Fantasy Baseball Season: Using the Proper Settings

It seems like just yesterday that the Philadelphia Phillies were carrying the World Series trophy, but a new season is already near, as spring training has started and the baseball bats are getting warmed up! This, of course, means that it is time for Fantasy Baseball! Nearly every hardcore baseball fan between the ages of 15 and 65 is anxiously anticipating a fun-filled fantasy season and is already making a list of who they want to select in the first round of their drafts. Most fantasy players already have compiled pages and pages of rankings and lists in preparation for their drafts . . . but this is all for not if you are in a badly managed league with unsatisfactory scoring settings. If you are looking to create a league and are not sure what settings to use, then your best bet is to use the following format:

-USE THE "HEAD TO HEAD" weekly style instead of the boring Roto league style. If you are in a roto league, you can find yourself out of the hunt very quickly if you have a slow start. It is much more difficult to dig yourself out of the cellar in roto than it is in head-to-head. In head-to-head, you can pull two weeks in a row where you go 8-2 and 7-3, and suddenly, you're right back in the thick of things. Plus, in head-to-head, you face a new opponent every single week, which always make things more interesting and entertaining, especially if you have certain friends that you like to trash talk with during your matchups. And it's always nice to have a new "fresh and starting over" feeling every single Monday, as opposed to roto, where it is one steady, long, and boring challenge. Roto leagues have no sex appeal.

-SCORING SYSTEM: For scoring, use ten categories. You don't want one area to dominate the other, so make sure everything is even by using five categories for offense and five categories for pitching. The recommended categories for offense are Runs Scored; Runs Batted In; Homeruns, Stolen Bases, and On Base Percentage. Some will argue that they prefer Batting Average over On Base Percentage, but the problem with batting averages is that sometimes players like Ryan Howard, who are feared by all pitchers, will end a game by going 0 for 1 with 4 intentional walks. That means he got on base 80% of the time, which is extremely impressive, but if you use batting average instead of OBP, he gets no credit at all for reaching base. Why use a category that punishes a batter for getting intentionally walked??

For pitching, use Wins, Strikeouts, Saves, E.R.A., and W.H.I.P. Make sure to use a "minimum innings pitched" format or else somebody can easily win the ERA and WHIP categories with just one scoreless inning pitched by a reliever. A good number to use for the minimum per week is 30 innings, which is the equivalent of about 4 or 5 starts and a couple of relief appearances. If a player does not reach the minimum innings pitched for a certain week, then he/she will automatically lose all five pitching categories.

TRADES: Trades are fun, but unfortunately, the majority of competitive fantasy players never see eye to eye with the fairness of trades. Trades bring more anger and jealousy than anything else and can very easily cause players to drop out of the league or just not care anymore because they think the league is being run unfairly. With this being said, just go ahead and do away with trades. It is much more satisfying to win a fantasy league on pure drafting skills and strategic free agent pickups than it is to win because of a sketchy trade with a last place team right before the playoffs start.

FREE AGENT PICKUPS: Injuries happen quite often in baseball, so you will need to use a good amount of free agent pickups. Some commissioners enforce a maximum of 50 free agent pickups per season, which is usually enough; however, setting a maximum for the season is really not necessary. But what is necessary, is that you set a maximum on a WEEKLY status. Only allow players to pick up a max of 3 to 5 players per week, otherwise, you may have some unethical players that may drop and pick up a ton of pitchers one week in order to pick up cheap victories in the Wins and Strikeouts categories.

ROSTER: Your starting lineup should consist of a catcher, 1^st baseman, 2^nd baseman, 3^rd baseman, shortstop, 3 outfielders, 2 utility hitters, 4 starting pitchers, 1 relief pitcher, 2 utility pitchers, and 12 bench spots. In addition, set up 5 DL spots, as they will be needed all throughout the season! Sometimes 5 is not even enough, so feel free to increase that number to 7 or 8.

PLAYOFFS: If you are in a typical 12-team league, don't allow more than half of the teams to make the playoffs. Use either a 4- or 6-team playoff format. Some commissioners allow up to 8 or 10 players to make the playoffs, which makes that long regular season almost pointless, doesn't it?

The last tip for setting up a superior fantasy baseball league is to join a league that has plenty of smack talk options! Winning is fun, but rubbing it in is even better!

Play Ball!