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 will be talking more in the future about bread-and-butter items like these, as well as about roster sizes and stat categories, but I wanted to take a quick aside to examine divisions.

Most online fantasy baseball hosts–like the one my league uses–offer some sort of package (usually only for paid users) that allows leagues to be carved into divisions, usually into two or three in a twelve-team league, set, of course, by the commissioner. As well, most hosts then schedule the teams within each division to play each other more often than against non-divisional teams.

So far, it’s a system similar enough to the major leagues, and could draw similar complaints–foremost among them the contention that uneven divisions could prevent some of the best teams in the league from reaching the playoffs, and likewise boost good, but not quite as great, teams into the postseason.

I think such complaints have some merit, but I want to set them aside and assume divisions are a good thing (which I’ll explain my reasoning for in a second). But in the meantime, what are the different ways divisions can be, well, divided? One way is geographic by manager location, which in my league seems imbalanced at first blush, since we have two managers in California, eight in the northeast (mostly in New York), and a pair in the middle of the country–not quite the cleanest partition. Another scheme is to interweave the top and bottom teams from this year, aiming for a systematic evening of the scales–this method benefits from simplicity, but I am thinking of something a little more in-depth for our league.

What I’m looking for is a scheme that emphasizes one of the biggest benefits of divisional play: the rivalries. Dividing a fantasy league into divisions not only makes the game feel that little bit more like professional baseball (which is always a plus in fantasy leagues), but it also puts together all the kindling, fuel, and pressure needed to start a competitive fire.

I have noticed in my league, and I assume you have noticed in yours, that some managers, though they are competitive every week, are extra-competitive when facing certain other managers. It goes beyond the psychology of playing a strong or weak team, or playing for placement in the playoffs or standings, and goes right to the dynamic essence of playing this game with a group of friends: some guys (or gals) it just feels that much better to beat.

It’s my opinion that divisions can be a good tool to foster these healthy rivalries, and one of my projects this off-season is to find a structure that creates divisions that are as balanced, but livelier than a league without divisions. But tell me what you think? Are divisions worth the possibility of unevenness? If so, what’s the best way to construct them?
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