After that I’d say live action draft, having a clock on me helps.

I think points systems are very stupid for baseball (as opposed to football where it’s the best way) and head to head would, i think, be an awful choice if we’re doing lineups on a weekly basis (which I really don’t like, for what it’s worth). Doing head to head would defeat much of the purpose of going to weekly lineups since a great deal of the league becomes scouring for pitches with two starts in the same week rather than building the best staff possible.

Bottom line, I think roto is the way to go by far and head to head isn’t worth considering unless we shift to daily lineups and transactions.

but I will say I prefer head to head. I just think it’s more fun.

I am really against leagues with too many stats, and particularly hate most negative stats (batter K’s and errors, pitcher walks, etc), but there are a few stats we could choose to go with on top on the standard 5×5. In one of my yearly leagues we’ve added Holds for pitchers, which makes setup men more valuable/required and gotten rid of Batting average in favor of OBP and Slg%, making for 6 categories on either side. Honestly, I wouldn’t add too many more different stats than that as you either start to double and triple up on certain at bat outcomes or really muddle the pot.reward players for simply playing less.

Otherwise IF’s become to valuable. Getting a good CF becomes a priority after MI.

If we just make it generic “pitchers” there needs to be an inning cap and floor, imo. The strategy of just loading up on closers to punt saves and wins but do well in whip, ERA, and saves, is strategically smart sometimes, but it’s really unrealistic and annoying, and I don’t like leagues that allow it. I prefer leagues that require teams to have all sorts of pitchers, which is why holds are cool, because you need setup men, closers, and a basically full starting staff.

Catchers- Catchers are boring as hell to deal with anyway. If we had to catcher spots, we’d basically have every ML catcher on rosters, which means you are constantly fiddling with deciding who’s getting an off day when, which is just a pain, and most catchers aren’t that different anyway. I’d go with 1 catcher.

IF – I like not having extra extraneous infielders required to play (ie, spots for 1B, 2B, SS, 3B, as well as required Ci and MI starters). I’d generally prefer to have just the set positions.

OF – I think 5 OF is excessive, as is requiring a specific LF, RF, and CF 9especially since in real life there is no reason a lot of RF’s, for example, couldn’t switch to left, but the system won’t let them because the just happen to play right). I would think it might be cool to have 3 generic OF spots and one specific CF spot though, as it would require everyone to look into this less offensively powerful pool. If you want more specificity, maybe 1 or 2 COF spots, 1 CF spot, and then generic OF spots until there are 4 positions. If we add the 5th OF spot, we should add another IF spot so isn’t unbalanced. If we add the generic CF spot, I’d actually support adding a generic MI spot as the last IF spot so guys had to select from marginal players instead of everybody just drafting another 1B to play their IF spot.

Util/DH – One of these is plenty, IMO. If guys really want to force utility players, we can put it in in the form of the required MI spot.

Pitchers – If we add holds, 9 is probably too few (need 2 closers, 2 or 3 setup men, 5 starters) and I might even advocate a 10 man staff. Without holds, 9 is fine.

DL – 1 seems foolishly restrictive to me, in general, especially since you cannot cut people right off the DL list on CBSSports (ie you have to drop somebody else, put the DL player back on regular roster, and THEN cut them). Depending on the size of our rosters ultimately, I think 2 DL slots is probably enough, with maybe 3 if we go with bigger rosters.

Bench – Cna you make the bench specifically devided between pitchers and hitters? If so, we could do a 9 man staff, for example, with 2 pitching bench spots, then give two hitting bench spots. If we cannot do that, I’d prefer maybe 3 bench spots, but it again depends on the size of our rosters. Too many bench spots, especially with this big of a league, really depletes the intrigue along the waiver wire, which is a lot of the fun. But too small of benches leaves an annoying small amount of flexibility. It’s good to have a couple bench spots though…

I guess my preferred roster setup would be C, 1B, 2B, SS, 3B, MI, OF, OF, OF, CF, DH

In general I’m against having too many of the generic MI/CIF, UTIl, etc slots since having lots of those flex spots devalues guys who can play many positions and still hit, whom I think should keep some level of special value by being flexible (CHone Figgans back in the day, along with Brandon Inge, were the kings of this kind).

Forces owners to have each OF position, but also gives flexibility. I was also considering CF,CF,OF,OF,OF to force the CF issue, but that would probably be too many center fielders.

Even though I’m over-spread out in fantasy leagues and should want weekly, I have one huge problem with that format (other than midweek injuries being a huge deal): A HUGE component of the league becomes filling your staff with pitchers who have two starts that week, simply because of how the calendar falls. Evaluating players more based on the dates of their starting rotation, rather than their sleeper value or matchups or anything else is really… not fun to me. Also, it’s a ton of work, which at least partially offsets the time save you get by making lineup changes weekly.

But it’s a great comunity thing, so we encourage it.

Plus, they sponser the league…the top-tier league…for free. So it has to be on the front page.

So I’m waffling. Span Man has a great point, for a fresh league like this it may not be best to jump right into contracts and keepers. So I’m reversing my stance for the moment – no keepers.