Head on over to Fantasy Baseball Geeks for this week’s edition of the Roundtable. This week the experts discuss the types of leagues and variations that they think are the best to play.
This week’s question was: If you could only play in one fantasy baseball league a year, what type of league would you want to participate in? Draft vs. Auction, Keeper vs. Redraft vs. Dynasty, Roto vs. H2H vs. Points vs. Other, Mixed vs. AL vs. NL, “Expert” vs. Friends, How many teams…..
As usual there were some differing views. What surprised me was the lack of interest among experts in deeper leagues. Most thought that the 12 team mixed format was their favorite and the best setup. I cannot disagree more! It takes far more skill to play in a tough, deep AL or NL only auction league, and I am surprised that so many of the experts didn’t agree. Or maybe they did agree but felt that it was not their preferred format.
In my view deep auction leagues require the owner to utilize every skill that they can, and it requires the most knowledge and ability to succeed. Isn’t part of the fun of this game knowing about the backup infielders that will get 300 ABs and bat .270 so they don’t kill you? Isn’t it fun to watch your bargain basement pitching staff get rocked to the tune of a 7 ERA one week and then put up a 1.50 the next? Mixed leaguers never get to use the full breadth of their skills and abilities, which in my mind is a sad state of affairs.
7 responses so far ↓
1 Mike Podhorzer // May 7, 2008 at 7:29 am
I have played in one AL-Only league before, finished in the money, but have no desire to ever play in an Only league again.
Why? Injuries KILL you. For all the extra skill involved in knowing all the crappy players, it’s offset by a Tulowitzki injury, for example, that forces you to start a scrub for almost half the season. It’s bad enough in my shallow 12-team mixed league having to pick up Eckstein for the time being until I could work out a trade, but an Only league is far worse.
Sure, everyone has to deal with injuries, but there is too much luck involved and some teams will inevitably get hit harder than others.
I think it’s very hard to find a happy medium between deepness and not too deep where the team with the fewest injuries has the best chance of winning. So I think a 14-16 team mixed league is probably optimal.
2 Jon // May 7, 2008 at 8:52 am
Really, REALLY suprised at the number of experts who prefer mixed leagues. I’m with Patrick - it’s AL or NL-only all the way.
I want to know every player, be able to brag when I pick up Guilermo Quiroz and he hits a HR for me, have Jonathan Broxton be one of the more valuable members of my pitching staff, and be at an advantage because I had Blake DeWitt as a farm player going into this year.
Anyway, let’s start with the obvious:
Live vs. Online: obviously live. I cannot think of any valid reason why you’d prefer an online draft.
Auction vs. Draft: forgive me for my arrogance, but drafts are for simpletons. Pick your player, wait for 15 minutes until it’s your turn again, and repeat.
In an auction you’re involved in the bidding on nearly every single player (or at least you should be, until you’re locked out at a position). You need to know within a split second what your bid limit is for a certain player at any time is. You have the opportunity to get any player you want. You have unlimited options as far as roster makeup go, as opposed to a draft where the format dictates it (1 top 12 player, 1 player ranked 13-24, etc.). In an auction, if I want the 3 best players and the 20 worst, I can do it. If I want a balanced team, I can do it.
Want more? There’s inflation (not just in keeper leagues), budget management, bluffing, and just the excitement. Isn’t hearing the bidding for Jose Reyes approach and exceed $50 just exciting? Owners are agonizing over whether they should go $1 higher. In a draft, you pick your guy. That’s it.
Really, the only criticism I’ve ever heard about an auction is people who aren’t really serious saying that it was just too much for them to handle.
Back to mixed vs. “only” leagues. I firmly believe that much more skill is involved in single-league leagues. Why? Because everyone knows who the superstars are, but we don’t know how well they’re going to do. We can say with, say, a 90% certainty that ARod is going to hit between 32 and 56 HR. But how many exactly? There’s so much randomness in the game; there’s virtually no difference between a player hitting 39 HR and 47.
However, getting Clint Barmes for $1, because you knew that Jason Nix wouldn’t hit, and getting good production from him? That’s skill, and it’s where serious leagues are won.
Simply put - deeper rosters allow for more varying opinions, and more research makes you better off. Yeah, there’s still the random fluctuations in the stats of the superstars, but there’s half as many of them.
I could go on and on - but for someone who considers them serious about fantasy baseball, I just don’t see anything other than a auction based AL or NL-only league. Debating the categories and scoring is fine. But again, no offense, but mixed leagues and draft leagues are for wimps.
3 Brian Joura // May 7, 2008 at 9:33 am
I really liked Jon’s post but I think the reason to prefer an online draft is that it makes it possible to have a league with friends all over the country. My keeper league used to be based in Boston but now we’ve got people in at least 7 different states. It’s hard enough to get people together for the time needed to conduct a draft, I don’t even want to think about how much haggling it would take to get us all together for a live draft.
4 Jon // May 7, 2008 at 10:18 am
Oh, sure - for some, a live draft/auction isn’t a possibility (though I’ve been in some leagues where half the people are in person and half call in - if you have a conference room or something this works surprisingly well, as long as the auctioneer is good at repeating things).
I just meant that if a live draft is feasible, it’s obviously preferable to an online one.
5 Derek Carty // May 7, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Didn’t get a chance to participate in this one, but I have to agree with Mike. I do like the idea of having to know every player, but knowing who Omar Quintanilla or Jonathan Herrera are isn’t going to help you make up for the production you lose when Tulo gets injured.
I think league’s like this can come down to not who is the most skilled, but who avoided injury the best. This can be applied to your strategy, but there are players every year with perfect medical histories that end up getting injured.
I like a league that is deep but not so deep that losing one of your first seven or eight picks to injury will make it nigh impossible to compete.
6 rob // May 9, 2008 at 11:50 am
When you have Clint Barmes on your roster at the end of the draft, you need psychological counselling to try and determine why you like to beat yourself up.
You may be forced to relinquish your ball gag, so proceed to the psychologist at your own risk.
And, in closing, with regards to Clint Barmes, I have two words for you: DEER MEAT.
7 Jon // May 13, 2008 at 12:49 pm
To each his own, I guess. The thing that makes me happiest about my current 2nd place standing (2 points out of first) in my AL-only league is that I’ve gotten about $40 worth of production from Dellucci, Dave Murphy, and Jamey Carrol, and spent a total of $4 on them.
Having Clint Barmes is beating myself up? I think that trying to predict who’s going to have more HR between Arod, Fielder, and Howard is beating myself up, because the only way you’re right is because you’re lucky. That’s the essence of mixed leagues.
My main point is that unexpected, but predictable performances occur much more regularly by players in the bottom half of a single league’s player pool (i.e. the players who would never be drafted in a mixed league). And these are exactly the players that “experts” should be recommending. Who needs an expert to tell them that Giovanni Soto is a good hitting catcher or that Dustin McGowan is a good pitcher? These are the guys that were most often written about preseason.
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