ESPN Fantasy League Baseball

Post by **B. Stinson** » Sat Mar 27, 2010 4:56 pm

Draft is complete!

Check the recap Here.

or each team's draft Here.

I'm disappointed I didn't get my Roy Halliday. But I did get Chase Utley, so that's good.

Post by **McQwak** » Sat Mar 27, 2010 8:06 pm

I drafted fairly well. My goal was to get a good starting pitcher and 1B. Unfortunatelly I ended with two superb SPs and not so good 1B.
Just one Yankee and one Met in my team

and three Philies

Top pitcher Tim Lincecum is now Quarryman with last season's ERA 2.48. He's listed day-to-day so I'm not sure he'll be ready from the beginning.

Let's get it started

Post by **Manimal** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 11:17 am

How did I fare in the draft? I'm no expert on MLB, but it seems my team is heavy on the pitchers. What pitching positions do we get points from? All eight?

Post by **B. Stinson** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 5:28 pm

Manimal wrote:How did I fare in the draft? I'm no expert on MLB, but it seems my team is heavy on the pitchers. What pitching positions do we get points from? All eight?

You've got Shane Victorino in the outfield, he's a great player. Probably the best outfielder here in Philadelphia.

As for your pitching staff, I'd say you've nailed it.

Cliff Lee, Justin Verlander, CC Sabathia: all among the league's top pitchers. And damnit! Roy Halliday!!

Arguably the best pitcher in the league.

On the topic of scoring, it appears that all eight pitchers are eligible to score points each night. But with the way pitching works in baseball, many of your eight pitchers may not play on a given night if it's not their turn in the rotation. In an entire week, you may get only a couple games from each Starting Pitcher (SP), with maybe a handful of innings from each of your Relief Pitchers (RP).

This is due to the "pitching rotation". Teams have about five or six starting pitchers on their roster, and they start them according to the "rotation", usually a "five-man rotation". Pitcher 1 starts tonight, #2 starts tomorrow night, #3 the next night, etc. etc.

It's like if NHL goalies only had the stamina to play about 40 minutes per night, and then needed a lot of time to rest. As you can imagine, teams wouldn't survive starting a good goalie one night, then relying on the backup for the next five nights it takes the starter to rest. So instead, they would employ about five starters on the roster, with maybe two or three backups. Each night a new starter would start the game, play his maximum 40 or 50 minutes before he's too tired to continue, then they'd send in one of the backups to finish the game.

Baseball is the same deal - Starting Pitchers are like the #1 goalies, and Relief Pitchers are like the backups who come in to finish off a game when the starter is too worn down to finish it himself.

Post by **Manimal** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 10:44 pm

Thanks for clearing that up! Looking forward to the season

Post by **McQwak** » Mon Mar 29, 2010 10:52 am

B. Stinson wrote:So, what kind of championship trophy do you guys want to go with?... Single Cup-style trophy, or a European/Olympic style medal system? If a single cup, any preference for color: Gold, Silver, or Bronze?

I'd take gold

I don't know. Single Cup should be acceptable since it's american style and american game

And as for 7 innings pitched rule: isn't it too much? We may end with only one of our 8 pithers is eligible to score points. Don't know why this rule was implemented, though.

We'll see it's pros and cons when the season starts.

Post by **B. Stinson** » Mon Mar 29, 2010 4:49 pm

The reason for the 7 innings minimum is to make sure the ERA and WHIP are sufficiently "populated". The reason they need to be sufficiently "populated" is because they're both averages, and averages can be seriously skewed without enough data being calculated.

For example, say you start only one of your fantasy pitchers. He's a relief pitcher, and plays only 1 inning in real-life. In that 1 inning, he allows 0 runs, and no hits or walks. The 0 runs allowed will give him, and your fantasy team, a perfect 0.00 ERA, and the 0 walks or hits will give him, and your fantasy team, a perfect 0.00 WHIP (Walks + Hits per Inning Pitched).

Now, since your team has a perfect ERA and WHIP, you can bench all of your pitchers for the rest of the week, and it will be impossible for your opponent to beat you in those stats. The best he could do is tie them if he's lucky.

So to prevent this, ESPN requires our teams to meet at least 7 innings pitched, or else our ERA and WHIP will not count for that week.

In fact, this is exactly the deficiency in our hockey league right now. For whatever reason, ESPN doesn't provide any rule like this for hockey... so the same trick can be applied to goalies. One of your goalies gets a shutout, and happens to be the only goalie you've played so-far. His GAA will be a perfect 0.00, with a perfect 100% save percentage. All you have to do then is not play any more goalies for the week, and your opponent can do nothing more than tie you in those two stats.

Post by **B. Stinson** » Sun Apr 04, 2010 3:50 am

It's here!

Spring Training is over, and Opening Night is less than 24 hours away. The season opens tomorrow night at 8:05 ET when the Red Sox host the Yankees at Fenway.

Starting for the Yankees will be CC Sabathia; Josh Beckett will be in for Boston.

eric1985 · Post by **eric1985** » Sun Apr 04, 2010 4:31 pm

Nice. Lets get in on!!

Post by **Manimal** » Mon Apr 05, 2010 3:37 pm

Hey commish'!
Why isn't there a tie-breaker set?
I'd vote for home-runs

Post by **McQwak** » Tue Apr 06, 2010 3:34 pm

So our acquisitions limit is the standard one? Do we use these? 10 acquisitions per week?

Post by **McQwak** » Wed Apr 07, 2010 1:11 pm

My whole team will be in action today

Current matchup score 8-2-0 looks good, doesn't it, Eric?

eric1985 · Post by **eric1985** » Wed Apr 07, 2010 5:55 pm

Post by **B. Stinson** » Wed Apr 07, 2010 7:20 pm

Manimal wrote:Hey commish'!
Why isn't there a tie-breaker set?
I'd vote for home-runs

ESPN's baseball appears to be a bit deficient in this area for some reason. Their only options for match-up tie-breaking is "Home team wins" or nothing. The default is 'nothing', and match-ups will simply end in a tie. I left it there because I thought that would be more deserving than having one team lose a whole match-up simply because they're the theoretical away team.

McQwak wrote: So our acquisitions limit is the standard one? Do we use these? 10 acquisitions per week?

Correct, our acquisition limit is set at default. ESPN is including an extra day in this week (giving us 8 days, instead of the standard 7), so we're at a limit of 11 acquisitions this week. For the following weeks it'll go down to the standard 10 acquisitions.

Post by **McQwak** » Wed Apr 07, 2010 7:58 pm

B. Stinson wrote:
Manimal wrote:Hey commish'!
Why isn't there a tie-breaker set?
I'd vote for home-runs
ESPN's baseball appears to be a bit deficient in this area for some reason. Their only options for match-up tie-breaking is "Home team wins" or nothing. The default is 'nothing', and match-ups will simply end in a tie. I left it there because I thought that would be more deserving than having one team lose a whole match-up simply because they're the theoretical away team.

That's good decision.

Post by **B. Stinson** » Thu Apr 08, 2010 4:15 am

Just a heads up:

You guys may notice a "rule change" listed on the league home page. All I did was add a trade review period like most fantasy leagues have. This won't affect anything other giving the commissioner the power to accept or reject trades before they really go through. But don't worry, I accept everything as long as the two managers agree on the deal, and it's not a blatantly horrifyingly bad deal.

Post by **McQwak** » Fri Apr 16, 2010 2:07 pm

Why do we play 21 H2H matchups in season? 4 matchups x 5 teams = 20 total

There seems to be repetition of the first matchup in the end.

Post by **B. Stinson** » Fri Apr 16, 2010 8:20 pm

McQwak wrote:Why do we play 21 H2H matchups in season? 4 matchups x 5 teams = 20 total There seems to be repetition of the first matchup in the end.

21 is the default. But great catch, 'cause 21 is definitely an ugly number for a six-team league.

I've bumped us down to 20 weeks to eliminate that oddball week at the end, which will give us an even four games vs. each team.

Good work, McQwak.

Post by **B. Stinson** » Tue Apr 27, 2010 2:57 am

So I see corinthian decided to steal my claim to 1st place. I think I'll have to get my revenge in our next series.

Post by **McQwak** » Tue Apr 27, 2010 10:34 am

Interesting Philadelphia rivals match this week

Post by **McQwak** » Wed May 12, 2010 9:08 am

Great, my Brandon Morrow recorded ERA 32.40!!!

He pitched only 1.2 innings and allowed six runs, three hits and six walks while recording four strikeouts.
I'm going to drop him immediatelly.

Post by **McQwak** » Tue May 18, 2010 2:26 pm

What does "GB" mean in this record:

Record: 28-28-4
Standing: 3rd (6.5 GB)

bruins72 · Post by **bruins72** » Tue May 18, 2010 3:11 pm

GB is Games Back. I believe it's how many games back they are from 1st place.

Post by **McQwak** » Mon May 24, 2010 12:41 pm

Wow, what a match between Sinful Dawn and Philadelphia Kalas, 10-0-0

Erik is really kicking our ases

eric1985 · Post by **eric1985** » Tue May 25, 2010 1:55 am

Woot woot for me

. Heres hope it sticks