Designed to resemble a real MLB as much as possible, each roster will contain 25 players, as follows:
Offense:
1 Catcher (C) 1 First Baseman (1B) 1 Second Baseman (2B) 1 Third Baseman (3B) 1 Shortstop (SS) 1 Leftfielder (LF) 1 Centerfielder (CF) 1 Rightfielder (RF) 1 Utility (UT) – Can be any offensive position, will serve as Designated Hitter (DH)
5 Other Players, your Bench. These players can play any position, and will be the guys you use in the event you wish to play someone other than a starter because of injury, slumps, more favorable match-ups, etc.
**Actually, to be more precise, you won't be drafting a "Utility Player" as such. You'll ne drafting 8 position players, and 6 players for your bench. But every day's lineup will have an open spot for "Utility" which you should fill, as the ponits for the player you put there will count every day.
That's what I mean when I say that the Utility Spot is really your Designated Hitter.
So, what you should do in the draft is try to cover all your 8 field positions with a backup, keeping in mind that one of them (or possibly the same one) will be playing every day in the DH role).
Pitching:
6 Starting Pitchers (SP) 5 Relief Pitchers (RP)
See “Pitching” in the “Maximum Number Of Games Played Per Position” Section for an explanation on how to use the 6 starters
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Maximum Number Of Games Played Per Position
Offense:
162. Yahoo will track this for you with the link on the bottom right-hand corner of your team's home page.
Once you reach 162 games at an offensive position, points at this position will automatically no longer be counted by Yahoo .
This feature allows you to devote as much or as little time to the game as you wish.
You can play the same guy at a position every day with no worries, since no one player can exceed 162 games.
The only time you would want to play someone else is if your regular guy misses a game. If you don't make that game up at some time in the future, you lose that game forever, which you don't want to do since the more games you have, the more potential points you can get.
To make up the game, you would wait until a day when your regular isn't playing, and then fill the position with someone from your bench.
Also, keep in mind that if a player goes on the real-life disabled list, you can put him on your DL as well (up to 5 players can be on your DL), in which case you would also want to make up whatever games your first-stringer misses.
Or, you can take the strategy to the next level, and deliberately bench your regular in favor of someone else, because of slumps, hot streaks, or because certain hitters do especially well or poorly against certain pitchers or in certain parks.
Although I am not sure if this information will be available from the Yahoo site, it definitely is available in the ESPN Salary Cap Game, which we will presumably all be playing as well.
Pitching:
Yahoo does not allow for a “Maximum Number Of Games Played Per Position” for pitchers, which I find rather odd. A real MLB team has no maximum number of games played for relief pitchers, since a real-life MLB manager can theoretically use as many or as few as he wishes to but, as on offense, it is impossible for a pitching staff to start more than 162 games during the course of a season.
Accordingly, to impose the 162 game limit, it will have to be done “artificially”, so to speak, and this is the only part of the game which requires (albeit brief) daily attention.
This will be done as follows:
One of the Stat Categories for pitchers is Games Started (GS). Since we will have an artificially imposed maximum of 162, it will be necessary for each of us to track our number of starts ourselves, although I will post the number of starts used/available in the scoring update every day.
The number of games started by each SP is available from the “Team Log” link, at the bottom right hand corner of your team’s home page, which shows the total number of points accumulated by each player in each stat category on days in which they were in your starting lineup, whether they are still on your team or not.
Since GS is a stat category, the number of games started by each pitcher will be listed there.
Once you hit the maximum of 162 GS, I will act as Yahoo would if there were a “Maximum Number Of Games Played” feature for SPs as there is for position players, and stop adding starting pitchers score into your daily total, or subtract them from your total at the end, or whatever.
Also, to make life easier, when you hit the 162 game limit, you should simply place all of your SPs on your bench. Or, as commissioner, I can do that for anyone who happens to drop out along the way.
Now, this is where the game gets a little tricky, and the only time, really, that it does:
As stated above, each team will have 6 SPs. Since a MLB SP typically starts 33-35 games each year (barring injury), if you don’t carefully choose when to have each of your SPs in your starting lineup and when to bench them, you will hit the 162 game maximum when your 6 SPs hit their 27th start each, which should be some time in mid or late August, and at a point when each will have maybe 6-8 starts left.
If you do that, that’s fine. However…..
You will not have taken advantage of the fact that you can bench certain starting pitchers on certain days because of their past history against certain teams, or in certain parks, or because they are slumping, or whatever.
(Again, while I don’t know if this “match-up” info will be available from Yahoo, it definitely is available in the ESPN Salary Cap Game in the “Splits” section of each pitcher’s profile).
You may end up with 4 of your starters making all 34 of their starts (for a total of 136), and the other 2 making only 13 starts each. You may wind up with 5 starters making all 162 starts, and your 6th starter making none.
Or any combination at all, really. Just like a real MLB manager.
You may find at the very end of the season that all 6 of your SPs have no more scheduled starts left, and you are only at 159, so you may want to drop 3 of them and add 3 available free agent SPs that have a start left, to make sure that you maximize your points.
Even if the three that your drop are, say, Johann Santana, Chris Carpenter, and Roy Oswalt, it won't matter since they won't have any starts left among them anyway.
The way I envision it playing out – at least at the strategy level that I personally intend to take it – is that I will draft the best 6 SPs that I can (I’m not suggesting here that I’ll draft SPs first, just that, at at every position, I’ll want the best one(s) available and I’ll draft them when I think that the total number of points that one will get is more than the total number of points I can expect from another position I need to fill).
So when the draft is over I’ll have 6 SPs, but obviously some will be better than others.
So my plan would probably be to use my top 5 SPs as many times as I thought it prudent to, and fill in the rest of my starts with my 6th SP.
I know, for example – and I’m not giving away too much strategy here, because I think everyone pretty much knows this – that if I have any National league SPs on my staff, they’re gonna definitely get benched on days when they’re scheduled to pitch in Colorado, regardless of who they are.
So that’s the way to do it, I think.
Have your best 5 SPs in your starting lineup at all times, bench one of them when you think the match-up on a particular day is really bad (or if they’re slumping or whatever), replace those lost starts with starts by your 6th starter when you think that he has a favorable match-up, and be mindful at all times of the 162 game limit.
Don't get so far ahead of yourself that the 162 game limit is reached before you want it to be, and don't get so far behind in using your starters that it's so late in the season that it becomes impossible to make up all of the lost starts (like where DMC is headed in Yahoo Basketball)
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Offensive Categories & Values:
The following are all self-explanatory:
Runs Scored (+1) Runs Batted In (+1) Stolen Bases (+1) Caught Stealing (-1) Bases On Balls (+1) Hit By Pitch (+1) Singles (+1) Doubles (+2) Triples (+3) Home Runs (+4)
Also,
Grounded Into Double Play (-1): We discussed this one briefly. My thought is that since the game treats an "out" as a "neutral" occurrence, with a value of Zero, when someone hits into a double play and, in effect makes two outs with one at bat, that event should have a value of (-1).
Sacrifice Flies and Sacrifice Hits: We talked about this one also, about the possibility of assigning a (+1) value to each of these, since they were positive occurrences, but my feeling is that although a Sac Fly, for example, drives in a run, why should a player get two points for that (one for the RBI and one for the Sac Fly) when a player who does so is using up an out as well, while a player who drives in the run with a single also gets credit for two points without using up an out?
Pitching Categories & Values
The following are all self-explanatory:
Wins (+6 for each) Losses (-6 for each) Complete games (+3 for each) Shutouts (+3 for each) Saves (+8 for each) Outs (+1 for each out recorded) Hits Allowed (-1 for each allowed) Earned Runs Allowed (-3 for each allowed) Walks (-1 for each allowed) Hit By Pitch (-1 for each) Strikeouts (+1 for each recorded) Wild Pitches (-1 for each) Save Opportunities (-4 for each opportunity) Holds (+1 for each)
Games Started (+1 for each): The only reason this one is in there is because by making it a stat category it will appear in your team’s Game Log, so we all can can track our own and each others progress towards the 162 Maximum Number of SP Starts. While I originally thought that it was stupid to give everyone an extra point for that, I later realized that actually it was a good idea, because those of us who manage our teams well will get all 162 points that you can from this category, while those of us who don’t will lose a few points by not hitting the 162 game max.
Balks: I had to eliminate this category, since you are only allowed 15 stat categories, and I figured Balks was the one with the most minimal impact.
Total Bases Allowed: I went back to -1 for each hit allowed, as ESPN does it, rather than a -1 for each Total Base allowed. There’s an explanation why in my third post above.
Yes, I fooled around with some of the pitching values a bit in order to assign pitchers what I felt was their proper place in the overall spectrum of both all pitchers as well as of all players, including hitters.
For example, the SP with the most points last year (Chris Carpenter) rates below the best offensive players, like A Rod, Pujols, Ramirez, etc., but above the “second tier” offensive players, like Cabrera, Tejada, etc.
And the highest rated relief pitcher (Mariano Rivera) rates below the top SPs (Buehrle and Colon are the two rated directly above him), but above the "second tier” SPs (Brett Myers and John Patterson are the two rated directly below him).
