Highly Custom League: Sacrifices

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.

Design Aesthetic

Draft Type: Auction or Snake

League Type: Redraft or Keeper

Teams: Any Size, preferably no deeper than 14-team mixed

Scoring: Any, 5×5 preferred

Waivers: daily $1,000 FAAB

Trading: On

Compatible Modules: All except WAR wars

I envision two versions of this mode: hardcore and lite. Let’s start with the easier “lite mode.”

Sacrifice Lite

Once a week, teams must cut a player with no corresponding move. This is the “sacrifice.” Sunday makes for a natural choice since most games are during the day. See what happens, choose one player to discard, then submit FAAB bids for whoever you want to replace them on Monday. The cut players will be available to bid upon for Tuesday.

There are a couple important wrinkles lest this become a game about who can sacrifice David Fletcher the most. In lite mode, an owner may not sacrifice the same player twice in a season. This refers only to the Sunday process. Players may otherwise be released, streamed, etc. as normal.

Additionally, any player sacrificed in the previous week is ineligible to be the sacrificed in the following week. Again, they may be cut normally.

To facilitate this, the commissioner should publish a weekly running list of officially cut players. When in the doubt, the list can be referenced to ensure valid moves were made.

In Lite Mode, it is recommended you employ a weekly moves cap – perhaps four moves. This is to make it harder for managers to execute waiver moves specifically to sacrifice unimportant players. Alternately, you can try to impose a one-week roster minimum before a player is eligible to be sacrificed. Most platforms will not include much native support for this. A third option is to restrict waiver action to a weekly FAAB with sacrificed players ineligible to be added.

In the event a manager does not submit a cut, a player will be chosen at random from that roster. It’s a harsh penalty! Make your cuts!

Sacrifice Hardcore

The baseball gods are thirsty gods. Their most hardcore worshipers must make daily sacrifices. The rule-set is otherwise similar to Lite Mode except for four exceptions.

1. Owners may not sacrifice the same player twice in any 30 day period. You can chop Fletcher on Day 1 and Day 31. The commish should continue to track daily sacrifices in a publicly available spreadsheet.

2. Sacrificed players may not be sacrificed again by any team for a period of one week.

3. Managers are given a full inning of nine “strikes” (three-strikes-you’re-out over three batters). A “strike” is simply any time an owner does not make a sacrifice. These can be used strategically or to cover for days when sacrificial duties are forgotten. If a manager records a 10th strike, a player is randomly removed from the roster as the sacrifice. At 15 strikes (or a number of your choice), the roster is locked and all accrued stats are set to zero.

4. There cannot be a moves cap – weekly or otherwise.

In either variation, any managers eliminated from head-to-head playoffs (if relevant) need not participate. Both modes function best as pure redraft although a keeper element could introduce interesting gamesmanship.

The sacrifice modes should pair nicely with most highly custom modules. Personally, I think it would pair especially nicely with Category Wars.