Convincing a League to Use OBP

by
February 10, 2010

Now is the beautiful time of year that leagues are beginning to form. Commissioners are emailing participants to confirm interest, and discuss possible rule changes for the upcoming season. This is the process that is taking place in a league I participate in, and I am creating quite a stir.

A group of us in the league are considered to be the “active” owners who constantly check rosters, scour the waiver wire, and always show up at our online draft. The rest of the league is considered to be the “casual” owners who just want to have some fun. We “active” owners were discussing some possible changes in the rules, and I submitted a proposal to switch the league from batting average to OBP. All of the active owners thought OBP was superior to AVG, but two of them turned it down on the grounds that it would handicap the casual players even more than they already are.

Going into a full league vote sometime later in the week, the voting is set at 2-2. So, now it is down to the rest of the league to push OBP through and make me happy in the process.

Chances are, someone reading this is wondering why a league would want to complicate things and switch to OBP, or are thinking about convincing their league to do the same. Here are some simple arguments as to why a league should adopt OBP:

1. When a player reaches base, I want credit for it. It really is a simple concept. I cannot tell you how many 0-2 games it seems I had from Manny last year, where I received no credit for him reaching base in his other trips to the plate.

2. The player is helping his team by reaching first base, so why shouldn’t he help mine? Again, a very simple and straightforward idea, but some still cannot wrap their head around it.

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The only argument I have heard against changing a league to OBP is that the casual players would have problems because the players rankings being used by the draft site do not change, leaving some players vastly overvalued. My argument against that idea is simple: Deal with it. Show up to the draft and do a small bit of research and there will be no issues.

Now, I want to hear from you, the reader. Have any of you recently convinced a league to switch to OBP? If so, how did it go? I believe an OBP league is utterly superior to an AVG league, but getting most to switch over will be a long struggle that will ultimately ruin some leagues due to conflict.





 

Zach is the creator and co-author of RotoGraphs' Roto Riteup series, and RotoGraphs' second-longest tenured writer. You can follow him on twitter.

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Rudy Gamble
15 years ago

Zach –
I think you’re right on merit – even luddites are coming around to OBP is superior to AVG. But as someone who plays in several leagues (and blogs about fantasy), moving from AVG to OBP is a pain in the butt. It’s a pain to plan for multiple drafts where each draft has different rules. Yahoo still has their ridiculously thin rosters (3 OF in 10 team MLB leagues!), people are playing anywhere from 8-20 team leagues, and there is the AL vs. NL vs MLB differences. Not to mention points vs. H2H vs. roto.

Standard 5×5 seems like the only constant. Give me one constant…

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