What is fantasy baseball? Seriously, describe fantasy baseball to a baseball fan that has never played. It’s not that easy.
First, unless you just play a standard league, very few leagues are the same. Point systems can be different, the number of players on the roster, the positions that are used, what constitutes a starting lineup and yes, how pitching staffs are built are all different from league to league.
If you ask someone who has played for years in the same league, they might not even recognize what you consider fantasy baseball at all. The easiest way for me to describe fantasy baseball is you get to be the owner, GM, and manager of your own team using the players from MLB as your basis, yet, you don’t control the playing time for any of these players. No wonder it can be so frustrating!
Last year I ran a fantasy baseball league with all Chicago Cubs Online commentators. It was a lot of fun hearing about all the different ways that people have done things in other leagues. Neil allowed me to write a weekly recap and he posted it on the CCO for the league members to have a place to discuss the league. This year we are going to do a column devoted to fantasy baseball.
I am still running the league and actually am going to add another. But this column will not be about those leagues (we will have links to the leagues if anyone does want to follow along), but here we will talk about fantasy baseball.
We will discuss all parts of fantasy baseball and especially about our beloved Cub players and how they play out in fantasy baseball. Imagine how fast our Cubs players go in the draft in a 20-team league with only Cubs fans!
As far as the new league, if you are interested in playing, please send Neil an email (shortcut to Neil’s email) with your CCO screen name. The league will be on ESPN and will follow the same point system and rules as the previous league.
My question for all of you is this, what types of league do you or have you played in and what unique rule, point system, style, etc. does your league have? Also add what website is used (ESPN, Yahoo, CBS, etc.). Just to give you an idea, ESPN offers H2H (head to head) four different ways, points, most categories, each category or total season points and they offer rotisserie style leagues. Leagues can be all of MLB, or AL or NL only. You can do a snake draft or an auction draft.
The leagues I run are ESPN, MLB, snake draft, H2H, 20 team leagues. I also play in a Yahoo, MLB, auction, H2H league that has a point system based on sabermetrics.
I hope everyone enjoys talking fantasy baseball with their fellow Cubs fans and I want to thank Neil for giving us the opportunity to talk about fantasy baseball on the CCO!