One shortcoming of a standard 5×5 setup: imbalance.
Last year, as we inaugurated our league with a more-or-less cookie-cutter setup on a free online host, we used the classic 5×5 for our head-to-head matchups: R, HR, RBI, SB, and AVG on the hitting side, and W, SV, K, ERA, and WHIP on the pitching side. These […]

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I will be going on vacation until 12/12 so I won’t have any posts until then. This would be a good time to go back into the archives for some of our older stuff! And who knows, maybe the con-contributors may have a post or two. If you are looking for my latest hardball […]

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What are the costs and benefits of adding divisions to your fantasy league?
We have taken some time to discuss keepers and trades in planning for the next year in our young fantasy league, all with an eye toward keeping the league as competitive and fun as possible for all teams from top to bottom. I […]

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Examining my NL pitchers and who should be kept for 2008.
As usual, I pursued a “stars and scrubs” strategy when dealing with my NL pitching staff. There are legions of articles dealing with this the stars and scrubs model, so I won’t delve too deeply into it here. But the aspect that bears discussion […]

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Answering another reader’s keeper question on these three players.
A reader posed the following: he is in a 12-team mixed league, with two keeper slots. Each team can keep two players and can keep two rookie players (those that were rookie eligible in 2007) by replacing their ninth and tenth round picks with the kept […]

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One of my free agent pickups got completely hosed in the AL ROY voting.
Which of these two pitchers do you prefer? Which do you think had a better season?
Is there any great difference here? The seasons are almost identical except in a few respects; K rate, xERA and Wins. But by any account, if […]

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As promised, from Keith Law, Director of Scouting for ESPN.
Thanks again to Keith for helping me out with scouting reports. Keith is one of the best at his job, and you should be reading his work over at ESPN. Here they are:
Hughes: Before he pulled a hamstring back in May, Hughes would typically work […]

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Looking at my NL roster and deciding who should be kept. Next up will be NL pitching and then my AL roster. It is an interesting group of players, since considerations other than the mere fact of whether they will be profitable next year are the key factors to consider.
We are getting close to the […]

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At First Pitch Arizona, Baseball Prospectus’ Joe Sheehan had some thoughts on various players and whether their 2007 season was a fact or a fluke. Here are some of my thoughts.
In a Baseball Prospectus “Unfiltered” post (their blog) Joe Sheehan, one of my favorite baseball writers, discussed his participation in a “fluke or fact” […]

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Link to my latest Hardball Times column.
E-mail Trade Solicitations.

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To keep or not to keep? That is the question for our new league.
Last week I introduced for examination our guinea pig fantasy league (please note it is not made up of actual guinea pigs). To summarize its post-season situation, it is a twelve-man head-to-head league, and while the most active managers rose to the […]

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