Who's Ready for a New Year?
OK, everyone, remember where we left off? I didn’t. Had to
think about it. Dean is the current champion. He had sold some talent in 2024
giving him a decent head start in 2025 that he executed well. He survived a
mid-season scare and played well in the playoffs. Keith and Paul really sold
out last year to try to keep up, they made the playoffs but came up short. Dave
had the best team during the regular season last year winning the power ranks
crown, but came up short in the playoffs. Last year was the down year after Max’s
big sell off for a championship in 2024, props. On to the next one.
We’ve intentionally kept the league rules very stable for a
number of years now. The last big rule change was the allowance of draft pick
trades, and that was all the way back in 2023. It took us a season to
understand the possibilities of this and for a certain someone (COUGH, Max), to
find the loopholes and/or be interested in selling off future years for the current
year. But I digress, enough of the history lesson. A cool thing about this
league is that we adapt to keep up with evolving interests. That’s what I’m
proposing. My biggest interest is in sustained competitive balance, it seems
that a number of you feel the same way.
I opened up the floor for rule changes at the end of last season
and got a handful of ideas back. Arthur just said to remove all restrictions
but I honestly think we’re pretty close to that (and a few options are being
proposed below to move further that direction, so unless a particular wording
is proposed, I’ll just carry on). Here are the rule changes we’re proposing and
some quick explanations, pros, and cons I can think of in case you’re
interested. I’ve set up a survey monkey so the actual voting link will be at
the end.
- End
the season one week earlier
- Pro:
no need to deal with the starting pitching ‘bingo’ and playoff player resting
malaise of late September; Yahoo's restriction where rosters have to lock
the night before games do not facilitate the flexibility needed to
execute this well and the drama all happens during the fantasy playoffs. We’re
not mind readers and it messes with championships.
- Con:
classical fantasy baseball goes all the way to the end of the MLB reason season and there is an
argument there is a skill in being flexible and ready for ‘bingo.’
- Change
2 bench spots to starting hitter spots (likely an Infield Spot (IF) and an
Outfield Spot (OF))
- Explanation:
our league rules are set up to over-value pitching, which was a pivot a few years ago to address pitching streaming issues. We hold about 15-18
pitchers and they can all play, but we can’t play more than 12-13
hitters. This would address that.
- Pro:
adds more balance to our rosters without increasing the roster size; this
would keep the free agent wire interesting and making pitching talent on
the wire even more interesting.
- Con:
some may say it was already hard enough to fill our rosters with everyday
hitters, this would make that harder
- Remove
maximum moves per week
- Pro:
with as deep as the rosters are now: we don’t need the streaming pitching
protections that this rule once provided and many of the streaming
pitchers aren’t that good anyway.
- Con:
opens the door to the active managers getting more ‘lottery tickets to
take chances on players,’ for better or for worse
- Remove
restrictions around number of picks held in any rounds
- Explanation:
we put these restrictions in place to prevent teams tanking or holding
too many draft picks for the next year to prevent creating an uneven
advantage heading into the next draft. Well. We found ways around that
AND we didn’t install protections the other direction so now the rules
are off-weighted AND we voted against fixing it last year. This rule no
longer prevents tanking or outweighed-draft-capital-acquisition, it only
over-complicates draft pick trading.
- Pro:
save Michael the sanity during trade deadline season. Protect the
less-analytically-inclined managers that don’t care to talk about draft
pick dollar values
- Cons:
you hate Michael and/or you want to be able to take advantage of a
manager
- Update
bidding wars:
- Explanation:
there’s a lot of fine print required here, and I can share with anyone
that cares what I have in mind, but for voting purposes, let’s just say
that the proposal will shorten bidding wars and require less back and forth
AND it will put slightly more value in the first pair of managers
that make a trade and slightly less value in vultures just waiting
for a deal to come in to outbid it
- Pro:
less headache to get trades across the finish line. It’s not fair to
managers that actually agree to trades to then deal with 20 text messages
and emails for a week nor is it fair to either manager to have a trade
bid linger for days on end.
- Con:
the current process is as fair as it gets and if you want the player or
pick bad enough you should have to work for it
- Anti-tanking option a) allow unlimited draft picks with one caveat: You
cannot trade away rounds 1-5 during the season.
- Explanation:
This will limit the advantage of teams for the next year. The way
it is set up, teams should alternate years of buying and selling to
maximize your chances. This will limit the skipping a year
strategy.
- Pro:
limits draft capital able to be dealt during the season to prevent tanking
- Con:
people should be allowed to tank if they can handle the repercussions
- Anti-tanking option b) the
loser of the Bourbon Street Championship (BSC) forfeits their third round pick to the BSC champion with
the offsetting pick being in the 30th round…IF the loser of the BSC acquired
during the year more than $20 of next year’s draft capital than they had
to start the year (approximately a third round pick)
- Explanation: If you want to sell off your team you’d better not
lose the BSC.
- Pro:
we’re tired of people selling off their team to go for a championship and
then throwing away the next year.
- Con:
let teams manage however they want and/or this punishment is too much
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