Are You Ready For Fantasy Baseball - 2009?

Good conversation!

I was thinking more along the lines of the following:
If you pick someone up, they must stay on your roster for one week (barring injury or release from a team). If you let someone go, you forfeit their contract and may never pick them up again.

Moving players around is interesting, but doing so only to gain points for one day kills the spirit of what fantasy sports is about. It's not who can use the ww to their benefit the most, but who can strategize the best players and starts. I must admit that I often wanted to do the above thing about taking every pitcher to start the next day and release them immediately so they would be on the long draw of the ww but I just didn't have the gumption.

Just as picking up the best player off the WW is a strategy, releasing a good player is also a strategy. (Unless, of course, you just don't know what you're doing ... in which case it's just dumb.) My strategy is affected, for instance, but the value I might put on the particular game I'm playing in. My game this week, for instance, is more important that my game 8 weeks ago. And I must also strategize based upon my opponent, who might have a bigger stable of SP, or perhaps is chasing Holds.

I think all of it is strategy, and just as streaming is a strategy, countering the streamer also takes strategy.


Yeah, that's just wrong.

But to clarify, you would have to hold them on your roster for a day, otherwise I believe they are able to be plucked from the WW as soon as you put them back there.

Perhaps, but how do you figure? I made a flurry of moves unrelated to pitching in the first half of the season. Not sure what point you're trying to make.

Again, no question I partook in the strategy, after I realized 5 good starts a week was not going to cut it. Oh, and Webb and Peavy went on the DL.

I'm not sure what point I was trying to make either. I don't view streaming as a bad thing at all. I'm assuming you partook of the strategy because you said you did, plus you had the most roster moves -- thus, I concluded you did the most streaming. As I said, I don't think there was all that much streaming going on, relatively speaking.

Another possiblility: limit the number of starts per week.

Aside from tweaking the scoring categories (i.e., adding losses), we could cap the number of acquisitions in a week, or the number of acquisitions in a season (I don't advocate either, btw). Looking at the available "Commish Tools," I don't think we can set a maximum on the number of starts (like we can set a minimum IP per week).

My vote would be to add the "loss" as a statistical category, thus you are penalized for picking up a poor ... what's the word, George ... jamoke? Thus, ERA/WHIP/L would be the three categories you are likely to be penalized in for streaming, and IP/W/K are the three categories in which you are perhaps going to benefit.

I like that idea. The problem is, it would not prevent streaming, only make it
more dangerous. Some will still stream, treating this as merely a game.

Why so defensive? I mean, if it's only a game, there's certainly no harm in opinionated commentary and suggestions for improvement, right?

Okay, it was kind of funny. Sorry--past my bedtime.

You had me worried there for a sec, Kool-Aid Boy.

<sigh>

So you're saying that I should move my players around more? Or dump one or two and replace them each week?

Only if it improves your team. For example, Tico is streaming pitchers today to get 2 additional starts. Not improving his team, improving his numbers in an effort to win.

Having an unlimited stable of pitchers would be a managers dream.

I don't really mind the level of streaming here. I enjoy that we all play differently. I also don't mind if Loss is added as a category - that makes sense to me and I like the resulting balance Tico described.

Shhhhhh ... that was a very guarded secret, McG.


Of course it's an effort to win. But you're telling me Joe Saunders is not an improvement over Luke Gregerson? Sez who? Saunders pitches for a good team and has won 4 straight. In any case, my opponent already has 2 holds this week. I'm not going to win that category, so why should I just sit tight chasing holds when I can focus on other categories? That wouldn't make any sense.

And dropping Stephen Drew for Hiroki Kuroda also improves my team ... again, in the sense that it might help me win. I don't need 3 shortstops at this point in the season. The flip side of my strategy is this: If someone wants Stephen Drew, there he is. If I didn't improve my team by acquiring the player I got when I dropped Drew, then by inference the player I dropped is more valuable than the player I got. So I'm helping the WW with this transaction. Not really my goal, but it makes me feel good to know I'm doing my part to help my opponents.

Saunders didn't improve my team this night, that's for sure. Doing well with a SO until the 5-run 6th. Ouch.

That inning was more fun to watch in my living room.

Making roster moves is at least half of the fun of the game, IMHO. I mean, you're the manager and that's the sort of things you do.
I can't imagine how many moves would the real managers make, if they didn't cost money to their team and the rules were as lax as in fantasy play.

Everyone -and I mean every one- has made smart and dumb moves, whether it is to win just one matchup or to build a better team looking for the pennant.
Usually, you move batters thinking of season round performance; that doesn't happen always with pitchers.

I stupidly dropped Tulowitsky, after a bad start, Pantalones (I think) got him as he turned his season around, while I was stuck with Andrus and Cabrera at SS. But I smartly dropped Giovanny Soto, who never turned his season around, and replaced him with Miguel Montero.

On the pitching side, I remember a close matchup (I think it was against the Tubas) whre I desperately needed a hold. On saturday I picked Bobby Seay (whom I've never seen pitch, but had good Hold stats) and he gave me a key Sunday hold... dropped him a few weeks later, when he was being bounced.
But then, I dropped De la Rosa when he was in a meltdown, the Tubas grabbed him when he got better, then dropped him when he allowed something like 7 earned runs, I was after him, but Tico beat me and now my former man gave him a win, 0 runs in 8 innings.
Desperate, as my pitching went below average, I grabbed Bronson Arroyo from the gutter, and he's given me decent performances.
I think this is part of the core fun of the game.

Rotisserie playing -with its inning limit- is more classical and easygoing; but face-to-face has the sort of friendly adrenaline that is proper for community playing.

I agree. It would be pretty boring if all we did was draft a team and than watch them win or lose. I got into a chess-match with, I believe, Gargamel, last week. It was fun even though he won.
One of the pitchers I ended up shuffling in was Wade Davis. McGentrix and I, this week, aren't making any roster moves. Davis threw a CG, SO for me this evening.

Agreeing that that's the fun of it for me. I won't take back that I said adding Loss made sense (as a solution), but I prefer the way the scoring stands.