Yahoo Fantasy Baseball signups open!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Well, I searched and didn’t see anyone starting this, so what they hey.

It’s that glorious time of the year again, when Yahoo has opened up their fantasy baseball league signups! That eternal void of time between the end of fantasy football and the start of fantasy baseball is almost over!

So, I figured as the defending champ of last year’s Mark Grace Slump-busters league, it’s only fitting that I’d get the ball started on discussions for this year’s SDMB league. I’ll dig up last year’s thread so we can recall the settings we used last year, and once again open it up to discussions for changes.

We’ll need a commish - I would volunteer, but I’ll be out of action for a week or so at the end of February for some minor surgery, so I may not be the best candidate.

So, who’s interested?

Last year’s draft recap
Last year’s signup thread

2

I am so in. The Cougars had a great year last year, and I’m excited to see how this season goes.

Thinking about last year’s game, I think one thing that needs to be looked at is strikeouts as an offensive category. It didn’t seem to me like it really had any correlation to overall performance and I think it undervalued some guys.

I can’t commish because of my schedule, and I would request now that whoever ends up being commish try to get a Monday, Wednesday or Friday draft slot.

Oh, and Omni: guess you were wrong about me drafting Chris Carpenter last year, weren’t you?

3

Where is everyone? Come on, guys, we need more than 2 people.

4

Hard to believe, but some people might not check the SDMB on weekends! :eek:

I’ll post a note in a Yahoo Fantasy NBA league I’m in, Omniscient and Jimmy Chitwood are in it, perhaps Kiros too.
I may try to start a league and score a decent time slot. Gotta think of a witty league name first, though.

5

Yeah, bitches.

6

I might be interested. What’re the categories?

7

You can read last year’s signup thread for the discussion on last year’s categories. This year’s might change, might not.

8

We will get enough people for another ridiculously large league - plenty of time. I am in, of course :smiley: This is my favorite fantasy league out of all the ones I play, I think - just so interesting between the cats we use and the massive depth involved.

Random stuff:

There are a couple people who dropped their SDMB subscriptions but requested we get in touch with them for this league (as they’ve participated multiple times before and enjoyed it) - anyone have that list? Winnowill, I think? Munch? Others?

We’re going to see if I can hit on a single pick between rounds 2 and 6 this year. Gagne/Nomar/Ollie Perez/Patterson/Morneau was a murderer’s row of “ouch”. Thank goodness for Lee and Ensberg.

We tend to shift the stats we use yearly, though not by much. For reference, I believe we used the following last year:
::Offense - R, RBI, HR, OBP, SLG, SB, K
::Pitching - W, SV, K, HLD, TB, ERA, WHIP

Ditto for positions. Last year:
::C, 1B, 2B, SS, 3B, IF, LF, CF, RF, OF, Util
::SP, SP, RP, RP, P, P, P
::DL, DL, BN, BN, BN, BN, BN, BN

This is the point where I start my yearly crusade to get rid of the Total Bases category, as being completely unrelated to any other objective measure of pitching success. The most damning statistic about the category is that if you take last year’s final standings, calculate Total Bases per Inning Pitched (TB/IP - a category that Yahoo doesn’t support, but is almost undeniably more to-the-point), rank all of the teams by TB/IP, and put those rankings against the actual TB rankings… they will bear little to no resemblance. TB has little to do with pitching well so much as pitching less.

On the other hand, offensive K’s (the other negative counting stat) actually correllated pretty well with what it was supposed to, presumably because it was a lot more likely for teams (particularly the less active ones) to get closer to the games played cap than the IP cap.

I like keeping the positions the same (particularly if we have 16-18 teams as we have been having - it has worked out decently). For the stat categories, it would likely depend on if there have been any additions to the Yahoo system this year in terms of stuff we can use.

Will post more stuff if I think of it, and will certainly be watching this thread with anticipation.

9

Holds? Holds?!

Um…why holds?

10

Big league.

11

That begs the question. Holds is a junk stat, far more so even than saves; if the league is big enough that it makes sense to draft middle relievers, why aren’t ERA and WHIP (and, to a lesser degree, wins and Ks) sufficient to give them appropriate value?

If it were up to me (which it, like, totally isn’t), you’d get rid of holds and substitute strikeout-walk ratio instead.

12

Well, that’s what we use these threads to talk about. Last year the general consensus was that we wanted another positive counting stat, and that holds was the best of a not-that-great selection of categories. Honestly, I don’t think holds worked out to be that much of a junk stat at all. The guys that racked up holds were the guys that pitched well over a lot of relief innings.

13

Fair enough.

Ooh…thought of another good pitcher stat: home runs allowed. We used that in my Yahoo league last year, and it seemed to work well. It’s not a positive counting stat, of course.

14

Yeah, Holds actually worked out pretty well because the guys that got the most holds tended to be… the setup guys who pitched the best (albeit with an advantage to the ones on the best teams). Which was the point, I think. Plus, with the relatively thin pitching, it provided an alternate strategy for someone to help out their ratios and still be productive if they missed on other stuff - and more possible strategy is always good

I am generally extremely suspicious of any negative counting stats until I can be convinced that they will reflect production more than playing time.

15

Well, that link didn’t work nearly as well as I wanted it to. But you get the drift. Sorry for the double :smack:

16

I see what y’all are saying; maybe it’s just that I’ve got a personal aversion to holds as a stat. I’d probably be better off sticking to my other league, where we don’t have to worry about middle relievers. :slight_smile: (Our categories are H, R, RBI, OBP, SLG, and SB for batters, and W, K, WHIP, SV, HR, and ERA for pitchers.)

17

But half the fun of this league is rounds 12-16 of the draft, where everyone is debating the relative merits of Ray King, Guillermo Mota and Kyle Farnsworth. :slight_smile:

I just noticed that one of the available pitching stats is outs. I’m intrigued by it, because it seems to put a premium on pitchers who can actually get guys out (yes, it cheapens the matchup guys, especially lefties) and is not dependent on someone’s interpretation (like holds are.) Any thoughts?

18

Hey, I picked up Kyle Farnsworth on waivers last year, he helped me win the league. Course, that’s after I drafted Mike Adams and Jesus Colome, who lasted about 13 minutes on my roster. I think holds tends to reward active owners, who keep an eye on who is getting holds as the season progresses.

In theory, if you’ve got an IP cap on pitchers, shouldn’t all teams get the same number of outs? I guess it puts a premium on strikeout / wild pitch combos. Bobby Witt would RULE.

I’d be happy if we used the same setup as last year, and even happier if we junked Batter’s K’s and Total Bases Allowed. Like Kiros, I’m not a fan of negative stats.

19

I guess, but if that’s the case it seems odd that they’d include it.

I would also be happy if we went back to a 6x6 league and cut those two categories.

20

I want in.