Why nobody will join your fantasy baseball league

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heyzeus
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Why nobody will join your fantasy baseball league

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Famous Mortimer
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Re: Why nobody will join your fantasy baseball league

Post by Famous Mortimer »

I'm in one other league, and from when I joined in 2008 it's gone from needing an overflow league to cope with all the people from the site who wanted to take part, to (as of today) only have 6 entrants and almost certainly closing down.

AWvsCBsteeeerike3
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Re: Why nobody will join your fantasy baseball league

Post by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 »

I think the easiest thing to say is that it's definitely a checkers and chess comparison
Ie, people are stupid and lazy.

But, it's true, playing fantasy baseball is a huge time commitment.

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go birds
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Re: Why nobody will join your fantasy baseball league

Post by go birds »

I read this article (which is good) and then fell right down the rabbit hole for like 2 hours. There's a [expletive] load of other good links on that site.

Anyway...my big money league (pay out of roughly $3k) has been going strong for 10 years. Dynasty league/13 keepers/round value/farm league/etc. A few of us have repeatedly talked about branching off and starting our league with less rules bc goddamnit were too damn old for this [expletive].

But here we are again, another year, another team.

Fantasy baseball is basically indentured servitude.

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cardinalkarp
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Re: Why nobody will join your fantasy baseball league

Post by cardinalkarp »

I'm in one and it's no trouble what-so-ever. You set the lineup once a week and that's it.

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Re: Why nobody will join your fantasy baseball league

Post by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 »

cardinalkarp wrote:I'm in one and it's no trouble what-so-ever. You set the lineup once a week and that's it.
I haven't played fantasy football in some time. So, perhaps I don't remember correctly. But...but...but....it seems fantasy football is tied much more with the draft and trades than with the upkeep of a team.

In football, there are fewer positions if i recall: QB, WRx2,RBx2, TE, UTIL (WR/TE/RB), kicker, defense. That's 9 players. Then there's a bench of what, another 7 or so players? Comparatively, baseball has 16ish starters and 20 some odd total positions.

Football sees a few breakout stars every year, but they're usually already on a roster. Baseball constantly has breakout stars that are called up int he middle of a season that aren't on a roster after the draft. The scrapheap is much larger and tougher to sift through.

Football has one game a week which makes the matchup much more easily recognizable. In baseball, it's more about who is hot/not. Who is healthier. There's two completely separate things to look at pitching/offense.

In short, baseballs season is twice as long, has twice as many players, has seemingly twice as much turnover and an introduction of infinitely more players.

A good draft can make a fantasy football year, whereas a good draft combined with good transactions is needed for fantasy baseball and those transactions take a lot of time to research.

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cardinalkarp
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Re: Why nobody will join your fantasy baseball league

Post by cardinalkarp »

If it was a $$ league I guess I could see people wanting to spend lots of time messing w/ things...but I'm just doing mine for fun, so if something doesn't get taken care of it's not the end of the world.

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Re: Why nobody will join your fantasy baseball league

Post by mikechamp »

I agree with karp. Our FBB league (daily, points, non-keeper) is just for fun, and sometimes potential new managers wonder how much time it will take. I tell them 5 minutes a day to check your lineup/rotation will keep you in the running for a podium spot.

We're in our 12th season. We have 8 managers this year, and we've already got interest from 3 new and/or past managers for next season, so I could see us getting up to 11 teams in 2016.

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Re: Why nobody will join your fantasy baseball league

Post by pioneer98 »

I knew it was a bad sign when Yahoo! started listing Fantasy Football above Fantasy Baseball on their list...During baseball season and football's offseason.

I love Fantasy Baseball. I have 4 teams in Benchwarmer Baseball (dynasty format). Benchwarmer seems to be slowly growing and adding a few more teams and leagues each year. It did take me a lot of time the first year I did it, because I didn't understand the best way to manage salaries and the salary cap. Now that I have that part figured out, it takes a lot less time. That being said, I had a rash of injuries earlier this year (sometimes I'd have the same injured player on 3 teams). It did take some time to figure out who to pick up to replace them. You do have an advantage if you can find that unknown rookie who is going to break out, or a veteran coming off a bad season that bonces back that you can pick up cheap. So you can get sucked in searching for that guy. But the basic strategy is to put together the best group of players you can and the rest is luck, just like any fantasy league.

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Re: Why nobody will join your fantasy baseball league

Post by pioneer98 »

AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:
cardinalkarp wrote:I'm in one and it's no trouble what-so-ever. You set the lineup once a week and that's it.
I haven't played fantasy football in some time. So, perhaps I don't remember correctly. But...but...but....it seems fantasy football is tied much more with the draft and trades than with the upkeep of a team.

In football, there are fewer positions if i recall: QB, WRx2,RBx2, TE, UTIL (WR/TE/RB), kicker, defense. That's 9 players. Then there's a bench of what, another 7 or so players? Comparatively, baseball has 16ish starters and 20 some odd total positions.

Football sees a few breakout stars every year, but they're usually already on a roster. Baseball constantly has breakout stars that are called up int he middle of a season that aren't on a roster after the draft. The scrapheap is much larger and tougher to sift through.

Football has one game a week which makes the matchup much more easily recognizable. In baseball, it's more about who is hot/not. Who is healthier. There's two completely separate things to look at pitching/offense.

In short, baseballs season is twice as long, has twice as many players, has seemingly twice as much turnover and an introduction of infinitely more players.

A good draft can make a fantasy football year, whereas a good draft combined with good transactions is needed for fantasy baseball and those transactions take a lot of time to research.

You're not wrong.....But the part about baseball being about who is hot/not and who is healthier, etc is a problem in REAL baseball, too. Heck, we struggle with it in the game threads. Slumps don't really exist quite the same way in football. Injuries do though.

Another thing is that baseball has really gone in a geeky direction with sabermetrics and this stuff. And it's more OK today than probably at any other time to be a geek. But geeks are only cool within their niche, with other fans that already have at least a basic understanding and appreciation. In other words, I don't think anyone with zero baseball knowledge would become a baseball fan after reading Fangraphs. And Fantasy Baseball is kind of geeky like that, too. Fantasy football is more accessible to casual fans since the complexity level is lower, as you point out.

Or maybe look at it this way: by managing a fantasy team, you are kind of aspiring/pretending to be the GM of a team, right? Well, in real baseball the trend is to hire guys with advanced degrees in Economics (or similar) from prestigious colleges to be GM. Geeks!!!!!!!!! Guys like Mozeliak, Luhnow, Zaidi, etc. In football, you have guys like John Elway and Jerry Jones as GM. Which set of GMs would you rather sit down and have a beer with?

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