DVDTalk REAL league disussion - draft setup

[~~ PAL ~~]

There were enough people expressing interest in participating in the REAL league earlier, so I went ahead and created a custom league at Yahoo!. Here's the basic information:

League setting:

League ID#: 311597
League Name: DVDTalk REAL League
Password: dvdreal
Draft Type: Offline Draft

Max Teams: 12
Scoring Type: Head-to-Head
Player Universe: All baseball
Max Moves: 40
Max Trades: No maximum
Trade Reject Time: 2
Trade End Date: August 22, 2004
Waiver Time: 2 days
Can't Cut List Provider: Yahoo! Sports
Trade Review: Commissioner
Post Draft Players: Follow Waiver Rules
Min Innings Pitched: 14
Weekly Deadline: Daily - Tomorrow
Start Scoring on: Week 1

Roster Positions: C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, OF, OF, OF, Util, Util, SP, SP, SP, SP, RP, RP, RP, BN, BN, BN, BN, BN, BN, BN, BN, DL, DL, DL, DL, DL

Stat Categories: R, HR, RBI, SB, K, AVG, OPS, W, SV, BB, K, HLD, ERA, WHIP

Basically, the stat catagories were identical to last year's real leagues, seven each in hitting and pitching. Each team will have 25 roster spots. As before, each team will have an entire MLB roster at the manager/coach's disposal. You are allowed to leave your own team players in the waiver pool, and move them in and out of your roster as you please. The following guidelines were edited from last year's real league rules:

TEAM DRAFT
Once there are 12 teams, a team draft will be held. The draft order is random. Each owner picks an entire MLB team. Any trade in the team picks is subject to Commisioner approval.

EXPANSION DRAFT
The expansion draft works like this. After the team draft, the 12 teams will be put in order based on their 2003 records. Worst record has first pick, then the next worse, and so on. There will be two rounds in this draft. Each round is 12-1 (based on record). So each team will be able to pick up a maximum of 6 players. You only get 6 players, whether or not they are on the DL makes no difference.

Player draft picks CAN BE TRADED for either players or draft picks. Any combination is OK, 2 picks for 1 pick, 2 picks for 1 player. Draft pick trades must be posted and approved by the Commisioner before they go through.

PLAYER CALL UPS
If a player is called up during the season he belongs to only that team. The team owner has the option of claiming him at any time.

MLB TRADES
If a MLB trade occurs, it has no effect on us, unless the player traded to your team is on the waiver wire. If that is the case, you will have the option of picking up that player at any time after the trade. If the player traded is on another team, he stays there.

FANTASY TRADES
Teams in the league can start trading after the Team draft. If a trade is proposed and accepted it has a 2 day hold period. If 3 owners dispute the trade, the league must vote whether or not the trade goes through. If 60% (6 of the 10) of the owners (excluding the 2 involved) oppose the trade then I will veto it. If a trade has less than 3 disputes after 2 days, it will go through.

DISABLED LIST
If someone on your team gets hurt, you can pick up players that belong on your team only. Usually if someone goes on the DL, the team will call someone up. So when Yahoo adds them, you have the option of doing the same.

PLAYERS ON WAIVERS
Any player on waivers that is on your team belongs to you and only you. They can be picked up by your team at any time. Unpicked team’s un-drafted players are off limits, they can not be picked up at any time. If you drop a player that you acquired via trade or the expansion draft, that player is locked and no one can pick him up.

CLARIFICATIONS
1. If a player who is originally part of a drafted team is traded, the player remains the property of the original team, regardless of whether the he is actively on the original team’s roster or on the waiver wire. No other team may pick up the traded player under any circumstance.

2. A few of the ultra powerful teams like the Yankees or the Red Sox will not be eligible for the team draft. Instead, the players from these teams will become available in the supplemental draft. Exactly how many teams are exluded from team drafts in this fashion will be discussed and agree upon by the majority.

[twikoff]

"Real" Fantasy League :hscratch:

[DarkElf]

Originally posted by twikoff
"Real" Fantasy League :hscratch:

It's an interesting approach to fantasy baseball, where you're essentially the fantasy GM and manager of a real MLB team. You pick a team and you get every player in that organization. Then you participate in a supplemental draft to select the remaining players from teams not chosen.

The problem we had last year was that we didn't have enough players on our rosters to give us the ability to do any creative trades, or to have "tough choices" in setting our lineup.

I think this year, we should not lock undrafted players from unclaimed teams. We need to give owners more to do, more decisions to make, and more players to choose from.

[~~ PAL ~~]

Here are some of the topics of discussion that the "real" league participants need to consider:

1. Teams to exclude from team draft - Thanks to some of the more convoluted trades and free agent movements this past season, some of the MLB teams by themselves is already a fantasy powerhouse and too unbalanced in league competition. Previously, some people had suggested that New York Yankees and Boston to be excluded. Please nominate any other teams that might need to be excluded from the "team draft".

2. Supplemental drafts - Based on my own experience and general feedback from participants last year, there simply were not enough supplemental draft picks last year. So for starters, I think we'll start with 6 picks per team. However, the lower tiered teams still might not be able to compete if every team has the same number of supplemental players. Right now, I'm leaning toward giving the lesser teams a few extra picks so that they can compete, but exactly how this is to be compensated is still subject to discussion.

3. Draft - Right now, it's set up as offline draft. Do we want to do as we did last year and have the draft picks in a thread? The only downside to that is that last year we gave people 12 hours to make picks, but some people were not even around for the draft so a lot of time was wasted. I think that this year we need to have people more committed to be present during the draft. So, you need to "check in" at the draft thread so that the rest of us know that you're present. And if a person is not present at the draft then the majority will pick for the no-shows. Hopefully, this will save more time for everybody. Each person should still be given several hours to make their picks, but no where near the 12 hours like last year.

4. Waiver - Last year, the waiver pool was completely locked and inaccessible. A lot of people complained about that. This year, the free agent pool should be accessible to some capacity, but I'm not so sure leaving it completely open is a good idea either. Please provide some input here.

5. Number of teams - I have set the league up for 12 teams. Will it be advisable to increase the number of teams? Last year, we had 20 teams in one real league, and 16 in another.

6. Participation - There were 4 or 5 dead teams in the real league (at least the one that I was in) last year. Can people make more of a commitment and not leave your team to die? :)

[B.A.]

The amount of free agent/waiver wire MOVES a team can make is maxed out at 40? Am I reading that correctly?

If so - I have no problem w/ it as long as the waiver wire is completely unlocked.

[~~ PAL ~~]

The set up of the league is still not finalized. I'm initially putting a limit on the number moves allowed. But depend on how we decide on the availability of the waiver guys that might get changed.

[DarkElf]

Originally posted by ~~ PAL ~~
Here are some of the topics of discussion that the "real" league participants need to consider:

1. Teams to exclude from team draft

2. Supplemental drafts

3. Draft

4. Waiver

5. Number of teams

6. Participation

1. We can exclude teams, or use the supplemental draft to balance the teams better than we did last year. See #2 below. I wouldn't exclude any other teams, and if we can agree on a reasonably fair way to balance teams, I'd favor not excluding any teams.

2. I was trying to figure out a way to run the draft to "re"balance the teams. Rather than just set the supplement draft order in reverse of the teams' quality, giving the weaker teams MORE draft choices early in the draft could offset.

Here's one idea I came up with: have a lottery type setup with balls in a cage or something, and the weaker your team is, the more balls you have in the cage. The number of balls in the cage is how many picks you get in the first round, so if you have 5 balls in the cage, you get 5 first round picks, you just don't know where in the draft your picks will be until the balls are chosen one by one. Or we can predetermine the picks fairly, rather than leave it to luck. Subsequent rounds would be just single picks.

How to determine the number of 1st round picks? Before any drafting is done, we can make a table of the 30 teams, group the teams into "competitive levels" and each level gets so many picks in the first round. So the Yankees and Red Sox are probably in one group and get one pick (or no picks at all). Teams like Philadelphia, Chicago, Houston, Oakland go into the next group, and maybe they get 2 more picks that the best group. Etc....

It doesn't matter if we're 100% right on our assigments. It's up to the owners to make a judgment based on the assignments, and decide which team they want given the assignments.

There are other ways to do it, but I thought I'd throw this one out since it sounded fun to me.

3. I think it would be virtually impossible to do the draft online, so we'll have to do it here in a thread. And yes, cut down substantially on the time between picks. It might help if we have something like each team having a ranked player queue, so if the owner isn't here when it's their turn, we can use their queue to pick the player they want.

4. Keeping the free agents signable is my preference. Roster size limitations will restrict owners from grabbing too many players. I just favor giving the owners as many options as possible. Plus, having to watch the owners to make sure a rule wasn't mistakenly broken is a pain. Just open it up and make life easy on yourself.

5. Don't put a limit on the number of teams. If we only get 10, so be it, but if we get 20, that's great too. Mostly, we just have to set a deadline for signup.

6. Yes! :)

[devilshalo]

As long as Yahoo can keep up with minor leaguers coming up..

[~~ PAL ~~]

DarkElf, thanks for your comments. I think that your idea for the compensatory picks for the "lesser" teams are pretty good. I am going to wait until this afternoon to give other people a chance for feedback. But generally speaking I am going to look into the setup for the supplemental picks. This is what I'm planning to list for each MLB team...

# of top 25 players
# of top 26-50 players
# of top 51-100 players
# of top 101 to 180 players
# of top 181 to 300 players

The ranking will be a composite score of Yahoo, ESPN, and my own sheet. This will take some time to compile, so I'll probably have it posted here near the end of the day.

As far as the number of supplemental picks to be given for each team, maybe we'll have a better idea on that based on the compiled team list.

[~~ PAL ~~]

OK, I went ahead and compiled the number of top fantasy players that each team has. Not suprisingly, Yankees and Red Sox still have the best teams. While Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh are just fantasy wastelands...

Teams 1-25 26-50 51-100 101-180 181-305
Anaheim Angels 1 1 2 5 8
Arizona Diamondbacks 1 1 2 3 4
Atlanta Braves 0 3 2 1 5
Baltimore Orioles 1 0 2 2 5
Boston Red Sox 4 1 3 6 1
Chicago Cubs 2 1 3 5 2
Chicago White Sox 1 1 2 1 5
Cincinnati Reds 0 0 0 2 4
Cleveland Indians 0 0 0 2 3
Colorado Rockies 2 0 0 2 2
Detroit Tigers 0 0 1 1 2
Florida Marlins 0 1 3 4 3
Houston Astros 0 3 6 1 3
Kansas City Royals 1 0 1 2 7
Los Angeles Dodgers 1 0 2 2 7
Milwaukee Brewers 0 0 1 2 2
Minnesota Twins 0 0 1 4 6
Montreal Expos 0 0 2 3 5
New York Mets 0 1 0 5 4
New York Yankees 2 3 4 4 3
Oakland Athletics 0 2 2 2 4
Philadelphia Phillies 1 2 2 4 4
Pittsburgh Pirates 0 0 0 4 1
San Diego Padres 0 1 2 3 6
San Francisco Giants 1 1 0 1 5
Seattle Mariners 1 1 3 4 7
St. Louis Cardinals 2 1 2 2 2
Tampa Bay Devil Rays 0 1 1 1 4
Texas Rangers 1 0 2 2 2
Toronto Blue Jays 3 0 0 1 7


Based on this, how should the teams be compensated, any ideas?

[DarkElf]

PAL, good work. But just so you (we?) don't go through a LOT of effort for nothing (other than a fun baseball exercise), you might want to wait to see how many people sign up. We still only have 3 teams, and I'm not optimistic we'll get enough to be able to do this...

Let me look at this for awhile.

But first thing that jumps out at me, why do a few teams have SIX numbers, when you only have five categories? Since SF is one of those, and Bonds HAS to be in your top 25, I assume the teams with six numbers, the leading zero is bogus.

[~~ PAL ~~]

Yes, you're right. I need to get rid of some of the leading zeros for teams with long names.

Now the numbers should be correct.

[B.A.]

I'm in. We now have four teams, PAL, DarkElf, Hard Boiled Hoops and myself. We need 8 more.

[B.A.]

bump

Come on people - we need eight more owner/managers!!!

[dvds4u]

i have been in the whole time

[Munchos]

I would be in if this is a go. Sounds interesting

[~~ PAL ~~]

Originally posted by dvds4u
i have been in the whole time

Originally posted by Munchos
I would be in if this is a go. Sounds interesting

Huh? :confused:

If you guys are "in", then by all means go and sign up! I just checked one minute ago, and there are still only 4 teams in the league...

Where were all those people who said they wanted to participatte in the "real" league? :confused: It is rather disappointing that when we finally got one going all those folks that said they would participate would not sign up... :(

[Roto]

I'll go sign up now. I never even saw this thread last week.

Edit: apparently you can't have more than 4 Yahoo teams :( Oh well, I'm probably in over my head anyway with that many.

[Munchos]

Signed up... didnt see that you already started a league. My bad. In as Tacticle Swine