I'd like to get a baseball pool going similar to the ahl and fchl. Anyone have any ideas and interest?

in obv

You can have a simple style where Yahoo keeps stats

TB + SB + BB + RBI - (E + (4? x team runs allowed)) ?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_statistics

edit: not that I like baseball

I am in. All the way, even though I'd have a lot of catching up to do prospect-wise.

I floated this idea in the FCHL, scoring might be tricky and rosters difficult as well. What do you do with pitchers? I kind of like the idea of treating 'pitching' almost exactly like goaltending.

I could do without errors being a part of scoring, but otherwise I'm sure whatever Duane suggested was smart.

i would prefer an AL only

Boo.

Fwiw, when the idea was floated in the FCHL, none of our clever programmers had enough interest to devote the necessary time to setting up a site for it. So we'd likely need to keep it relatively simple (just relatively!) unless we're going to get people willing to be as hardcore as the AHL'ers.

I am interested. Was interested when Danny brought it up last year in the fchl.

I'd be in, but only if it was very simple.

I think something like batters have something like:

Single 1 point, Double 2, Triple 3, Home Run 4.

Forget RBI's, Stolen Bases, Batting %, any of that.

Then instead of having pitchers, you get teams, and every run scored is like minus one.

That way it's extremely easy to do and easy to keep track of.

I would prefer this too.

That's TB; total bases (batted?)

Would you guys join a hockey pool that was Eastern Conference only? This seems silly to me. How do AL-only leagues work when there is an inter-league trade? Do you just lose the player?

Id probably be in, but more likely if it was AL only.

Also, Id rather put in a classic 4*4 or 5*5, ie batting*pitching categories.
HR, R, RBI, SB, AVG
W, SV, K, ERA, WHIP

fairly traditional.

just my 2cents.

Because you can go deeper in a baseball pool, because it has more categories. Picking up the reserve OF on Oakland might make sense if you think hes going to steal bases for you, and you think you need that category. Your not gonna pick up Wayne Primeau in the FCHL under any circumstance.

Im in a pool that has 12 teams, AL only. It makes it much more strategic, and it works great for both the experienced (depth of the pool) and newbies to the sport (you only have to research 1 league)

In my league, its kinda cutthroat, you just lose the player that goes to NL. In others, you can keep him til the end of that year, but then hes gone.

Yeah, just total bases to make it easy.

I disagree with this - the backup outfielder is just like picking up a 3rd-4th liner who might pick up 80 PIMs. Plus, seems like that logic applies to leagues with roto scoring, which wouldn't fit the FCHL/AHL model.

Depends how deep you want to go, but I agree it can make it more or less strategic. I think the losing a player aspect simply does not correspond with the AHL/FCHL model. Can you imagine signing a guy to a big 5-year deal, or picking a guy first overall, just to lose them forever?

Yeah I think I can imagine that. Or I can just ask whoever owns Zherdev, Radulov....

I assumed it would be roto. Sorry if I was wrong, but the beauty of a baseball pool is the wide range of stats. If you just do a baseball pool based on 1 category, then yeah, just make it all of baseball, and let everyone draft only the stars.
Personally, I would find that boring. Just me.

Also, I can understand your hesitancy about a 1 league only pool. I felt the same when I joined an AL Only pool. But its awesome. Maybe Im just doing a poor job of explaining the benefits.

This reminded me of the old HBO show with Robert Wuhl "Arliss" where he was a sports agent. Their pool was NL only so they traded away their ace in the fantasy pool then orchestrated a trade that sent him to an american league team...lol

I loved that show.

going that deep where an 80pim guy is a good player means having to have like 30poolies.

Since most pools will only have like 10-12, being AL only makes it more viable to have to know the full rosters, and not just stars.

I would be interested pending a look at the setup of course.
Personally I wouldn't want it to be just AL only, but it's not a breaking point for me.

I'd be more a fan if it was AL only. I like Arp's idea of how it is more cut throat if your guy gets traded.

I am in.

I like the idea of an AL only but in a keeper league it is a big penalty if one of your keepers gets traded to the NL IMO. It depends of how many teams are in the pool. If we get 15 then AL/NL combined would work. If we get 10, then AL only is the way to go. Anything in between is a question mark.

I would love to keep it simple and make it like AHL/FCHL. How about something like thise:

.5 pt for runs
.5 pt for rbi

-.05 for your team pitching (works just like the AHL/FCHL were you have team pitching not individuals.)

agree.

disagree with the pts for just runs+rbi, but Im good with the majority, and maybe that simplicity gets more guys into the pool?

Yeah, it would be a lot easier if you could keep it as simple as possible.

What kind of money are you guys thinking about? I'd definitely be interested in joining if it was reasonable. I'd have a lot of research to do, and I'd be an underdog from the get go, but it would be fun.

I also maybe interested. I was in an AL only league for 5 years and was not committing this year (lost interest).

Can't speak for the people in this potential pool, but if they were looking at anything like the FCHL, it'd be $30/year, which is obviously next to nothing, but keeps things interesting enough.

Yeah, I'd want to keep the money in line with the FCHL, as opposed to the AHL! Preferably just a nominal entry fee, no money for transactions, etc.



Zherdev and Radulov (Hudler?) is not a fair comparison.

Any league where the rules are the same for everyone is fair, so I would still be in for an AL-only league. Just seems like we'd be unnecessarily restricting ourselves. If we're only doing batters, and have, say 12 people. FCHL rosters have 26 players. That's 312 total players. 30 MLB teams, 8 starters each, that's 240. If we're doing rosters and farm teams in line with MLB, seems like we have an appropriate amount.

I'm also far less interested in a league that involves 'just the stars.'



I'm with this. I'd be happy with more stats, but it will have to be relatively simple unless we can convince someone to program something clever.

See, the "just batters" seems a lot more ridiculous to me than saying just 1 league.
Yes, if you eliminate pitchers (which is about 40% of the league), then yeah, its the same I guess. But thats cause you eliminated 40% of the league!
that feels like "unnecessarily restricting ourselves" to me!

Maybe its just what Im used to. Dont mean to argue, I really dont care, and your entitled to your opinion, just trying to help what might be the next FCBL.

I don't disagree, and would also be happy to be in a league with any of these rules. Pitching seems more difficult to decide on stats, plus you have the whole issue of adjusting the importance of pitching and hitting. I think including actual pitchers would complicate the league to an extent that would disclude people, unless we made the rosters, contracts, cap space, farm, etc simpler than the FCHL/AHL.

Is disclude a real word?

Yes...

Main Entry: disclude
Part of Speech: v
Definition: to disclose, make known


Although, was it used correctly?



I think we need to figure out how many teams there will be.

Right now based on posts...

Dale
Serge
Duane?
Danny
Steve
Don
Arp?
Speed
John
Dubey
Wayne



That is 11 right now.


If we have no programming like in the FCHL to keep scores and such then we need to make the stats easier to tabulate each game day or whoever is in charge of that will get burned out pretty quick.

I guess with 12 people or 15 we could do Pitchers.

What is the penalty for not fielding a pitcher if none of your pitchers are in the rotation that day? I think it was discussed last year that you would have 3 gamedays a week on the busy days but what if your pitchers are on a rotation where they never play on one of those days? I think if you use pitchers you need to play many more games to allow all the teams a fair shot at playing pitchers. As opposed to doing teams. Can you do teams but add more stats?

1 pt for a W
-.5 for runs against
.5 for a save
-.25 for a walk
.25 for a SO

Still add more stats but still use the team.

With batters to expand stats

1pts for HR
.25 for double
.50 for triple
.50 for RBI
.25 for Run
-.25 for SO
.25 for walk
.25 for SB


I don't know. There is a lot of stats you can play around with.

It sounds to me that people aren't too interested in standard 5x5 scoring or maybe they just don't know what they would be getting into. This would be a fun type of direction to go while combining a few peoples ideas.

Start any 10 batters each week. Minimal stats would be tracked my suggestion would be HR +4 SB +3 BB +1. This would make it more then just a HR derby although if even less stats are better then just doing HR's would make it super easy to track.

Start any 3 pitchers each week. Only W-L matter for the team on games pitchers start. +10 for a win -10 for a loss. There could be a minimum games clause here or count as no goalies in the hockey pools.

How about unclude? outclude?

You can remove the ? from my name, I am definitely interested/in

It's not a real word according to my spell check, but I'll trust Steve (just not Danny).

I'm NOT in, fwiw, guys. I don't give a shit about baseball.

Fwiw guys, in place of automated scoring, and in place of having one person do all the work, you could have your opponent tabulate your score for each game day, and you do the same for him of course. Since we always know our own scores, we can easily double check to make sure our score is correct, etc. Plus everyone is honourable, I'm sure.

even though Zach isn't in. I think he would be an excellent candidate to do the scores for us.

Webster's must have discluded it by accident.


I'm sure there are a few people around (baseball forum?) that would be good additions but haven't said anything yet. Depending on the complexity, etc, I bet we can get at least 10 and probably 12.

Im more a ?.

Little to do with the rules. I would probably not be in it if you guys decided that people had to tabulate their own scores. I just dont have the time in the summer/September.

If we can have 2 or 3 people to keep track of scores then it should be fine and I would be okay with doing that. Just saying.

I will do all your score tabulation if it gets you in the league. I love you that much.

Like Steve, I probably have enough free time for the forseeable future to tabulate (or co-tabulate) scores for the entire league. Unlike Steve, I can actually add and use a computer, so we'll have at least one qualified candidate.

i also dont have time to do scores in the summer unfortunately...

I am serious that I can do scores. I do nothing at work all freaking day.

Like yesterday...

10am - got in, checked my email, talked to co worker to see what happened over the weekend.
10:10am - emailed my wife
10:12am - surfed internet
1:30pm - went to lunch
1:50 pm got back and ate lunch
2:15 - went to netflix and watched Full Metal Jacket
4:15 - surfed the internet
5:00- went home.


Today

12pm - got in to work
12:05 - checked email
12:06 - talked to cleaners
12:10 - surfed internet
12:30- got a phone call
12:37- went back to the internet
1:00 found a site where you play curling. Played a game. Lost 11-13
2:10 had a visitor, showed them around
2:25 - surfed on the internet
3:45 - still surfing


As long as people can wait till the next day for scores, I have all the freaking time in the world to help out a lot with that aspect as long as we don't have like 25 different scoring categories.

missed this post

Dammit!

next day is perfect...This year in the AHL sometimes we waited 5 days

This is something I can agree on, I really do like the beneficiary of the expanded NL pool, plus the strategy that would go into it, but if we do not get enough teams or if we plain have a majority vote it's something I'd certainly be ok with!



That sounds like music to my ears, perfect "target zone" if you will for me, somewhere around there, $20-50 would be where I'd be in.



Seems like a complicated problem, yet something that if we used pitchers would clearly have to deal with.
Regarding stats in general, I think to find a marriage between simplicity of stats and a decent number of stats (ie. chance to get points/lose points) would be best. Not the easiest to come up with, but I think we should start doing a vote a.s.a.p. perhaps? It would allow us to settle some things before the season and give guys a good chunk of time to do some researching/mulling it over. I think the more amount of things we get locked down fast, the better. It's going to prevent the beginning of the season, or last week or so to be much less hectic.

For the record, if we were voting, I would vote for AL only, since my baseball knowledge is limited. However, I'm happy with whatever everyone decides.

Just playing around with ideas of stats that would be easier to tabulate ( i don't want to do average or ERA or WHIP). I like the idea of negative stats for both batters and pitchers. You can dress Granderson and hope he gets a HR and SB but you know he is a strike out magnet so you have to work around that at times.

I am not saying each stat has to be used but you fantasy guru's can look and see if there can be a balance created.

Positive stats for Batting

Hits
HR's
RBI
Walks
Stolen Bases
Runs

Negative stats for batting
Strike outs


Positive stats for individual pitchers or team pitchers

Win
Strike outs
Saves
Holds
Innings pitched if individual pitchers

Negative stats for pitchers

Loss
Walks
Earned Runs
HR's against

The thing I've been mulling over is, let's say we do not use hits as a barometer for points for a batter.
What if a guy has a clean 2-4. Meaning, no runs, no walks, just two singles, no runs scored, no RBI's. By no means is that going to be a bad game. This is going to happen far more to those guys who are the "table setters". That would be my argument to include hits. If you've got a guy slotted, and this happens to him it'll be a bit of a jipped feeling.

I'm extremely worried about getting too gritty with stats to the nearest one hundredth of a point, but I'm just going to throw this out there. Perhaps it will get some discussion going and we can mold it from there.

Template:

Pitchers

Win - 2 point
Loss - (-.5 point)
Save - 1 point
Strikeout - .25 point
Walk - (-.25 point)
Run Allowed ( -.25 point) (Go with ER or just R?)

Batters

Hit - .25 point
Double - .5 point
Triple - .5 point
Home Run - 1 point
Strikeout - (-.25 point)
Stolen Base - .25 point
Caught Stealing - (.25 point)
Walk - .25 point
RBI - .5 point
Run - .5 point

(I think batters need to be trimmed in some stat areas, but I tried to balance it as much as so a team doesn't just decide to go without any pitching at all, and not completely screw over the slap hitters in this format.)

Discuss.

When did you "have" to wait give days? You obviously have Internet access.