Fantasy snobbery and league legitimacy

Good post, Derek.

One thing I would like to mention regarding my comment to which you refer is that I don’t think FAAB is a much better way to acquire free agents just for the simple fact that it’s more ADVANCED than plain add/drops; rather, I think it’s a much better method because it’s more FAIR. After all, it doesn’t seem fair to me that owners should get punished because they can’t get on the Internet due to busier lifestyles. I think fairness should be of upmost importance in constructing the rules of a league. Any league that takes away any element of fairness in effect takes away a tad of credibility, at least to me. Hence, my comment.

Great discussion, Derek.  I know my preference is for leagues with contracted keepers, deep rosters, and auction style.  We run a slow auction in our league, which some people don’t like.  I enjoy it and it makes for a fun dynamic and some different strategy in the auction…especially when you have to hold a bid for 24 hours before winning a player.  Locking up other owners’ money while going after a player you know they want can play a role in the league.  I think that’s fun, others think it’s not the right way to do it.

In my experience, owners need to become acclamated to new rules in order to compete.  The owner quality is such a huge factor, though.  I’ll admit I’ve made trades in leagues knowing I had robbed someone, but hopefully there are other good owners that see those opportunities as well.  I would love to get a group of very competitive owners to play in a league rules structure I’ve constructed, in order to assess how it plays out, rather than see very uncompetitive owners altering what the outcomes should be.  Anyone interested?

The rules make the game interesting, but the players make the game competitive. I have been running a league for 9 years now.  We have very little turnover; 2 team changes in the past 6 seasons.  We have been evolving the league rules over the past 9 seasons, slowly adding rules (keepers, auctions…) and making changes. This has given me and the other managers a better read on how far the league should go with the design aspects of it.  We have made an effort to emphasize the auction/draft as the most important portion of building a competitive team, but allowing add/drops seems to give teams a chance to supplement their team without having another team just try to block them (we don’t have issues with people running to the waiver wire to pick up players)- this is a conscious decision on the part of the design, as is having a max number of starts, roster freeze and keeper freeze date that makes dumping a non-factor in our league. All things that the league members feel are important to keeping the league competitive and engaging.

I think by getting a core group of players that have similar ideas of how much time/effort they want to spend in the league and their expectations on how the game will be played is much more important than the rules themselves.

Andrew,

Granted, I did not think you preferred free agent budget systems simply because they are more advanced. I think it can also be argued that first come, first serve is not necessarily “unfair.” One could view the waiver wire situation as a market, and the market activity as a trend that one can analyze and find inequalities in. Being quick to react may not be a “skill” per se, but it is a characteristic that is valuable in many contexts outside fantasy baseball. And, we’re all busy, but at the end of the day, it comes down to how badly you want to win the race to the wire.

I recall one closely contested season, down the season of which three of us got into a competitive battle of setting our alarm clocks to get first crack at spot starters. Oh, Joe’s getting up a 5:45 now, huh. We’ll, I’ma set my alarm for 5:30. I remember other stories about wanting to sleep at a friends house after a long night of drinking, but forcing myself to go home because I knew he’d lock his computer and I didn’t have his log in info, so there’d be no way I could beat him to the wire in the morning if I didn’t go home. These are fond memories for me; maybe that’s a bit disturbing.

Brian,

My home, oldest league, is run by a friend of mine who happens to be a lawyer, so everything is pretty smooth. We operate on keeper cycles, in which we up the keepers yearly to a crescendo, and wipe the slate clean, and re-start a new cycle beginning from a fresh re-draft. We also up the ante every year. We’re all friends and the league is an institution of our group (and the bane of our significant others’ existences - but it’s a bonding opportunity for them, I say). The problem is that over the years, though everybody is competent, there has developed a pretty clear A and B division, so while all the league owners are always down (and committed by written contract to play out each cycle - if one wants to leave, he has to find an owner who will take his team as currently constructed, like a transfer), we have begun to have minor issues about entry fees. The historically better performers always want the stakes to be higher, and the others want the stakes to be lower.