on Yahoo, with a couple of non-traditional 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 Time set (for now) to Tuesday, March 24, 8:45pm eastern.

We’ve talked for the last couple of years about ditching Holds - personally, I like having the same number of pitching categories as hitting categories, and I don’t know of a good replacement for it.

I renewed the league a couple of weeks ago, and we’re up to six. Of the other seven owners from last year, I just sent additional invites to alternate non-Yahoo emails I had for four of them (Petey, Winnowill, Petelin, rackensack).

hawkeyeop and Omniscient also haven’t renewed - I’ll send them PMs.

I will admit I do not know the SDMB username for the owner of the team name Krikkit Wikkits, hopefully they’ll see this.

Anyone else who wants to join, let me know - via PM or here!

Munch has suggested that we recruit elsewhere (possibly on the Athletic), which we’ll have to do if we don’t get to at least 13 owners.

2

That’d be my son, who’s not on the SDMB. I’ll PM you his email address, and I’ll mention it to him when he gets home from work later tonight.

3

I’m in favor of keeping holds, it definitely makes sense in a larger league.

4

I would encourage anyone with an interest in joining a fantasy baseball league to sign up. Attending the online draft and checking in to your roster once a week are really the only requirements. This was my first fantasy baseball league 18 years ago, as I wanted to reignite my interest in baseball, which had waned since the mid-90s. It’s really a great way to acquaint yourself with players well beyond the big names, or just the guys on the team you root for.

Additionally, the people that are in the league have always been extremely helpful and welcoming of newer players. Don’t be intimidated by coming into an established league - we always fill in a few teams with new managers, and it always works out.

5

Also, the Yahoo app has gotten much better so it’s easy to set lineups if fantasy sports are blocked at your work.

6

Unfortunately due to COVID-19, I am having to cancel the live draft party scheduled for Las Vegas. We’ll just have to draft from home as we have in years past.

7

I could deal with my kids’ high school and college closing, and with the live taping of “Wait, Wait . . .Don’t Tell Me” we were supposed to go tonight being canceled, and who will really miss the NBA, but this . . . this hurts.

8

How are online Fantasy leagues handling the NBA suspension? Is there a contingency plan of baseball gets delayed?
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9

I’m not in a basketball league. But baseball will just pick up whenever the season starts.

10

In my NBA league, we’re just paying out the money based on last week’s standings.

11

Since I’m the guy responsible for our using holds in this league (or at least the one who suggested it), I should say that I never loved it as a stat for pitching, but we wanted to go to 6 categories for offense (replacing AVG with OBP and SLG), and it was the least objectionable of the options available to add for pitching so that we could have 6 categories in each. There was also the consideration of keeping 2 rate stats and 4 counting stats for each, so that worked against adding another rate stat in place of holds. I could probably be easily convinced to do something else that made sense, I just haven’t figured out yet what it would be.

12

I like holds as a stat in larger leagues, it gives you a reason to pick up those guys who are potential closers and get something from them. Admittedly, pitching stats are in transition with more closer by committee and use of openers.

It’s definitely not a hill for me to die on, but if we’re voting, my vote is to keep them.

13

I’ve been thinking about swapping Saves and Holds for “Saves+Holds”, and finding another category to add in there. S+H expands the rosterable players like the separate stats did. A counting stat would be ideal, but I don’t think there’s another that works well. (We used Total Bases back in the day, and it was terrible). Maybe K:BB, if we want to go with a rate stat?

14

Fantasy is just going to be interesting this season. Assuming you need to get the season wrapped by Nov 1 or so, does MLB shorten the number of games in the season or go to a compressed schedule with more doubleheaders and fewer off days?

15

No idea, but I imagine there’s a provision in the current CBA with the Player’s Assoc. that controls how much they could compress by adding doubleheaders or removing off days.

16

And they could compromise by slightly expanding rosters.

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So we need to get this back off the ground, if people are interested. With a short season, this might actually be a great time to get into fantasy baseball, if you’ve been looking for a way to really nerd up your baseball nerdery, or just dip your toes into the nonsense. 60 games (maybe?) will go by quick. The regular SDMB Big League is a great place to start. And we are using the term “Big” extremely loosely this year - it’s at 10 teams right now.

For those who are looking for something even more casual, I started up a side league for one of the dynasty groups to play in this year. We’re freezing the league in carbonite for the season, and this is just to tide us over. Not everyone is playing, so there’s plenty of room. I’ve tweaked the settings a bit, based on some suggestions I’ve seen on The Athletic to make it a bit more friendly for a shortened season. DM me if you’re interested.