When I started this baseball league, I put a lot of thought into every aspect of the game play. We have already discussed the minimum IP issue at length, and we even changed a scoring category (Win% into Holds). At one point (unfortunately, too late), trader dick brought up the issue of positions (changing BN slots into RP slots). Nothing much has been said about the myriad other settings and rules that affect how we play.
Rosters
Each roster is comprised of 10 hitters, 10 pitchers, and 10 BN slots (plus 5 DL slots). This setting can no longer be altered.
Minimum IP
You must record at least 45 IP each week; otherwise risk losing any of the pitching categories that you might be leading in.
Playoffs
The top eight teams will qualify for the “post-season”, which begins on Monday, September 7th. There are no byes awarded to the top-ranked teams – only the privilege of playing a team that couldn’t even make the Top 6.
Scoring Categories
I always hated the Yahoo “O-Rank” system. Outside of the Top 3, they usually get it wrong. The column next to that, however, labelled just “Rank” purports to eliminate all subjectivity, and simply follow a formula. Using the default 5 X 5 settings (and default-sized leagues and rosters), the counting categories are easily measured. Their database ranks every player rotisserie-style, with the guy who has the most Runs scoring a “first-place” among the 400-450 other hitters. The same is done for RBI, HR’s, and SB’s.
Then comes the tricky part. Using the Batting Average category, the database orders all 400+ hitters, but assigned a “weighted” rank, depending on a player’s degree of deviation from the league average. In other words, a player who hits over .400 is not only ordered near first among the 400 hitters. He is also judged on how many AB’s he has, to determine if he is “helping” his team frequently or only a little. I don’t have a clue what such a formula might look like, but I trust that it generates an accurate portrait of who “gets more” in the category. And by that I mean that I trust that the accuracy of the column called “Rank”, whether sorted by this season or last season, whether by totals or per game averages, is a number that can be relied upon, provided you can estimate just what that formula might be.
In choosing the scoring categories, I wanted to retain a semblance of the players’ default values, as measured by the Rank column. I could have just used the default 5 X 5 categories, but I like to add as much nuance as possible to valuating a player. So I took the default cats as a baseline and attempted to “triple them up”, by adding two related categories to each of the ten originals. This way, a specialist like a closer or a base-stealer wouldn’t lose any value.
Since the Rank of a closer is based upon his contributions to the five pitching cats, he needs to retain a 20% stake in our 15 pitching cats to retain his default value. A player who leads the league in Saves is very likely to also lead the league in Save Opportunities and Net Saves. Using the three cats instead of just Saves, allows for a more detailed look at closers than a 5 X 5 system is capable of. Similarly, leading the league in SB’s will give you a good shot at also winning the Net Steals, and if you’re really good, the SB% as well.
Tripling up WHIP was easy, as that is the one category that is truly redundant with its sister-cats (H/9, BB/9). Another easy one was strikeouts, which I tripled up with K/9 and K/BB to really judge a guy’s abilities. It was tougher to triple up ERA, but I went with OBPA and Holds, figuring set-up men usually have the lowest ERA’s and lead both categories. To accompany Wins, I use QS and IP’s as comparable leader lists.
The league leaders in Batting Avg will often be found on the On-Base and Hits lists, as well. The same goes for Runs leaders on the AB’s and Triples lists. Players who lead the league in RBI will also be found among the league leaders in Doubles and Xtra base hits, while the Home Run kings will usually rank highly in Walks and OPS.
All that to say that now we can trust the Rank column for a fairly accurate, but rough sketch of where our players rank in this league. Anytime you have a league that doesn’t conform to every default setting, you get further away from accurate – I was trying to bring it back, closer to the norm (while using a freakishly large number of categories).
Written Rules
In addition to the aforementioned settings, I added a long list of Rules, most of which can still be found in the Commissioner’s Note. What I did was, I took the Official Baseball Rules and tried to alter them a little to apply to our league. The problem was, the Commissioner’s note only allows so many words. So I kept chopping and cutting, until I arrived at the finished product, that was nothing like what I had envisioned. To fit into the small space, I had cut out some key jokes that had set up other jokes. What I was left with was a cramped layout, full of sternly worded phrases, and a few disjointed jokes. It actually was my intention to have everyone name themselves after a city, but the whole point of that Rule was to reflect the Official Baseball Rule concerning the lettering of a player’s name on his jersey. Anyway, I won’t change them at all, but I thought I’d re-post them here, if only to make them easier to read. That, and re-include Article 3, dealing with my almighty powers. Look for that to follow, above.
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