Archive for League Design

You might know me as the streaming guy. I certainly endeavor to be known as the streaming guy. And so, it might come as something of a surprise to find me writing a post against streaming. First, let’s back up a step.

What is streaming? In short, it’s the practice of using the waiver wire to extend the size of your bench. Instead of sitting on Fernando Tatis with the last roster spot, we can stream to use Brad Keller versus the Tigers, Shin-Soo Choo leading off versus Mike Leake, and Craig Stammen after Kirby Yates pitched back-to-back days. Make enough of these marginal upgrades over the course of a season, and you should be sitting pretty. It’s also a great way to find a Max Muncy before your rivals – assuming you know to not immediately cut him.

Clearly, this is a strategy for an active owner. Many fantasy players prefer to take a chiller approach to roster management. Scrounging can be tedious. Some would rather draft a team and make only a few changes. To these owners, streaming is the devil – it confers an advantage to their rivals that can only be matched by a larger investment of time.

This post is for these owners. Today, we’re going to discuss how to design good non-streaming leagues.

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A few years ago I posted an article about designing fantasy league incentives.  While the popularity of customized, add-on incentives is hard to measure across the fantasy community, it’s clear that leagues conceptually understand the potential value of features and rewards that attempt to keep owners engaged over the course of a long baseball season.  In the standard winner-takes-all format of many points leagues, commissioners are often left to mitigate the wreckage of AWOL owners that sell off and check out early, so carrots, even small ones, can help in cross-checking drastic, standings-shaking transactions if designed thoughtfully. But designing the right league incentives is easier said than done because owners are motivated by different values.

The purpose of this article is for you, the reader, to help me design the right incentive structure for the very first 20 team Ottoneu league (more on this soon), an exciting experiment that will dramatically alter the traditional economic model that serves as the foundation of standard 12 team Ottoneu leagues. Your feedback will be critical to building a league that lasts, but the discussion will hopefully be a helpful reference for others attempting to structure leagues that are as engaging as possible.

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Today’s post shall cover three things in a rather perfunctory nature. Intro complete.

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With draft season kicking into full gear, this may be the last highly custom league I highlight this winter. Today we’re here to talk about elimination leagues including my own Top Tout Beta. Previous entries in this series covered 2×2 Roto, Split Auctions, Roto-to-Head, Rotating Divisions, WAR wars, Category Wars, Public Trade Negotiations, and If Only.

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A couple weeks back, I unveiled my Public Trade Negotiations format. It’s begging to be included as a module in a league that encourages trading. But it’s rather heavy handed to simply say: thou shalt make trades. Instead, the league design should be such that certain resources are only available via your rivals. By George, I’ve got it!

Previous entries in this series covered 2×2 Roto, Split Auctions, Roto-to-Head, Rotating Divisions, WAR wars, Category Wars, and Public Trade Negotiations.

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Welcome back to the Highly Custom League series. Today marks the seventh installment, one that was teased in the comments of the last post. It’s Public Trade Negotiations! Previous entries covered 2×2 Roto, Split Auctions, Roto-to-Head, Rotating Divisions, WAR wars, and Category Wars.

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Hey there! We’ve had a bit of a layoff in our Highly Custom League series. We return today with the sixth installment – Category Wars. Previous entries covered 2×2 Roto, Split Auctions, Roto-to-Head, Rotating Divisions, and WAR wars.

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This is the fifth installment of the Highly Custom League series. Previous entries covered 2×2 Roto, Split Auctions, Roto-to-Head, and Rotating Divisions. Today we’ll discuss a format I once tested three or four seasons ago.

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A good dynasty league requires a constitution – a set of rules and clauses to govern the league above and beyond those stipulated by your fantasy vendor of choice. I recently designed such a league which I named Dynasty To Be Named Later or DTBNL for short. The constitution – a 1,800 word whopper – includes every custom rule plus just about anything from the FanTrax rule page I thought might be the slightest bit important to know.

Today’s post has two purposes. First, to enumerate certain details that must be included in a successful constitution. Second, to highlight some of the custom rules I’ve baked into this particular dynasty league.

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Earlier this offseason, I began a series about highly custom leagues. This is the fourth installment. Previous entries covered 2×2 Roto, Split Auctions, and Roto-to-Head. Today we’ll dive into a fresh innovation called Rotating Divisions. It’s exactly what it sounds like.

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