re: New TD Free Fantasy Baseball League

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In, in, and in.

Leaves us needing either LSU31Always email address if he still wants to join (he hasn't responded since first post) or a final owner.

In

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Thanks hoss, looking forward to it. First time I've ever done fantasy baseball.

ETA: just accepted the invite

Can someone either explain to me the criteria for scoring or walk me through how to get there on the site? All I can see under settings are a list of the categories but no point values or anything provided.

First, to answer the question about the auction draft: yes, one player goes up on block at a time. Bidding occurs in EBay-fashion, where if you up bid after the clock has tucked under 5 seconds, it will put more time in the clock and start to countdown again. Winning bid is the last one made before the clock is allowed to run out without a higher bid coming on top. I promise, it'll take 1 or 2 players and you'll see how intuitively is. There is a draft "order" - but the order essentially means that when its your turn up, you are the one picking who goes up on the auction block for bidding.

Now, to scoring - we are essentially doing a format where there are 6 categories that matter for batters (Avg, HRs, Runs, SBs, RBIs, and strikeouts [want low]) and 5 for pitchers (ERA, Wins, Ks, WHIP, and Saves). Each week, owners are matched up head to head, similar to a fantasy football season schedule. Values are totaled for the course of a week for the matchup. At the end of the week, whichever of the two owners facing each other "wins" the most categories, they'll receive the win for the week. I.e., If I beat my first opponent 8 categories to 3, I would win the matchup and be 1-0.

I chose this scoring method for a variety of reasons. I mimics a traditional format that tabulates 5 batting categories and 5 pitching categories over the course of a year (termed "rotisserie"). However, that format usually lends itself to owners getting fatigued quickly if they start slow because they don't want to take the time and effort that it takes to chip away and come back in the standings, So, I chose H2H instead of rotisserie. This way, owners are kept closer in the standings longer, which will hopefully keep everyone interested for the season. I added one extra batting category to the weekly scoring in order to avoid 5-5 category "ties" that often happen in this format...because ties blow.

There are the variations on the H2H format that can be explored if we keep the league on a yearly basis. For instance, in the example I gave above - instead of me being 1-0 after a first week win, we could count each category individually, which means I'd be 8-3 after the first week, and my opponent would be 3-8. Also, we could do away with categories and just give point values for different events (single, double, triple, HR, win or save for pitcher, etc.). This would make it even more analogous to fantasy football. With that said, I thought the setup for this year should be one that was simple to grasp and kept the standings tight to keep interest up.

Spot on Jamal. My post above yours echoes that same explanation, and also gives the reasons why I chose to set it up this way. I agree, Roto more "pure" in terms of fantasy baseball "history" and tradition, but a H2H format is more appealing to non-diehard baseball purists.

I actually prefer a points setup to a category setup, but I thought our current settings would allow everyone to get their feet wet this year and be less confusing and easier to comprehend when strategizing for draft. Once everyone has a good feeling for fantasy baseball, we can discuss making changes going forward.

Thank you both for the explanation. It makes a lot more sense now going into the draft. I'm pretty pumped being my first auction style draft. I hope I don't screw up too bad.