That time of the year is rapidly approaching. The snow has melted. Warm, spring-like days intermittently break up the bone-chilling winter weather. The pop of a baseball smacking against the leather webbing of a glove fills the quietness outside like chirping birds in the morning.
An email from an old college roommate signals that it will soon be time to shake the cobwebs from the part of your brain that retains stats, splits, stadiums, ages, matchups and a multitude of other details that ensure that, come October, you will win the ultimate prize of a few hundred dollars and an offseason worth of bragging rights. You guessed it – it’s time for Fantasy Baseball!
For some, fantasy baseball is an opportunity to display their MLB prowess to their friends. For others, it is a method to force themselves to remain thoroughly acquainted with the game, as it is easy for one to become so engulfed by their favorite team that they neglect what goes on around the rest of the league.
To most, though, fantasy baseball is both a project that consumes their free time, and a welcomed respite from their daily grind.
The “sport” (or activity, since the only physical aspect of it is pounding the keyboard when a late inning homerun costs you the series) is far from uniform. Leagues can be set up “rotisserie-style” in which owners draft their teams, select their categories (RBI, HR, AVG., SB, R, W, ERA, SV, K, WHIP – for example) and add up the stats from each category at the end of the season. In a 12-team league, the player who finishes first in a category earns 12 points, while last place earns one point. The points are added up and the team with the highest total at the end of the season is the victor. This is a simple method that requires little attention throughout the season – you should check in from time to time for injuries or trades.
Leagues can also be set up as week-to-week face-offs with a set number of statistical categories that add up over the course of a week. Each team gets a notch in the W column for each category they win and one in the L column for each that they lose. The notches from all the weeks are added up and determine which teams make the fantasy playoffs. The last few weeks of the regular MLB season serve as the playoffs in the fantasy season so that everyone on the fantasy rosters is still active in the real world. This head-to-head version of fantasy baseball requires more daily attention – checking when pitchers are starting, what categories you need to make up ground on late in the week, or if you have a favorable matchup (like Albert Pujols against Chris Capuano). It requires more skill and maneuvering.
Some leagues have loopholes if the commissioner fails to pick the right categories. Last year, the commissioner of my league decided he wanted to work with only whole numbers – no averages.
“It’ll be easier for everyone to understand,” he said.
So we used Hits, Runs, Homeruns, Stolen Bases, and Runs for our offensive categories, Errors (as a wildcard), Wins, Strikeouts, Saves, Runs Allowed, and Walks Allowed for our pitching categories. We also had just two bench spots.
I found the loophole during week two of the season when I noticed that Phil Hughes, one of my roommate’s starters, was touched up for three runs in three innings and pulled early in the game.
“Man, what a shoddy pitching performance,” I said. “If we had ERA in our league, that would have hurt you pretty badly for the week.”
That’s when a light went on in my brain. With no quota for innings pitched in our league, and no statistical categories taking innings pitched into account, having starting pitchers actually hurt more than it helped. By dropping or trading all of my starting pitchers in return for “sure thing” closers and stellar offensive players, I had an edge in the Saves and offensive categories, while also securing victories in the Walks and Runs Allowed categories. All I had to sacrifice were my Wins and Strikeouts.
Everyone warned me not to do it, because once I dropped my starters, I couldn’t get them back if they were picked up off the waiver wire. I didn’t care. Take Sabathia, Lowe and Liriano. I wanted Nathan, (Carlos) Lee, and Kinsler.
I soon cruised to the top of the league and whenever other teams played me, they employed my strategy and benched their starters. It didn’t matter. By that time, my offense was so stacked that when they had just six guys playing due to MLB off days, I had nine due to my deep bench.
I floundered in the playoffs as I was plagued by injuries (Carlos Lee, Carlos Quentin and Ian Kinsler all went down in the last couple weeks), but I won back my money and proved that my roommate/commissioner was not the fantasy guru after all.
There is a downside to becoming so involved in your fantasy league. While some people let it affect their work and/or relationships, most of us keep it as a nice little side project to become secretly obsessed with. But when the season ends, there is a void. We click the link saved at the top of our homepage, but there are no new numbers to crunch. Sure, fantasy football, basketball, or even hockey are worth playing, but they don’t offer the same day-in, day-out, statistically driven game that fantasy baseball does.
Sit tight fantasy fanatics, the long offseason will soon be over. Listen for the sound of baseballs popping against gloves. That’s when you’ll know to get your draft order ready.
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