Starting Your Own Fantasy Baseball League

Being the commissioner of a fantasy baseball league is not an easy
task. The hours are long. You often manage a bunch of crybabies. And,
the pay: it sucks.Hopefully, you'll have the rules laid out so that
there aren't any disputes during the season that you have to rule on,
but there's always one guy looking for a loophole in the rules to take
advantage of. Of course, it is a game of points so why shouldn't
managers look for ways to maximize their points. It's up to you to
create a set of rules that attempts to cover every possible situation
that arises. Not easy.Here are some of the decisions a commissioner
needs to make when starting a league.PLAY FOR MONEY OR NOT?I always
believe its a good idea to have a cash prize. Sure, winning the league
trophy and the bragging rights is important, but there's nothing that
motivates fantasy baseball managers through a long season than a cash
prize.The cash prize should not just be for first place. Give cash
prizes to the entire first half of the league. If a manger falls
behind early, then they have an incentive to stay involved and attempt
to move up to fifth place in a ten team league.How much money is the
question. The amount of money invested per player is going to depend
on how wealthy your friends in the league are. It should be enough to
keep them interested, but no such much that they start hating you if
you make a decision as commissioner that costs them more than just a
night out with their wife or girlfriend. Consider about $100 - $300
per manager.LEAGUE SIZE AND DEPTHIt isn't often that you can get a
group of larger than 10 together for a league. It's great if you have
20 or more in a league, but that's really a lot of work and tough to
pull together.Get the cash up front or you will see teams disappear in
the week before the draft. That plays havoc with commissioners and
many leagues are abandoned at the last minute for just this
reason.It's always been my opinion that a league that is deep is more
fun than one where the teams are made up of all all stars. Everybody
knows about Derek Jeter and A-Rod. A true test is to find out who
knows about Dustin Moseley and Francisco Cervelli. (A deep league is
one that has almost as many fantasy teams as real life teams so that
teams need to be stocked with both starters and reserves from the
MLB.)To truly get a deep league together, you will often have to
decide on making it National League-only or American
League-only.SCORING SYSTEMIn the early years of fantasy baseball, the
original 4 x 4 league was invented as the norm. Keeping track of 8
statistical categories was about all that a league commissioner could
handle if he didn't have a job at IBM.Today, however, with the
proliferation of internet stat services, you can do a nearly unlimited
amount of statistical categories. Some services will even keep track
of balks for you!Adding a category like HOLDS will make your league
more lifelike to the real game of baseball. As set up men are usually
neglected in fantasy baseball, such a statistical category seems to
make sense. As for balks or sacrifice bunts, I'll leave that to you to
decide.While having oddball statistical categories can be fun, less is
usually more.HEAD TO HEAD LEAGUES OR POINT LEAGUESThere is certainly
something to be said for both head to head and point leagues so this
is a personal decision. One of the advantages to head to head leagues
is that it seems to keep players motivated in that they want to beat
their buddies, even if it means playing spoiler late in the season. It
also better mirrors true baseball, but it does go against the grain of
traditional fantasy baseball leagues.With head to head leagues, upsets
can occur each week, just like in the real game. The better managers
and better teams don't always win each week as weaker teams can get
hot. Over the course of the long season, however, the better teams and
managers will prevail in a points league.DAILY or WEEKLY LINEUP
CHANGESSome leagues allow for daily lineup changes. This is almost too
much work for busy guys. It means you are shuffling players in and out
every day and taking advantage of off days, potential rainouts, and
particular matchups for that night.No matter how much of a fantasy
baseball geek you are, this is almost too much over a 6 month season.
You don't want to be responsible for a divorce.Weekly change leagues
make more sense, but bring up the potential issue of starting pitcher
streaming (where a manager uses 2 start pitchers for that week on his
starting lineup). Quite frankly, I believe 2 start pitcher streaming
is an interesting addition to a fantasy baseball leagues so I'd
recommend allowing for weekly lineup changes.KEEPER LEAGUES OR NOTIf
you have a group of friends who are reliable and at least half of them
will return for next season, a keeper league might make sense for you.
Most leagues allow for up to 15 keepers from year to year; some allow
as few as 3 per year.You are always going to have churn in managers
each year. Allowing fewer keepers from one year to the next will
encourage new blood into your league so keeping keepers to a minimum
from year to year seems to make the most sense.THE DRAFT -- Auction or
Snake DraftThis is another decision based on the dedication and
experience level of your players. An auction draft is more complicated
and will require more preparation for your managers, but ultimately
its more fun and adds a new element to the draft process. To do an
auction draft, however, you almost have to be in the same room with
all of the other managers as doing it online or by phone would be a
long and arduous process.An auction draft is not for every league, but
if you can pull it off, it's clearly more fun.WHEN CONTROVERSY
ARRIVESIt is inevitable that you will have some controversy over the
rules. You can't think of everything. While it's ideal to have a
commissioner that does not own a team in the league, this is
unrealistic and rarely is there a knowledgeable person willing to be
involved without having a team in the league.Putting things up to a
vote is only going to make things worse. When controversy arrives,
seek everybody's opinion, then rely on a group of 3 of the most
experienced and fair managers to be your advisory board, then make
your decision. Not everybody is going to like it, but ultimately the
commissioner needs to decide.