Major League Baseball FANTASY OPEN, Regular Season Ended

The Major League Baseball (dot com) Fantasy Open is an alluring game as presented on the red, white and blue site. A careful reading of the rules, or experience earns potential players a slightly different view.

Fantasy baseball, or roto-league baseball has been an activity that has fostered a deeper interest and understanding of the "real" game. Read Sam Walker's book" Fantasyland," if you are willing to be astounded by the passion that fantasy games have engendered. Walker took a year off from his journalism career to run a team with a hired statistician, even a paid astrologer. I'd like to get one of his "Street Walker" tee shirts.

There are many fantasy games that one can pay to join. I've done that many years ago, and did not much like it. MLB, and several other websites allow free play. Most of these sites have auto draft, meaning that, after you sign up, you are assigned a slot in the draft. Unless you are on line at exactly the right time, and with a computer that has a specific software package, your team will be auto-drafted. You can submit a list of preferences, players you just don't want at all, players that are underrated in the published rankings. You can start a team up until week about 14 of the regular season. Week 18 starts the playoffs. This is done so that the whole game, regular season, playoffs, and world series end at the same times as the "real" world series.

The MLB game is simplified by having the players draft a whole real teams pitching staff. Further, if you are smart and do some trading to get more pitching staff on you bench, you can only make substitutions for a whole week. Having the second teer pitching staffs on your bench will keep them off your opponents roster. Further if you have the time to plan, you can have a pitching staff that is facing a week bunch of hitters for the next week.

This set of rules leads to my conclusion that the MLB fantasy open teams that draft a lucky pitching staff will win no matter what any of the other managers do short of collusion which considering the prize money should probably be investigated. There is a "commissioner" system that is supposed to preclude such activities, but that systems is heavily computer based and, I suspect subject to manipulation by skilled nurdnicks. Considering how easy it is to register email addresses, one could easily register several teams in a league under pseudonyms.

I discovered a very simple strategy. Just wait till late in the season to start you teams. The auto draft does not reduce players' rankings when they are on the Disabled list. Start your teams, you are permitted five teams, late in the season. Just as soon as you get your team, ADD and DROP. Drop the "DL" listed players, add the hot players and especially pitching staffs. Set you roster, and look forward to the playoffs.

I don't think I will tell my wife about the $10,000, yet.