Halos Heaven

Fantasy Sports, bro.

Ok so I am starting up a new league after the one I had been running for five or so years went sour slightly. I play competitively and am looking for people who know how to play, trade, and be adults. No need to fluff boners, lets get into the nitty gritty, yo:

Who we have so far:

1) PhiSlamma
2) WiHaloFan
3) ItCouldHappen
4) eyespy
5) 2pintsofbooze
6) Stuck in Romania
7) b0rd3rline
8) NathanielS
9) Moondoggy
10) jimmuscomp
11) angelsownredsux

Ten people would obviously be the minimum otherwise you have way way too much talent on the waiver wire. Tweleve seems like the reasonable max, however, we can go over that if a lot of people want in.

Here is how I am used to playing, forged from tweaks year after year to make it as fun but realistic as possible while being able to make enough moves to change your roster as you see fit:

ROSTER:

Roster is one of each; catcher, first basemen, second, third, short, center fielder, left fielder, right fielder and a utility spot which you can view as basically a DH. The players must actually qualify at the position to play there so no bullshitty "OF" positions. This gives much more value to outfielders, especially good corner ones, and is significantly more realistic than the standard "Lets have 5 OF spots, go ahead and play 5 CFers, its cool"

Pitching is 5 Starters, 4 Relievers with a Bench of 7 of whatever you want.. bringing the total to.... (brace yourself) 25. Nifty.

If you have any input on this, let me know. Nothing is set in stone but there is something much more neat about maintaining a proper 25 man roster with proper positions than having strange MI slots.

SCORING:

This is probably the thing that most people really truly care about. This changed nearly every year until we settled on this, which I love. Both categories are even, with both offense and pitching have one negative stat (walks issued and strikeouts).

I prefer walk totals to OBP because when you are in the finals its significantly more fun/easy to say "I need 4 walks today to beat WiHalo, who can I put in to do that" than "I need .54% more OBP, let me figure out what the hell that means first then Ill figure out my roster"

Same goes for walks issued. Although that stat does need some love, it seems that even if you draft amazing pitchers the person with the most Innings Pitched is going to be last or near last in walks allowed. Wins are wins. Quality Starts are a good stat as it makes up for the flaws inherent in "wins" and gives more leverage to starters. WHIP is a staple, I feel, and although it is represented slightly by having walks issued and innings pitched it also monitors your pitching staff as a whole to the effectiveness of preventing baserunners.

We have extra base hits in to give value to doubles hitters (Kendrick). Home runs tend to be overvalued in standard leagues and players who hit for good power but not over the fence tend to be completely ignored.

As for starts we have a cap of 7 per week. 7 Days per matchup, 7 starts. Streaming pitchers is brainless and takes away from the awesomeness and realisticness of trying to figure out if you want to start Bud Norris against the Nationals or see if Ubaldo can rebound against the Dodgers for your last start of the week when you are down 6.1 innings pitches, 5 strikeouts, and are tied in wins. Streaming ruins a lot of that strategy and real life like decision making that I feel make fantasy baseball fun.

Again, none of this is set in any kind of stone. Just giving you my point of view.

We usually have a add cap of 60 throughout the whole season. 60 seems like a lot, however, it prevents people from annoying dropping and adding people willy nilly and gives the process thought and value. I would like to explore a FAAB system or something, because I really like that idea.

For drafts its snake, random picked. Auction just takes too long with baseball. ESPN has a FANTASTIC online live draft system. I have used every FLB site I can find and I prefer ESPN by a lot. If you have a site you love let me know.

We usually do a keeper system as well, but it was fledgling and would love to bring it to a full, robust keeper system with the possibility of adding minor league talent in some way to rosters. Like a baby AAA farm system on your team every year that you have to carefully manage.

Also, im my opinion, Head to Head style is significantly better than Roto in about every way. Accumulating stats in the same spreadsheet as 10 people is so lackluster compared to letting 2pints know he is awful and is going down this week when I face him. It just adds so much more. I feel like its a must, but again, its up to the majority.

I am sure I am leaving things out, but if you want in, or want to discuss the league set up, or anything this would be the place to do it. As soon as we agree on rules, setup, site, and get the full batch of people then I will make the league and send invites.

Thanks, you guys are awesome

<3 Phi