Scoring:

The league is a head-to-head weekly lock format. Each week, all the teams
are broken up into pairs, which constitute a matchup. All the points for each hitter
and pitcher category for the week are added together and then the team of the pair
with the highest total points scored for that week wins the matchup (ties are
technically possible under our system). Weekly lock means you cant make moves
daily; the roster locks right before the first baseball game of the week (typically on
Monday), so make sure you set your lineups on Sunday night if possible. If you
dont completely set your lineup, the LMs may have to make some moves for you,
due to anti-tanking clauses, as explained later.
Our league uses a modified CBS pts scoring system, which we adopted quite
a few years ago as it just makes the most sense between fair scoring and also being
able to properly root for your players. The main system is pretty simple for hitters, 1
pt for each total base (so 3 for a triple, etc.), walk, hit by pitch, rbi, run. The main
differences from the standard ESPN scoring system is that we only subtract -0.5 pts
for a K instead of a full -1 pt, which we found was just dumb, because 1) it makes
many hitters utterly unplayable if they are high K, 2) it creates too much disparity in
batter value between PTS and 5x5 formats which complicates player evaluation and
drafting 3) in real life there is not really a strong correlation between how good a
batter is and how much they K, so punishing that strongly for it is dumb. We also
have a slightly different Stolen Base scoring system of 2 pts for a successful steal
and -1 pts for a caught stealing, mostly to fix the disparity in value between a PTS
and 5x5 league and try to normalize that to some degree so the speedy players
were still playable.
On the pitching end of the spectrum, the main difference is that we use the
CBS idea of giving points for quality starts and reduce the magnitude of both wins
and losses. This way, Starting Pitcher (SP) points arent as heavily weighted towards
luck-based YOLO stats like Wins and Losses and pitchers that give their team a
chance to win generally will score fine. So pitchers like James Shields who pitch a
TON of innings at a generally good, if not truly elite level, will end up scoring very
well in volume in our league, since hes usually allowed to pitch very deep into
games. In terms of Relief Pitchers (RP) we had to edit the points slightly so that top
closers would score appropriately, and then we found there was a huge problem
with scarcity of closers, since there are 12 teams that need 3 = 36 and there are
only ostensibly 30 closers in MLB. This created an awkward situational comedy
where mediocre closers were being valued super high and being traded as very
valuable assets for top hitters, which we did not want. So we added 5 points for
holds, which is less than for a save, but still playable. This allows people to play
setup men as well in the RP slot, which alleviates this scarcity issue; historically 4-8
setup men are playable, and can even have top 5 RP seasons if they have a career
year like Wade Davis in 2014. Be careful selecting setup men though, due to high
RP variance very rarely will a non-closer do well 2 years in a well
If youre confused about our scoring system and/or which types of players
have done well historically, feel free to look at the past seasons and check out the
highest scoring players at each position. You can always ask us or make a post and
ask any questions you have.

Roster Composition and Maneuvers

Your hitting lineup must contain a Catcher (C), First Baseman (1B), Second
Baseman (2B), Third Baseman (3B), Shortstop (SS), and 4 Outfielders (OF). In
addition you have one utility (UTIL) slot to play any hitter you want, and a Corner
Infield (CI) slot that can be any 1B or 3B, and a Middle Infield (MI) slot that can be
any 2B or SS. Should be pretty clear and we use ESPN standard eligibility rules.
Your pitching lineup must contain 6 Starting Pitchers and 3 Relief Pitchers. To
prevent unfair tactical advantage, your RPs must be actual relievers, not
swingman who often start, or actual SP who are merely RP-eligible. You
also get 5 bench spots, but no DL spots, so you need to use your bench slots on
your DL players. To prevent egregious streaming this year, we have decided to only
allow you to use up to THREE of your bench slots pitchers, which means at least 2
must be used on hitters. Having extra Starting Pitchers on hand is vital, so make
sure you have at least 8 SP on your roster at all times. This makes you protected
against injuries, and also allows you to stream your SP in order to get as many 2starts as possible, as 2-starts are the most important tactic to use in any weekly
format. If you do not have at least 8 and preferably 9 SP on your roster at all times,
you will definitely not win many games. So repeat after me: I must draft and roster
9 good SP. I must draft and roster 9 good SP. I must draft and roster 9 good SP.
Good, good.
You are allowed a maximum of 3 trades during the year, this is to prevent
people taking advantage of other people as well as people with more political power
from having too great an advantage. Once a trade is agreed upon, it will be subject
to a league vote, and we highly encourage making a message board post about it
so it can be discussed in there. If a trade seems lopsided and the owners have
posted no explanation it will likely be voted down. League votes usually go for 3
days, although it can be pushed through sooner if it gets enough votes such that it
is extremely unlikely to be voted down and it is near the cutoff pt for a weekly lock
so it makes it easier for the trading teams to set their rosters in time for the next
matchup. For trades made very close to the lock, for example on Fridays, if
appropriate the trading teams should indicate whether they want the trade to go
through before the next matchup lock or not. We usually assume that only about 810 people at any time are paying attention in the league based on historical
patterns. Assuming 9 people are paying attention, 2 of them were making the trade,
so that leaves about 7 impartial people. Thus we require 4 of them to vote against
the trade, so a vote of 4 will vote down a deal. We do have a trade deadline, that
will be manually set later that we will announce shortly.
We will be using FAAB for all Free Agent pickups during the season. If you are
unfamiliar with FAAB, I will post some links about it as well. Basically you have a
$100 budget for the year to use on all your free agent pickups. Every Tuesday,
Thursday, Saturday and Sunday we process Free Agent claims @ 10:00 pm EST
(possible exceptions for weird schedule occurrences). We dont do it every day just
because that would provide an advantage for the most active players over some of
the ones that dont have as much time to spend on this. When you want to pick up a
player, you put in a waiver claim and bid $X of your FAAB dollars, then during the
next Free Agent cycle, you get that player if you bid the most on him. You can bid $0
and ties are broken by reverse standing order as shown on ESPN. Often you may not
get your first choice, so it is very useful to put in one or more backup bids, for
example if your 1B got hurt, you maybe want to bid on 3 separate 1B to make sure
you fill the slot. There are lot of nuances and strategies used for this, which I will try
to cover later. Typically you can budget $5 for each period since there about 20
periods in the year (18 weeks plus pre-season and All-star break) although there are
many other budgeting strategies. If you end up missing a lineup slot intentionally
that is OK as long as it is for a strategic reason. If you do not fill out 2-3 lineup spots
because you want to lose on purpose to your buddy, that is considered tanking
and really not in the spirit of competition in the league. The LMs will always take
any steps necessary to prevent tanking. Also if you become clearly inactive for a
couple weeks, the LM will take over temporarily and make minor moves so your
lineup slots are all filled out until you have enough time to be active again, just to
keep things fair for all teams. If you also tried to fill a lineup spot in the FAAB cycle

and were outbid, please post something, and the LMs will add a player to that
missing spot for you at the cost of $5 FAAB.
Playing while intoxicated
Feel free to play Fantasy Baseball while intoxicated, or under the influences of
other substances. If you make accidental undesirable moves while under the
influence of psychotropics, we may be able to reverse them if you can get a doctors
note.

Playoffs
Playoffs? Yes were talking about playoffs here. In our league 6 teams make
the playoffs, with a complex playoff format to spice things up. Each of the 3 division
winners make the playoffs, as the #1, #2, or #3 seed based on final record, with
MOST PTS SCORED as a tiebreaker (we try to use this for a tiebreaker for as many
things as possible, except when H2H and seeding would make more sense). If teams
finish tied for the division title, I believe we will use Head-to-Head as the first
tiebreaker, then we apply PTS SCORED. Then the 2 teams with the 2 best record
who are not division winners get into the playoffs as the #4 and #5 seeds. Starting
last year, we decided to spice up the #6 seed so that nobody is truly out of it and
people can stay involved throughout the whole yr. The #6 seed is the team out of
the ones that havent qualified yet for playoffs (so not the #1-5 seeds) that has the
BEST RECORD in the 2nd half of the season ( weeks 10-18 ). So even if you get off
to a terrible start, if you make good in-season moves and finish the season hot,
youll make the playoffs!
In the first round the matchups are #3 vs #5 and #4 vs #6, it is done this
way because some percentage of the time the #6 seed is incredibly hot, and its
kind of unfair to make the higher #3 seed play such a hot team, but this might be
changed in future seasons, since its not entirely clear what should happen here.
The #1 and #2 seed automatically advance to the semifinals, but they still do play
each other in the first round in a seeding matchup as some tournament sports
use. The winner of the #1 vs #2 seeding matchup will be able to CHOOSE their
semifinal opponent (from the winners of #3 vs #5 and #4 vs #6) , and the loser will
be forced to play the other team left. So you can see getting the bye from the #1
or #2 seed is quite nice. How important it is to win the seeding matchup depends
each year on how easy it is to determine the strength of the lower-seeded teams
and how much equal they are in strength. Oh yeah, ties in the playoffs will go to
the higher seed should it ever happen.
During the playoffs this year we are implementing special rules, to try to
curtail the extreme dominance of a few teams in the past few years. Because our
league rules allow very liberal pitcher streaming, teams load up on a lot of 2-starts
to carry them through playoffs rather than use a core of elite SP. This year, we will
only be allowing 1 Starting Pitcher roster change during each round of the playoffs
per team (with medical exceptions for injuries, bereavement, birth, etc. anything
that would cause a SP not to be able to make his start). This will force players to
mostly use their starting pitcher core and not just stream 3-4 new pitchers every
round in the playoffs.

Draft Tips
1) Make sure to sort players by projected pts at the positions you are
interested in
2) Some of the earlier OF are only good in 5x5/roto and not in PTS formats,
so just be careful about which OF you select early. An example would be
Starling Marte, who is OK in a PTS league, but definitely not 4th round
value.
3) You dont necessarily need to take an early Starting Pitcher to win; many
of the past winners have not done so, but if you arent used to this format
it can be helpful to have an ace as an anchor
4) For hitters, OBP is pretty important, so high walk and lower K guys are
very valuable. A hitter with a .760 OPS can easily outscore one with a .850
OPS just based on BB and K rate.
5) K-rate is also very important for pitchers as it is highly correlated with
success. On par, higher K pitchers have a greater chance to break through
to another level, although low walk SP can be very useful too.
6) Lineup position matters a lot for accruing RBIs and Runs, generally 3 and 4
are the best.
7) There are tons of different strategies and pick orders that can work,
please check out the article I linked below which covers things in depth
League Tips
1) 2-starts: The most important thing in a weekly format. If you dont have 9
SP on your roster so you can rack up the 2-starts every week, you are
going have a bad time, then you will need to go to Bangkok for a good
time. Think about it this way. Lets say a really good pitcher like Kershaw
gets 20 pts a start. Then a trash tier SP like Kyle Kendrick might average
like 11 pts a start. Well, if Kendrick starts two times in a week 2 x 11 = 22,
so hell outscore Kershaw on average if Kershaw only goes once that
week. Thus its important to see who will be 2-starting in the upcoming
weeks and pick them up so you can be competitive every week. Your
roster might have a core of 6-8 SP and then 1-3 SP who you rotate in and
out depending on who is hot and who is making a 2-start soon. If theres
one thing you should take away from this, its that clearly you should draft
Kyle Kendrick and start him week 1 for dat 2-start. Clearly.