MontanaXVI

I know that Yahoo opened up the Fantasy Baseball leagues and I had not seen a thread here yet so I took the liberty to make a league this year.

The settings were copied over from last season.

I would like to see all the regulars in it, so instead of just posting the information up here for all to join, I would like to have the regulars or those from last year join first then anyone else can fill up the spots.

12 teams max, so I don't think it should be a problem, just send me a pm or an e-mail with your interest and I will send you the league information and password.

I hope everyone keeps up with their teams the entire season, as well as the integrity of the game, we have had a couple of disputes the last couple of years and I hope they aren't the norm.

The only problem I see is the draft time. Sunday March 9, 9:45 AM EDT. It was the best time they had open, I tried to get the Sunday before the season but all it let me choose was 11pm and then it said it wasn't open when I went to finalize the league.

H2H style league with a standard 5x5 scoring system in place. If the league doesn't get enough interest then, oh well see ya next season.

***LEAGUE INFORMATION***
We have 8 right now with MOST of the regulars in, everyone else I have yet to hear from so here is the registration for anyone who wants in, remember it is a 12 team league and we are at 8 so join up fast if interested

***JOIN INFORMATION REMOVED LEAGUE IS FULL***

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pan6467

Let me know if there is an opening. I wanted to play last year but couldn't make the draft.

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I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

MontanaXVI

I don't know if everyone is going to join or not, I believe I sent out a couple of invites on here as well as using the information from last years league, I don't know who all is in or out, as well as who isn't going to do it at all this year.

Whoever was in it last year and has no interest in doing it again, or if I missed sending you an invite PLEASE let me know in the next couple of days or I will open the league up publicly on here for anyone to join in.

Right now myself included we are sitting at 5 teams.

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crewsor

How about sending me the info Montana. I was in it last year, right? SCREAMING EAGLES? Thanks.

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dylanmarsh

I'm back, as always. Of course, my only goal is to beat Guns.

MontanaXVI

I sent a PM for Screaming Eagles, however he has yet to join.

I will send out a PM to Pan above and FLSTF once they join since they did ask in a PM I will post the information up here for anyone to join. The private invites are going slow, even though I know we have a while before the draft I would like to have the league all full and ready to go.

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flstf

I signed up a few minutes ago. I noticed that the league is head to head instead of roto. I would prefer roto but will play either way.

MontanaXVI

Ooops.

I put roto and didn't even look to see that it made it a head to head league, I hope this doesn't take away from anyones interest as I intended it to be a roto league from the start

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crewsor

I'm in. SCREAMING EAGLES again. I prefer the head to head format, so it works for me. Good luck and I look forward to a better season than last year.

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MontanaXVI

Ok, I did transfer settings from last year so that is why the league was H2H to start with, I thought it was roto so, I made an oops post when someone pointed it out to me that it was not roto and I changed it to such.

I am 1000000% fine with a either style league as I thought it was roto until I am reminded of the bet about naming each others team with Donuts and Guns then I recalled it being a H2H league, I know I think it was Pan said he was more in favor of a roto than H2H, but I just royally screwed up, we do H2H every year, sorry for any confusion this caused, I boo boo'd

As you can see above I said from the get go that the draft time may be a problem, I tried to get something for 11pm EDT then it said that wasn't available when I when to finalize the league so this is what we are stuck with, I will be working nights at the time and getting home early in the morning and having to make it for a 9am draft for me with it being EDT so I am kinda ticked too, but it is all I could get at the time.

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crewsor

Hey Montana, did you consider limiting moves? I seem to recall some bitching and acrimony during the playoffs for "pitching and ditching". Now would probably be a good time to address that.

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flstf

I have only played H2H in football. If I understand it correctly the best strategy in H2H baseball is to stack hitting and relief pitching in the draft and use multiple starters from waivers etc..and sacrifice era for wins and SOs. Is this what you mean by pitching and ditching? Isn't this the main reason to play H2H instead of roto?

crewsor

I don't know. All I know is the last couple of years some people complained that by picking up and dumping starters during the playoffs the integrity of the league was being undermined by drastically changing the teams makeup. I didn't do it, but didn't have a problem with it because the league was set up with unlimited roster moves which would seem to make it ok.

I'm just suggesting that if the majority of teams want to prevent it we should have limited roster moves.

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MontanaXVI

Just got in from work, let me settle in for the night and I will get back to you.

Thanks.

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pan6467

What would be cool and maybe truly prevent this while making sure the league owners stay active is a "trade only" rule where you can only go to the F/A list if you have a DL'd player, all other moves have to be in the form of a trade.

I think we'll definitely see some deals then.

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I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

flstf

I don't think roster moves or waiver pickups should be limited. It seems that especially H2H is taylor made for this activity.

http://www.fantasyplayers.com/mlb/st...p?story_id=771

MontanaXVI

Looks as if we may have a bit of "fun" on our hands this season.

I have been in a few leagues where the much debated "pitch and ditch" tactic has been used, and my thoughts on it are as follows.

While it may not be legally against the rules, it imparts an unfairness to the game, almost like one of the unspoken rules that are always talked about. If you are honestly looking to upgrade your team then make all the moves you want, but to merely grab every starter that is in line for a start each day just to pick up the W, K at the expense of ERA and WHIP has just always seemed a bit cheesy to me if you will. Not to mention it has almost always been frowned upon by those who play here in the TFP leagues year in and year out.

There is always going to be the person making moves who will argue his/her point to their adds/drops being valid improvements to their team while others will see it as a cheese tactic, or bogus maneuver.

As in life, there is always going to be a bicker, or argument when you have people of varying philosophies and ideas gathered in one place for a common meeting, and this is true with the fantasy sports scene, one person sees it is a legit move and another sees it as "cheating".

I guess it is pretty much up to me as the commish with everyone's suggestions to help guide me in what to do about this situation.

There is no way that I know of on Yahoo! to set up the transactions like a trade system, this is a no go unless there is a hidden setting somewhere......the more I look at the post mentioning this above I think it is misunderstood on Pan's part, in order to pick someone up for this one start you would have to drop someone all moves are like this unless of course as you mentioned you have a player on the DL.

I have come up with a couple of solutions but I don't know how they would/could work out.

1. Look at how many weeks the season is, come up with a "fair" number in my mind say....5...transactions per week and set the maximum transaction number to 5 X number of weeks. This way you are allowed to make moves to your team that you think may better you, however, you burn up 20 moves in 2 weeks on pitch and ditch it really hurts you in the long run so look long and hard and see if it is really worth it to pick up a guy for one start?

2. Add a stat category to batters and pitchers, if you add the L stat for a P then you are always looking for who is going to make the best start for you each time out, not just looking for a W. If there is a chance I might get a W but take a hit in L, WHIP, and ERA I might think twice about the move...get one stat and lose 3 isn't a sound move in my eyes, and to make it even on the other side add a 6th stat for hitters, so instead of a 5x5 we are looking at a 6x6 league instead?

3. Come playoff time rosters are locked, preventing someone from making pickups and drops unless an injury or something I could make the move manually for the team? I know MANY football leagues do just this, you get locked come playoff time and you have to ride out with whatever team you have at the time.

I am open for any other suggestions, or if you see something above that catches your eye then by all means PLEASE let me know. As of right now I am leaning towards coming up with my own fair number of moves per week and setting the max for a season at that number X number of weeks.

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djtestudo

I was actually going to suggest the locked playoff rosters idea. Kind of like how the major-league teams have to set their rosters by September 1, barring injury.

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flstf

It seems to me that the primary reason to play H2H is to give weaker teams a chance to win by making up quality with quantity via wavers. If you have great pitching you are not likely to drop them to pick up waiver pitchers. Since you would not be willing to drop your aces I can see why you would want to limit others from using waivers so you could beat them every week. Only weaker teams will probably do this.

If you can't use waivers to set strategy each week then what is the point of playing H2H instead of roto? Why is it unfair if everyone has the ability to use the same strategy? I might feel differently if after the draft I wind up with the best pitchers and want to prevent you guys making many roster moves.

MontanaXVI

I think on this one we are just going to play out the season and see how goes it.

It has always been a common mindset in the TFP leagues that the pitch and ditch isn't a tactic that we employ in the league. Every year someone makes moves that are thought of as in the spirit of this maneuver and I guess just like every year we will deal with it when it happens.

I still might lock the rosters once the playoffs start though.

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crewsor

Locking the roster for the playoffs would be fine as long as you give some advance notice so we can prepare accordingly.

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flstf

I have never played H2H Baseball before so I started looking into what strategy to use. I can see that it requires daily attention to your lineup. One of the best articles on strategy I have come across is:

http://sports.yahoo.com/fantasy/mlb/...trategy_032707

It appears that each team you play every week should be evaluated and strategy set up accordingly. If you are playing against a streamer then there are ways to beat them at their own game. I look forward to learning more about H2H fantasy baseball as it seems to require a lot more skill than just assembling a good team in roto leagues.

cameroncrazy822

I'm drafting Roger Clemens 1st... but only if he continues to "NOT" take steroids or HGH. L

Jadey

I'm back in (Crazy Diamonds) and hoping to do better than last year.

I do kind of like the idea of locking the rosters once the playoffs start. Even if everyone is in agreement that the pitch and ditch tactic will not be employed there always seems to be some disagreement about what that threshold is. If you pick a guy up and keep him for over a week before dumping him is that okay, two weeks, a month? It's just so hard to police and then if you set a limit on the number of roster moves then what about the guy that gets hit with real bad luck. I was in a basketball league last year and the moves were set at 25. I was pretty good going into the last few weeks until I had players getting hurt, players being rested before the playoffs, and teams (seemingly) tanking for a better draft position (Like the Atlanta Hawks) and I made about 10 moves the last 2 rounds of the playoffs and still had to a couple of players sitting on my roster not playing.

MontanaXVI

Looking at your schedule on the league home page you can see there is 22 weeks in the season.

I say week 23 teams are locked from making transactions. I just don't know exactly how to deal with injuries though. Let someone make a move if someone gets hurt, or just ride with what you got?

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flstf

Having never played H2H baseball before, I don't understand. If you are playing against a team that is streaming players and it is such a good strategy then what is to stop you from doing the same thing? I thought that ESPN and Rotoworld listed the pitchers who will have 2 starts in the coming week just so owners will know which ones to pick up. There are certain players who are undroppable so you can't drop really good players to waivers.

Like Jadey said, if you get to the playoffs and have a lot of players whose club is tanking for a better draft position or resting starters for the post season, you might as well forfit if you can't stream.

Can you explain why streaming is a strategy that TFP leagues do not like to employ?

MontanaXVI

You call it streaming, I call it pitch and ditch. Both different names for something that we have, in the past, as a collective whole looked down upon. I thought I stated in a post above that while technically it may not be against any rules per say it is just something we don't think much of as a strategy so it is not something we use in these leagues.

It looks like in 2005 when you did the league before for some reason it was a roto league, but has been H2H before and since, how you managed one season it wasn't a H2H league is beyond me.

Pointing back to Jadey myself you can also see they say that even if we all agree it isn't a tactic that will be used everyone will have a different idea of what an acceptable level of moves is.

To sum up, can I explain why the TFP leagues don't like it? No, I really can't it is just something that amazingly we all pretty much agree is a cheese tactic for whatever reason.

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DDDDave

I'll back Montana up on this one. I think it is cheesy and has been discussed at length in TFP leagues before. It kind of violates 'the spirit of the game'. I look at it like regular baseball. You would not, and practically, could not, drop a pitcher just because he has one start scheduled in a week and pick up another one because he has two. Then the next week you drop him and pick up the one you dropped earlier. The size of the rosters allows you to stockpile enough pitchers to have plenty of starts throughout the week. What happens is in the final weeks of the season, active managers start adding and dropping their pitchers literally everyday. It does as has been stated - pad the K and possibly wins and sacrifices ERA, WHIP. Montana, you're idea of adding a negative stat for losses would sort of work but then you would give up one stat (losses) to increase two (wins,K's). I like the gentleman's agreement that there be no 'pitch and ditch' and that the commissioner be the arbiter of what is too much. Everyone just wants a fair game and there has never been an attempt to not allow someone to improve their team. Just MVHO.


Oh, and don't be hating on my Rays. We will be very much improved this year. We have almost doubled our payroll and our bullpen will be much better. We lost 12 games last year when leading going into the 9th. Ouch.

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Serpent

I'll play again this year, even though i stunk it up again last year.. team newb ftw.

pan6467

To me fantasy baseball should be like owning a real team. You draft the best team you can and trade around if needed. Going into F/A to pick up the hot players or in H2H games to help your stats by wins or whatever, is cheap. To me it shows you didn't have faith in the team you drafted.

I also think it creates isolationism and takes away a lot of the fun that is trades and shit talk. The biggest problem is the majority, maybe even 90% may agree with that, but once the season starts and 1 person starts the dumping and picking up everyone else will just to keep up.

But that's just my 2 cents.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

MontanaXVI

I disagree. That is the role of the commissioner to step in and call it off, be it through locking a team for the remainder of the week, or longer if needed. I would hope everyone trusts me to be fair in my ruling if I suspect someone to be doing a pitch and ditch tactic and I won't be one to rush to a snap judgment just because someone made a move to help their team.

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flstf

In roto baseball I usually make about 30 to 50 moves/pickups usually fishing for the next closer or good starter. If they don't pitch well on their next game I'll sometimes drop them right away. The last time we played in the same roto league I had about 40 moves, Balco 34, Screaming Eagles 44 and Donuts 66. A lot depends on how good your team is after the draft. I guess it will not be much different in H2H.

Mr Scorcex

I (Guns) hope we can agree that not picking up FA's off the waiver wire would be ridiculous. I agree with the pitch and ditch banning, but I sincerely hope that picking up a promising undrafted rookie or dropping a slumping vet wouldn't be looked down upon in our league. There should be a reasonable level of picking up FA's. Kinda like that definition of obscenity, we'll know pitching and ditching when we see it, and I trust the commish to follow up on it.

That said, flstf, I think it will be different in an H2H league. While picking up a pitcher with the intention of only using him for only one start is the definition of streaming/pitching and ditching, you're still going to have to be careful about dumping a pitcher after one bad start.

MontanaXVI

Everyone is starting to walk on eggshells on this.

FA (free agent) moves are allowed and encouraged, sticking with the team you draft is insane and more difficult than I want to even try. I am not going to be going over every transaction made in the league with a fine tooth comb, it is up to ALL OF US, to use discretion when making their moves. Obviously the can't cut list comes into play, so we don't have to worry about someone dropping Johan Santana for a 3 start guy one week. Yet at the same time if someone drops say Joe Borowski for an SP and that SP gets horribly shelled in the start I don't think anyone would have an issue with that person dropping said SP to get someone else, however, if I see someone on a weekly basis making continual P moves that will red flag to me that something is up.

At this point I think everyone knows that this tactic will NOT be tolerated and I really don't see it being a problem. We have already spent WAY too much time worrying about this when we need to be getting cheat sheets and player rankings done up.

Also I will state again, just for the record here that the teams WILL be locked come playoff time. I think this will add an interesting twist to the playoffs, also I will be watching for fire sales in the last weeks of the season so don't think you can drop everyone if you don't make the playoffs to help someone else out.

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Serpent

Dang i guess i missed the join information, thought it was a pm, oh well.

flstf

I advocated allowing unlimited moves including pitch and ditch even during the playoffs but it seems the majority felt otherwise so I have been careful to not violate this rule. If we changed our position on this I did not get the message. Since the playoffs began I have added no pitchers and dropped one. As an example Crazy Diamonds has made the following playoff pitcher moves. Frankly I think he is doing well especially since I am currently getting whopped and I suggest we drop the "frozen playoff team" concept next year. Maybe I'm just trying to justify having the best record and winding up in fourth place.

Sep 24 9:10am Joey Devine (Oak - RP) Add Free Agents Crazy Diamonds jadey52807
Sep 24 9:10am Adam Wainwright (StL - SP) Drop Crazy Diamonds Waivers jadey52807
Sep 23 11:40am Adam Wainwright (StL - SP) Add Free Agents Crazy Diamonds jadey52807
Sep 23 11:40am Troy Percival (TB - RP) Drop Crazy Diamonds Waivers jadey52807
Sep 22 9:24am Kyle Lohse (StL - SP) Add Free Agents Crazy Diamonds jadey52807
Sep 22 9:24am Matt Garza (TB - SP) Drop Crazy Diamonds Waivers jadey52807
Sep 21 11:47am Troy Percival (TB - RP) Add Free Agents Crazy Diamonds jadey52807
Sep 21 11:47am Sean Gallagher (Oak - SP,RP) Drop Crazy Diamonds Waivers jadey52807
Sep 20 2:04pm Sean Gallagher (Oak - SP,RP) Add Free Agents Crazy Diamonds jadey52807
Sep 18 9:12am Max Scherzer (Ari - SP,RP) Add Free Agents Crazy Diamonds jadey52807
Sep 18 9:12am Scott Baker (Min - SP) Drop Crazy Diamonds Waivers jadey52807
Sep 17 9:32am Jesse Litsch (Tor - SP) Add Free Agents Crazy Diamonds jadey52807
Sep 17 9:32am Jamie Moyer (Phi - SP) Drop Crazy Diamonds Waivers jadey52807
Sep 15 9:41am Justin DuchschererDL (Oak - SP,RP) Drop Crazy Diamonds Waivers jadey52807
Sep 14 10:45pm Jamie Moyer (Phi - SP) Add Free Agents Crazy Diamonds jadey52807
Sep 14 10:45pm Glen Perkins (Min - SP,RP) Drop Crazy Diamonds Waivers jadey52807
Sep 11 12:54pm Matt Lindstrom (Fla - RP) Add Free Agents Crazy Diamonds jadey52807
Sep 11 12:54pm Jamie Moyer (Phi - SP) Drop Crazy Diamonds Waivers jadey52807
Sep 10 9:14am Gil Meche (KC - SP) Add Free Agents Crazy Diamonds jadey52807
Sep 10 9:14am Jeff Suppan (Mil - SP) Drop Crazy Diamonds Waivers jadey52807
Sep 8 9:33am Zach Miner (Det - SP,RP) Drop Crazy Diamonds Waivers jadey52807
Sep 6 1:03pm Zach Miner (Det - SP,RP) Add Free Agents Crazy Diamonds jadey52807
Sep 4 10:27am Dan Wheeler (TB - RP) Drop Crazy Diamonds Waivers jadey52807

MontanaXVI

You know, I was just looking at his team and thinking that same thing myself. Looking at these playoffs with today's drop of Wainwright who will get his stats counted and not take effect until tomorrow that makes the 4th P that has been on his team in this last week +, obvious abuse of the "gentleman's rule" that has been in effect. I know there are some moves that were made and that P is still on the roster, but it looks to me that if that player did not get a W or a decent stat line they were dumped for someone else immediately.

I totally forgot all about this thread and even the locking of the rosters come playoff time, I wish someone had brought this up sooner. Again I am really sorry about not locking them like I said I would.

I will take the steps and lock his roster, but with just a couple of days left in the season it would be meaningless at this point I think.

I would like to apologize again.

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