SDMB Fantasy Baseball

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Woohoo!

I just went to last year’s league page to bask in the wonderous wonder of having “The Shelbyville Shelbyvillians” listed as league champs, and saw that they’ve taken it down. :frowning:

But they replaced it with the promise of a better day, the promise of a greater hope, the promise of a new tomorrow: the 2004 MLB Baseball Season!

Registration begins in mid-February. Last year we had a great league - 13 teams! But there was some troubles with the draft day/time, and I figured we could brainstorm now and grab a good time as soon as it becomes available.

So, while I’m sure (and hope) this thread will deviate to fantasy league talk, and what stats to cover, and who’s playing, and how bad Hamlet is going to lose, and how excited deb is that the Halos picked up The Impaler, and how Weirddave will ignore how pathetic the Orioles’ pitching staff is and focus solely on Palmeiro, Lopez and Tejada, and how many times White Lightning has soiled himself thinking about Pedro and Shilling being backed up by Foulke…

I guess what I’m saying is that one of the primary things we’ll need to know from everyone is when you’re available/not available to draft.

Munch’s Availability:
Sun: all day
Mon: After 5pm EST
Tues: After 9pm EST (3/16: after 5pm EST)
Wed: After 5pm EST
Thurs: After 5pm EST
Fri: After 5pm EST
Sat: all day

Opening Day is March 30 in Tokyo, Japan.

2

Thanks for kicking this off for this year. Just checked the other day myself to see when Yahoo’s registration starts.

I’m hoping to participate again this year; with any luck, I might even be able to call what I do “competing”, unlike last year. Generally, weekdays after about 7:30 pm EST are workable for me, and most times on weekends. I have regular events each month on the fourth Tuesday and fourth Wednesday; in each case, 11 pm EST is about as early as I could commit to on those days. Of course, I’m on the road for business a lot these days, so any weeknight we pick might be tough, but there’s no way to know this far out what my schedule will be, so I’ll just have to take my chances. If things get on my calendar early enough, I’ll let you know what specific days are gonna be bad for me.

So who’s gonna be the commish this time around?

3

Ehh. I’ll do it, I did it year before last.

Rangers of the east, baby!

Not quite, in spite of his getting manhandled as a Giant, I still think Ponson is a better than average pitcher, and better than what Texas has. I wanna know why this team isn’t offering Maddox $14-15 Mil for 2 years right now, he’s still out there, and with him on board, I’d say we’d have a legitimate shot at a wild card.

AFAICT, Flanigan and Beedey are doing this as a two year plan, the thought being that you can’t make up that big a gap with the Yanks and Sox in one year, plus they will get $18 mil more to spend next year. I sure wish they’d at least make a run at Maddox, though…

4

That’s great! Can they afford Maddux, and would they offer him a multi-year contract? Seems pointless to grab him for a year if you’re going to build up pitching next year. Oh well, the east will be fun to watch.

We also should take into account how long a draft takes. It took well over 3 hours last year, didn’t it? I seem to recall getting out of work, grabbing dinner, and heading back to the office to draft, and leaving around midnight EST. Could be wrong, though.

5

Is this leauge open to new players? I’ve been commish for a leauge on Yahoo for 5 years now, and I love it. (Leauge champ last 2 years, so I am competitive). If you guys want more players, I’d love to join.

If it matters, I’m an O’s fan too…here’s to this year marking their return to respectability.

6

Sounds like you might be too good for the rest of us, but what the heck. We actually had at least one slot go unclaimed in the league Munch and WeirdDave and I were in last year (can’t remember if I set it up for 14 or 16, but we only had 13 players). There were at least two other SDMB-related leagues last year as well. So there should be plenty of room.

We had a slightly unusual format last year, one that sort of reflected my personal idiosyncracies. For one thing, it was a 6x6 league, instead of Yahoo’s default 5x5. I felt like in a mainly-for-fun league like this one, more categories gave more people a chance to pick up points in areas the leaders might be neglecting. And I decided to banish the RBI to its rightful place in the dungeon. The offensive categories we used were R, HR, SB, OBP, SLG, and Fielding Pctg. I don’t really like FP as a stat, but it did give us all one more thing to think about instead of focusing entirely on offensive production (perversely, it probably made DHs slightly more, rather than less valuable, since you didn’t have to worry about them dragging down your fielding percentage). For pitching stats, we used W, Sv, K, ERA, WHIP, and Hits Allowed (I had trouble finding a sixth pitching stat to balance out the six batter categories). I think if it were me this time around, I’d drop FP and Hits Allowed and revert to a 5x5 format.

There was also some talk among us at the end of the year about setting up this season as a keeper league; I don’t think we ever came to any definitive conclusion on that. Yahoo doesn’t support it, so we’d probably have to move to another provider (we talked about the possible logistics of doing it on Yahoo, but I think it’d be very difficult to manage).

7

I suggest we combine Slugging and On-base for OBP. Possibly include RBIs or doubles or something. Maybe K/BB or hits?

As for DHs helping your fielding, I disagree - it depends on the rest of your roster. Weirddave dominated, and he ran 2 Catchers on his roster (C and Util). Having a 1B-eligible DH (Phelps, for instance) would have helped Dave, but would have hurt me (since I had C-eligible 1B LoDuca at C). Regardless, other than the top 2 teams at fielding, everyone else was separated by about .003 points - a pretty tight and subjective race.

8

I’d like to play this year. I was going to last year, but I had to drop out (before getting to play in a non-SDMB league and winning.)

As for 5x5 versus 6x6, it doesn’t really matter to me.

9

I’d have preferred that, except Yahoo didn’t offer it as one of the categories.

10

Hi everyone. In the real world of baseball, The Anaheim Angels are gonna be 2004 World Series Champions we are looking good, pitching is better with Colon and Escobar added, and then there is Vlad, one of the top 5 players in baseball added to a good lineup–think about it, pitchers are gonna have to face Guerrero, Anderson, Glaus, Salmon, Guillen in that order then there is the bullpen which is one of the best. Sorry guys but your team might as well just call it a year and not even play. We have those who were injured last year ready to play, yes I AM looking at you Mr. Glaus who I also had on my Fantasy team grr.

As for Fantasy Baseball, I would love to play again this year and hopefully I can finish higher than I did last year, which second from bottom would be a definite improvement.

[rationalization] It wasn’t my fault, I had injuries…they blocked all Fantasy sites at work, really they did, what they figure I might actually like WORK if they did that-ha!..The baseball Gods hate me…it was that guy in the back’s fault…I wasn’t able to pick all of the cute guys for my team, some of the other owners picked some of them, those jerks…:slight_smile: [/rationalization]

So I am available anytime but Friday nite or Saturday daytime (PST) since we have flex time at work and for this I would take off.

Gosh I can’t wait for baseball season to start. I have already ordered my mini-plan for the Angels – 25 games baby. It is gonna be fun.

11

Huh? That’s just incomprehensible! Stupid Yahoo… For what it’s worth, I really liked having both those categories.

And to think you picked him up before Pujols and Beltran were off the board! But yeah, Anaheim looks solid. Extremely solid. Your 25-game package should be a lot of fun - I’m very jealous.

Welcome aboard, petelin! Good to have some new faces. Too bad I’ll have to smash it in this year… :slight_smile:

12

I’ve played Yahoo for several yeas now as a commish, and they’ve been good at upgrading/adding categories. Here’s to hoping they add OPS. It’s been widely talked about in the baseball world recently, so hopefully they’ll catch on.

It doesn’t really matter to me what or how many categories are used, as long as they’re decided on prior to the draft.

I can’t believe the Angels swooped in and stole Vlad from the O’s. I knew Flan&Beatty were getting cocky. Or who knows, maybe they were smart and his back will give out in June. We’ll see. All I can say is I’m actually looking forward to baseball this season becasue of the Orioles…not just becasue of fantasy baseball.

13

Oh I’m in alright.

As far as stats to go for, I didn’t mind dropping RBI but I hated having FP. I like having some of the more SABR-oriented stats like OBP/SLG (wouldn’t mind condensing it to OPS if Yahoo offers it this year, which they must), K/BB would also be a good one. Problem is balancing it on the pitching side. Are you sure HA was what we used last year rackensack? I don’t rightly remember. Problem is that WHIP covers most of what you’d come up with. If we do end up using both OBP and SLG maybe we eliminate WHIP and use both HA and BBA instead? Does Yahoo offer o-avg? Because that’d be a great one to use, I think. I think (we discussed this a bit as I recall) we should stay away from holds.

THe thing about Weirddave’s two-catcher situation, though, Munch, is that the second catcher he picked up for free and played at UT for the whole second half was Javy Lopez. Something of a unique situation there.

Ponson’s plenty good. Not ace material, to my mind, but we’ll see. I’ve heard Maddux wants to avoid the AL if at all possible. Anyway there will be a lot of 10-8 games played at Camden.

The Angels look pretty good on paper but I’d be concerned about Colon a) showing up in shape and b) lasting the whole season. Escobar is supremely unproven as a starter, and while the bullpen is explosive, you’ve gotta wonder about the bottom half of the rotation. Oakland’s offense will continue its steady decline (you just hope Chavvy doesn’t get wasted in the middle of that lineup), but with Hudson/Mulder/Zito you can stack up against anybody in any series and have a good shot. Throw in Redman and Harden and you’re looking at easily the best 1-5 rotation in the AL… West. Heh.

Yep, I’m drooling alright. Kim’s our 5th starter? That’s like last season’s offense; when you have a hitter like Varitek batting 9th, you break records. The only problem is I won’t be able to get enough Red Sox on my team because they’ll all be gone by the end of the second round. I’ll be drafting guys like Bellhorn and Kapler just to increase my Sox quotient.

Let’s get as many people involved as possible. I don’t suppose anybody kept a list of players from last seasons’ league? Thanks for the heads-up Munch, haven’t been around the board too much lately.

14

I haven’t been a SDMB member for very long, and I mostly lurk, but I would love to join! Let me know if there is room.

And the reason the O’s haven’t landed Maddux is that he has stated that he won’t pitch in the AL. Of course if no one meets his $ demands, that may change. I still say he signs with the Cubs.

Should be an interesting year in the MLB.

15

I wouldn’t mind playing either, if there is room. Although it sounds like there might be enough for 2 leagues. I always play in a league with my friends and a couple public leagues, but I think private leagues are better because people seem to stay involved all season. Someone in both of the public leagues I played in last year dumped their players.

Also, Yahoo does indeed offer OPS as a category. Last year was the first year. It was used in all of my leagues. I think they added it a couple weeks after the intial signups, so you would have had to go back and change your settings to notice. Nobody has mentioned it yet, but another category I am a fan of is holds. It just gets the middle relievers involved.

Has anyone used Espn’s fantasy baseball or any others?

16

We used holds in my other Yahoo league, and I don’t really like them. The rules on when you get a hold is very strange. There are times when pitchers can come in, give up a HR or two, not retire a batter, and get a hold. I’d be much happier with including a ratio that actually corresponded to pitching skill like K/BB or K/IP, or something along those lines.

Just my $0.02

17

Hey can I get in? I have never done fantasy baseball before but I have done quite well in every fantasy football season I’ve been a part of. How do we register?

18

Watch this space, as they say. When registration time rolls around there’ll either be a new thread or a revival of this one. The more the merrier. I really like deep leagues where it’s the late round draft picks and the marginal in-season pickups that make or break you.

19

I’d just as soon avoid using Holds myself. I’m sympathetic to the desire to make middle relievers more valuable, but I don’t think there is any way to do that using stats; if you have enough high-quality middle relievers that they help your ERA and/or WHIP, they’re going to hurt you in wins (unless they’re particularly fortunate in “vulturing” wins) and Ks.

Looks like OPS is available in Rotisserie leagues on Yahoo this year, as is K/BB ratio. The full set of configuration options is at Help for your Yahoo Account. The more I think about it, though, the more inclined I’d be to keep both OBP and SLG as discrete categories – otherwise, a high OBP guy with few steals who’s not a home run threat becomes much less valuable than he’d be in real life. (Sure, he’s still going to get runs by dint of being on base so much – but so will the HR guys by racking up at least one run per HR).

Hmmm. I’ve just had some more devious ideas about formats that might be fun to experiment with – may have to create another private league on my own to play around with.

20

I’m in. My work is flexible enough that I can be available for almost any draft day or time.

Here are most of the Dopers who played in the three leagues I was aware of last year:

Melting Pot

Chaosophers…erislover
The Sleepers…Fatwater Fewl
Rally Monkey…deb2world
WLs Theocracy…White Lightning
Winnowills Winners…Winnowill
Saskatoon Locusts…Treviathan
The Saskodies…Odieman
Portland Expos…whatami
Highlanders…Wilson
SDMB keeper

Schrodingers Bat…Fatwater Fewl
Stockholm Sluggers…Montfort
Rocky Peaks…wolfman
Continental Drifters…Pantellerite
Accidental Tourists…cmkeller
Les Miserables…Lamar Mundane
Logan Square Bombers…ReservoirDog
Bolshevik Revolution…?
Mr. Ecks 22…plasticbryan
Zevs Wolves…zev_steinhardt
Flys Sox…?
Baltimore Weirdos…Weirddave

SDMB_1

WLs Blue Sox…White Lightning
Winnowills Winners…Winnowill
Rickeys Residue…Fatwater Fewl
E. Wilson All-Stars…Wilson
Isotopes…Petey
Shelbyvillians…Munch
Blakes Bears…blakeformayor
Baltimore Weirdos…Weirddave
Out On Waveland…Omniscient
Saskatoon Yaksmen…Treviathan
Lake Merritt Marlins…ArchiveGuy
Rackensack Diamonds…rackensack
Debs Halos…deb2world

The positions and scoring categories used in rackensack’s league last year:

Offensive positions:
C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, LF, CF, RF, OF, IF, Util,

Pitching:
SP, SP, SP, RP, RP, P, P, P

Offensive (mostly) categories:
Runs
Home Runs
Stolen Bases
Fielding Percentage
On-base Percentage
Slugging Percentage

Pitching categories:
Wins
Saves
Strikeouts
Total Bases Allowed
Earned Run Average
(Walks + Hits)/ Innings Pitched

Oh yeah … WL and I are working on a fantasy baseball blog – rankings, strategy, opinion, commentary etc – hopefully we’ll have some substantial content up in a week or so. If anyone’s interested in checking it out, one of will post a link here once we’re rolling.