Originally posted by Just Lou: They were Roto, with max games. I also played on Sandbox for a few years.... If we only have a few people playing, I guess 5 relievers will be OK. But with more than a few, we'd be wasting roster spots with middle relievers instead of closers. Only speaking for myself, I'd prefer not to have to draft 5 relief pitchers. I see your reasoning for the 5 RP, but if it comes down to drafting middle relievers, it's a waste of time.
Here's my reasoning:
Again, seeking to make this resemble reality as much as possible, what real MLB team has five quality relievers?
Every team has at least one guy who's worthless.
If we have to really scrape bottom to come up with that many each, there's still strategy involved in drafting.
True, these guys will score a minimal number of points, but they should score something, and a few points at the end of the season could make the difference.
Also, picking 5 RPs give you the chance to find a "diamond in the rough" or two, so to speak.
But the bottom line is, if there are six of us playing (or even 7 or 8), there are 30 ML teams, and each one has a closer, so that's at least 30 closers, and presumably decent relievers, right there.
And, if you look at last season's stats, which are available on the game site and can be sorted in order based on our scoring system, you'll see that there are some set-up men who got pretty decent totals for the year, in some cases better totals than closers.
Another option could be to go with 6 starters, only 4 relievers, and add an extra hitter to the bench, but the reason I don't like that it is it detracts from the "reality factor."
Edit: I looked. There are plenty of valuable relievers, IMO once you get past the first 30 (based on last year's scores.
AAMOF, the difference in total points for least season between the 25th highest scoring reliever and the 50th is only about 70 points.
Since our opinions about who will do well in the upcoming season are what makes the draft, and since I'm sure no one in our league will just let Yahoo do the draft for them based on their rating system, I don't see any problem with picking 5 RPs.)
