ESPN Fantasy League Baseball

Post by **B. Stinson** » Sat Feb 20, 2010 9:46 am

With the 2010 MLB season right around the corner, and fantasy baseball registration just starting within the last week or so, anyone interested in getting a fantasy Baseball league together?

This is my first time ever playing fantasy Baseball, so don't expect difficult competition.

---
UPDATE:

The league is now open to any and all TBL users.
Post in this thread to sign-up. Include your email address if it's not listed in your profile.
Sign-up ends at 23:59 on 25 March 2010.

League Overview:

Name: Fantasy League Baseball (Home page)

Teams:
1. B. Stinson (Commissioner) - Philadelphia Kalas
2. corinthian - Corinthian Spitfires
3. eric1985 - Sinful Dawn
4. Manimal - The Manimals
5. McQuak - Prague Quarrymen
6. Open

Scoring: Head-to-head: Each Category - Go head-to-head with one opponent each week, earning a win or loss for each stat category.

Categories:
Batting: Runs (R), Home Runs (HR), Runs Batted-In (RBI), Batting Average (AVG), Stolen Bases (SB)
Pitching: Wins (W), Saves (SV), Earned Run Average (ERA), Strikeouts (K), Wins plus Hits per Innings Pitched (WHIP)

Rosters:
23 Total:
2 Starting pitchers
2 Relief pitchers
4 Pitchers
--
1 Catcher
1 First Base
1 Second Base
1 Third Base
1 Shortstop
3 Outfielders
2 Utility players (any position)
--
5 Bench
1 on Disabled List
9 keepers for 2011 season

Draft: Live Online or Autopick or Live Auction on Saturday 27 March at 05:00 ET.

Season begins: Sunday, 4 April 2010, 15:05 ET

corinthian · Post by **corinthian** » Sat Feb 20, 2010 1:36 pm

Would it be a keeper league? I enjoy playing fantasy baseball (head-to-head format) and i'm looking for a keeper league. Anyway I'd like to join this league.

eric1985 · Post by **eric1985** » Sat Feb 20, 2010 6:20 pm

Count me in too. Hope its keeper.

Post by **B. Stinson** » Sat Feb 20, 2010 10:01 pm

corinthian wrote:Would it be a keeper league? I enjoy playing fantasy baseball (head-to-head format) and i'm looking for a keeper league. Anyway I'd like to join this league.

To be entirely honest, I'm not sure what kind of league it would be. You may know a lot more than me, since this is my first time ever trying fantasy baseball.

But, I see no reason not to play keepers. It's fun in hockey, so why not baseball!

I don't know how big of a league we can get, though... I'm not sure how many baseball fans we have here at TBL.

Post by **Lidas** » Sun Feb 21, 2010 12:58 am

I'd love to join another league, but since I know absolutely nothing about baseball I'll pass on this one. I dont even think I can name ten players... Ichiro, Matsui, Matsuzaka - 3 Japanese players who are on TV here a lot.

If you decide to run a football (soccer) league, I'm in for sure.

Post by **Manimal** » Sun Feb 21, 2010 6:03 pm

I am intrigued as to why so many americans likes baseball. I find it quite tedious. If I join your league I might learn why it is so. Sign me up so you'll have someone to beat!

Post by **B. Stinson** » Mon Feb 22, 2010 12:27 am

Lidas wrote:If you decide to run a football (soccer) league, I'm in for sure.

I would love to do a football league. Oddly enough, though, they don't seem to exist.

I've been searching for the last couple of years, and all I've found are those "pick-a-few-players-every-weekend-and-see-how-they-do" kind of games; But no actual fantasy football leagues like we have with all the other sports.

I've been really tempted to start a simple league manually, and build it on something like Weebly, but I think it would be a huge amount of work just to keep the stats up-to-date. The site and league mechanics would be easy to build, but it's the updating that would be strenuous.

On the baseball side of things, so far we have:

1. corinthian
2. eric1985
3. Manimal
4. McQuak
5. Stinson

ESPN allows leagues as small as 4 teams, so we're in good shape right now, but we could use some more! Let me know if you guys have any objections with a 4-team league, otherwise I'll create the league, and we can simply add teams as/if more people want to play.

Also, what kind of draft are you guys interested in playing? We can do any one of the following:

Live - Your league will participate in a live online draft with ESPN's live draft software. Based on a predetermined draft order, each team takes a turn selecting a player in a set amount of time. This type of draft is sometimes called a Snake Draft, as the draft order reverses each round.

Autopick - Your league's rosters are automatically drafted based on each team's pre-draft rankings list. Each team owner will receive an email upon the draft's completion.

Auction - Your league will participate in a live online auction draft using ESPN's auction draft software. In an auction draft, teams begin with a set budget and take turns nominating players to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

As for the rest of the settings, I'll stick to default for noe to avoid any bad set-ups.

eric1985 · Post by **eric1985** » Mon Feb 22, 2010 8:05 am

Id like to live but in the end i'm fine with auto too.

Post by **McQwak** » Mon Feb 22, 2010 8:19 am

I'd try it. Baseball is thrilling and it's pitty that we have so little games on TV here in Europe.
I used to play softball when I was child, so the rules shouldn't be a problem

As for draft, I'd prefer the Autopick option. I doubt I'll be able to set my team up live (or online).

Post by **B. Stinson** » Mon Feb 22, 2010 9:08 am

Good work, we're looking pretty decent. McQuak is in, bringing us to five teams. I think my goal right now is 8 teams... same as the 1876 National League.

Also, check your email inboxes - I just sent the invitations to the addresses in your profiles. And once you join the league, I encourage anyone to browse over the league settings and let me know if there's anything you think we should change, or if you see something interesting that you think we should try. Currently, I have the league set-up with ESPN defaults, except our rosters - those I took from Yahoo's set-up since ESPN's was a little weird.

Post by **McQwak** » Mon Feb 22, 2010 11:22 am

So I created my team - Prague Quarrymen

The league settings seem to be OK, just defaults with no pros/cons. It's good.
Maybe we should change the trade limit to avoid the trading mess that happened in your fantasy hockey in first months. On the other hand, each team has only 21 games scheduled, so I'm not sure this restriction is necessary.

C'mon, guys. We need three more people.

Post by **Manimal** » Mon Feb 22, 2010 3:56 pm

McQwak wrote: Maybe we should change the trade limit to avoid the trading mess that happened in your fantasy hockey in first months. On the other hand, each team has only 21 games scheduled, so I'm not sure this restriction is necessary.

What trading mess? You mean Free agents, don't you?

Post by **McQwak** » Mon Feb 22, 2010 4:04 pm

Yes, maybe. I wasn't involved in it so I just read through the posts, don't know much about it.
Anyway, it's in another thread and I'm sure Brian learnt from it

Post by **B. Stinson** » Mon Feb 22, 2010 11:44 pm

Very true, McQuak. I'll look over our settings, and see if the free agent thing could be a problem like it was in hockey.

And speaking of deficiencies from the hockey league: you may have noticed the pitching requirement: your team must get at least 7 innings pitched in order for your ERA and WHIP to be eligible. This is the standard Yahoo requirement, which ESPN also had as an option... which is awesome.

And even better, this means that they already know why this type of rule exists, and how to implement it, so my suggestion to them on adding this to hockey appears to have a much better chance of getting through for next year's hockey.

Post by **B. Stinson** » Thu Feb 25, 2010 2:34 pm

I've been thinking about the free agents thing, and I have a feeling it may not be a problem.

I think the main reason will be the frequency of baseball games. Someone who has fantasy baseball experience could probably correct me if I'm wrong, but I would assume our rosters will be pretty full every night. So, there really won't be anything to be gained by constantly shifting free agents.

In addition, ESPN has a default match-up acquisition limit of 10. So that should be a back-up if my above assumption isn't as true as I think it is.

corinthian · Post by **corinthian** » Fri Feb 26, 2010 12:48 pm

I played Fantasy Baseball last year (Head-to-Head) and from my point of view we won't have any problems with free agents.

Post by **B. Stinson** » Fri Feb 26, 2010 8:49 pm

No more takers?! We really need, at the very least, one more GM to give us an even number of teams! ...Anyone?

It doesn't look like any of us are particularly hardcore-knowledgeable about Baseball, so don't expect to be an underdog if you join. I can say for sure that I'm not an expert of any kind - I have yet to follow a full season of MLB.

Post by **B. Stinson** » Mon Mar 08, 2010 1:00 am

Three more weeks to go until our inaugural draft! ...and we still need at least one more manager.

Sign up before it's too late; Don't miss your chance to be one of the original six!

Post by **B. Stinson** » Thu Mar 18, 2010 7:22 am

One spot remains open, with only 7 more days until registration is closed. It'll be closing on Thursday March 25th.

(If we can't fill the sixth and final spot before the deadline, I'll take the spot myself and operate a second team until someone decides to join. I'll run the team as if I was a separate owner; I definitely won't be using them to help my real Philadelphia Kalas team. Hopefully we'll get one more owner, though, so we won't have to worry about it.

)

Post by **McQwak** » Thu Mar 18, 2010 9:26 am

B. Stinson wrote:(If we can't fill the sixth and final spot before the deadline, I'll take the spot myself and operate a second team until someone decides to join. I'll run the team as if I was a separate owner; I definitely won't be using them to help my real Philadelphia Kalas team. Hopefully we'll get one more owner, though, so we won't have to worry about it. )

Great!

Post by **B. Stinson** » Thu Mar 25, 2010 2:04 pm

Last call for registration! Sign-up is closing tonight at about 18:30 ET. The inaugural draft will be this Saturday, 27 March, 2010.

Fantasy League Baseball is a keeper league, and thus, will continue year-after-year. This is your chance to be there from the beginning as a member of the original six; The six managers who will help create and sculpt Fantasy League Baseball.

If you want to be the one to claim that one final spot, just post here that you're interested, and you'll get the invitation at the email address in your profile.

Again, registration closes tonight at 18:30 ET... Inaugural FLB autopick draft Saturday, 27 March, at 05:00 ET.

Post by **McQwak** » Thu Mar 25, 2010 3:53 pm

Well I tweaked my players pre-rankings, so I hope I'll get decent roster. I'd like to have Pujols of Fielder. But I don't want to uncover my detailed tactics

Post by **B. Stinson** » Thu Mar 25, 2010 4:34 pm

I don't really know enough to have a strategy

... just get one particular player, who will remain anonymous, and then hope for at least a decent rest-of-the-draft. ...And to get at least one Phillie I can follow every night.

...and avoiding all things Mets and Yankees will be a huge bonus.

Post by **Manimal** » Fri Mar 26, 2010 12:41 pm

I haven't had the time to look at the list so I'll go with the autolist and work from there

Post by **B. Stinson** » Fri Mar 26, 2010 11:50 pm

So, what kind of championship trophy do you guys want to go with?... Single Cup-style trophy, or a European/Olympic style medal system? If a single cup, any preference for color: Gold, Silver, or Bronze?