Archive for League Design

Earlier this offseason, I kicked off a series about highly custom leagues. This is the third installment. Previous entries covered 2×2 Roto and Split Auctions. Today we’ll dive into a hybrid roto league with head-to-head playoffs. I’ve dubbed it Roto-To-Head which is not a sex act and is a pretty dumb name. Feel free to suggest alternatives!

This format is semi-supported by FanTrax.

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Last week, I kicked off my new offseason series on custom league designs with a 2×2 roto format. It pits quantity against quality. This time around, we’ll shift towards an uncommon draft style that already exists in the fantasy ecosystem: the Split Auction.

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Yesterday, I sat down to write this article only to discover there was another topic I had to cover first. Classic 5×5 Roto is one of the original forms of fantasy sports. And, despite attempts to tinker with the inputs, it remains the king of fantasy baseball.

A common change to the classic 5×5 categories is to swap out pitcher wins for quality starts. Although all agree a quality start doesn’t exactly measure its name – after all, a six inning, three run performance is pretty mediocre – everybody also agrees the stat is less capricious than pitcher wins. This season, Jacob deGrom won 10 games with a 1.70 ERA over 217 innings. He led the league in quality starts. Ryan Yarbrough won 16 games with a 3.91 ERA in 147.1 innings. He only made six starts, none of which were a quality start. Yeah, wins are sloppy.

Despite the flaws with wins, they’ve become vastly preferable to their number one alternative. It’s time to ditch the quality start. Don’t believe me? Behold, a table!
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League design is something I greatly enjoy. In my more innocent days, I believed in using stats that most closely mirrored on field performance. For example, replacing batting average with OPS or using quality starts instead of wins.

Time and math – mostly the math to be honest – taught me that the best fantasy experiences have nothing to do with accurately estimating real world values. Instead, the name of the game is managerial flexibility. Put another way, how many different strategies and tactics can I use and still contend? The top formats like classic 5×5 roto allow for dramatic mid-season pivots. It’s not simply a matter of zigging when others zag, I want the option to zeg, zog, and zug* as needed.

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Over the offseason, I’m going to endeavor to “invent” about 15 leagues – roughly one per week up until March, excluding vacations. This is the first entry in the series. Let’s kick things off with a real mindbender – 2×2 Roto.

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