Archive for League Design

Last week, a trade was accepted in my home league. It nearly split the league in two. 

Jack’s Cool League, the JCL as it’s lovingly known amongst friends, is a home league that is going on 14 years of competition amongst 10 teams, conducted in the endlessly entertaining and frustrating head-to-head categories format. 

As you may have guessed by the name, I’ve been commissioner of the league since its inception. Various rule changes have reshaped strategy over the years. 

We added quality starts. Then OPS. We expanded the default Yahoo lineups to add additional IL slots and NA slots. We increased the active roster size to 25, and then to 26, to keep pace with our colleagues in the majors. We instituted a minimum weekly innings threshold. And moved up the playoffs to end the season before major league teams start resting their stars. And this year, we rebalanced the number of utility and bench slots to try and make streaming starting pitchers more of a calculation. 

The only other change has been moving from the Commissioner having discretion to veto egregious trades to having each team having a chance to cast a vote to veto within a two-day trade review period. 

It is extremely rare for a trade to be vetoed in our league, as I believe it should be, but it has happened. Teams will use their voting power and rally other managers to vote if they feel one team is benefitting so much that it dramatically shifts the balance of the league.  Read the rest of this entry »

The Middle Infield episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Chris Towers

Strategy Section

• League format differences
  • How would your draft strategy change between?
    • Rotisserie (Roto) vs. HTH Points vs. HTH Categories
    • Waiver wire leagues vs. non-waiver wire (Draft Champions / Draft & Hold) leagues
    • Having IL slots vs. no IL slots
    • Large bench vs. small bench
    • Trading vs. non-trading leagues
    • Daily lineups vs. weekly lineups
• Middle Infielders
  • General player pool observations
  • Jacob Wilson as a fantasy starting shortstop
  • Which statistics should you look to draft from the MI position?

ATC Undervalued Middle Infielders

• Jeremy Pena
• Brice Turang
• Trevor Story
• Willy Adames
• Dansby Swanson
• Ezequiel Tovar
• Gleyber Torres
• Xander Bogaerts
• Masyn Winn
• Andrés Giménez
• Other honerable mentions

Injury Update

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Not everyone is playing in a high-stakes NFBC league. Some of us are just trying to beat our family members, friends, or random strangers who have agreed to play fantasy baseball with us. In addition, not all of us are in deep leagues. Sometimes it’s hard getting even 10 people to pay enough attention to baseball for a full season to make your league competitive. If you just so happen to find yourself in one of these shallow leagues, like an ESPN or CBS league, where the stakes are low, the waiver wire is full of talent and everyone is bought in, consider yourself lucky. But, don’t consider yourself in an easy league.

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You find yourself reading words about the innovative Highly Custom Leagues series. Specifically, this is an omnibus compiling some very basic details of all such leagues in one place. If you’re looking for unusual variations on classic fantasy baseball to occupy your mind, this is the place to find them.

Each section heading is a link. This post will be updated as new leagues are designed. I will also endeavor to note compatible modules.

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Craving something with unexpected players cropping up on the waiver wire? Wish to appease the thirsty baseball gods with fantasy blood? Then check out “Sacrifices,” a brutally difficult highly custom league. Previous entries in the series covered 2×2 Roto, Split Auctions, Roto-to-Head, Rotating Divisions, WAR wars, Category Wars, Public Trade Negotiations, If Only, Elimination, Home Team, Owners & Managers, and Battery.

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The Highly Custom League series is back with, well, something silly. Previous entries covered 2×2 Roto, Split Auctions, Roto-to-Head, Rotating Divisions, WAR wars, Category Wars, Public Trade Negotiations, If Only, Elimination, Home Team, and Owners & Managers.

Last night, I stumbled upon this hungry Ray Flowers tweet.

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The Highly Custom League series is back with my most ambitious design yet. Previous entries covered 2×2 Roto, Split Auctions, Roto-to-Head, Rotating Divisions, WAR wars, Category Wars, Public Trade Negotiations, If Only, Elimination, and Home Team.

Today we’ll focus on a league that forces owners to choose their partners – and pay for the privilege!

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Last winter, I debuted the Highly Custom League series with nine unique and unusual league designs. Entries in this series covered 2×2 Roto, Split Auctions, Roto-to-Head, Rotating Divisions, WAR wars, Category Wars, Public Trade Negotiations, If Only, and Elimination.

I implemented the Roto-to-Head format in Dynasty To Be Named Later (aka DTBNL, my patron 25-team dynasty league). We used the extensible platform provided by FanTrax to hack it together. While we didn’t have any major upsets, everybody seemed to really enjoy the wrinkle on the standard roto format.

Also via my patrons, we ran an elimination league named Top Tout (Beta). At some point, I’ll post a full breakdown with lessons learned. A second beta season may be required.

Today, we return with the 10th custom league. This one comes courtesy of Ariel Cohen. I’ll let him introduce it.

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On Tuesday, I described the issues us keeper league owners face in handling “dump” trades, using my current AL-Only keeper league as an example of the madness that began about two weeks ago. One commenter suggested I publish a follow-up summarizing some of the best solutions and outlining the pros and cons of each. Since the post did receive some excellent comments, this is that requested follow-up.

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In 2003 as a wee 21-year-old, I founded a standard 12-team mixed redraft league with a live auction. Ever since, I had toyed with the idea of starting a sister keeper format, but always decided against it. I have rarely played in keeper leagues, joining one many years ago and lasting just one year due to quirky rules I wasn’t a fan of, but am now playing a second year in my current keeper league, an AL-Only format. The last two weeks have just reinforced my opinion that a strong keeper league is extremely difficult to establish and run. The problem has always been handling “dump” trades, the term used for the trading of prospects or quality keepers for better high-priced or unkeepable players, with a bottom tier team serving in the dumper role, while a team fighting for a money spot acting as dumpee.

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