When does the Salary Cap league get started?

Don Malta, Don Sicilia, is this an option that you would consider in lieu of setting a max innings pitched?


Don Cardi

I hope the number will very liberal since I'm almost guaranteed to be the league leader again in roster moves.

Shouldn't that be up to the owner how they want to use their innings?

Keep your politics OUT of the sports thread!

It depends. One of the reasons given for putting in a limit was to make the game more realistic. If someone uses almost all starters or all relievers to max out their limit, then it isn't very realistic.

I thought for sure this would be the reply I got from DC.

Here's my final opinion on this, and then I'll leave it up to the powers that be. I feel if someone is willing to enforce the 162 game SP limit, it should definitely be there. There was no problem with "bullpen manipulation" last season, and I don't see it as a problem this season. I don't really like the max innings or max roster moves. I also feel the "save opportunity" value should be lowered from -6 to -5 or -4.

We are interchangeable lol

Was it the blown saves that you had a problem with before?

And what is save opportunity exactly

Last season a RP that came into a game in a save opportunity was charged -6 points. If he got the save, he got 8 points for a net total of 2 points for the save. IMO this net value is too low, and should be between 3 and 5 points.

Save opportunities. When a pitcher 1) enters the game with a lead of three or fewer runs and pitches at least one inning, 2) enters the game with the potential tying run on base, at bat, or on deck, or 3) pitches three or more innings with a lead and is credited with a save by the official scorer.

The negative number is what was throwing me off as far as what a save opportunity was lol.

3 to 5 sounds about right. So if I understand correctly a blown save did not cost you anything more than the -6 correct?

Well if you pitcher blew the save, more than likely he gave up a few hits, at least 1 run, and possibly lost. Add it all up, and your closer could be looking at -20+ points for a bad outing.

I understand that, but its not like you are getting an additional 5 points taken off for the blown save?

Also, why are we even doing save opportunities, I'm used to having a save getting you say 5 and a blown save costing you 5, why are closers being docked just for entering the game.

IMO that's ridiculous. Are you saying that if my relief pitcher entered the game in a save opportunity situation, he starts out with -6 points? What's the resoning behind that? Why in the world should a relief pitcher in a save situation start out with -6 points before throwing the first pitch?

If anything he should be penalized IF he blew the save opportunity, not before. With this setting he's penalized right off the bat even if he saves the game. Makes no sense to me. Truthfully this league is getting a bit too complex for a game that's supposed to be enjoyed.

Imagine if MLB penalize a pitcher for just stepping into a save opportunity?


Don Cardi

I agree 100%. I practically begged PL to change this before last season started, but he wouldn't do it. He thought it made great closers much more valuable than mediocre ones. I argued it made middle relievers more valuable than closers. Unless it's changed, this season is setup the same way. I believe a closer should lose something for blowing a save, but he must get more than 2 points for getting a save.

Is there going to be a salary cap league? I prefer those when it comes to baseball, but I'll play both.

It will be difficult for me to get off of work early enough to be a part of the draft, but I'll do what I have to.

However, if there are others that will have a hard time being here for the draft maybe we could possibly move the draft to a weekend day?

I prefer it stays during the week, and the 28th works for me.

....I went back and read the entire thread leading up to the start of last season's game. I had forgotten how hard I tried to convince PL into reducing the number of active RP from 5 to 2. Maybe that's an option we can explore this season. Instead of loading up our rosters with middle relievers, we can make saves worth more points, and limit active RP to 2 or 3 per day. This way RP manipulation will really be impossible. Every other fantasy league I've every played in always had a 2 per day limit.

Just another idea to consider.

In a real baseball season, if your team has SPs that pitch through the 7th inning everyday, doesn't it mean your relief pitchers pitch less innings. And if you have crappy SPs, your RPs will pitch a lot of innings.

Why wouldn't this be also the case in fantasy baseball? Isn't the point of fantasy baseball to simulate a real baseball season?

In any case, I'm fine either way. Like JL said, we'll just draft accordingly to the settings.

Nothing, other than there are only 6 SP spots available, I guess.

I think we're all in agreement that neither way is perfect.

Personally, I'd rather not set a limit on the number of transactions (which also includes trades).

Bethie, BL - Salary Cap game coming soon. Last time I checked, ESPN didn't have the game up yet. Will check again.

I like JL's ideas re: relief pitching. Listen to the man!

I didn't review all of Plaw's analyses from last year, but.....

MLB teams carry a 25-man roster for most of the regular season, and all of the post season. The way it's set up now, it's the same for our league:

C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, LF, CF, RF, Util/DH,
SP, SP, SP, SP, SP, SP,
RP, RP, RP, RP, RP,
BN, BN, BN, BN, BN

(I'm fairly certain that BN positions are split up between hitters and pitchers, if I remember correctly)

Real teams have 11-12 pitchers on their active roster: 5 SP's and 6-7 RP's. Our six SP's could really be cut to 5, like a typical squad. I don't mind have a 6th as a reserve, but something else to think about.

Although obviously teams stick with the usual 2-4 RP's on any good outing (closer, set-up man, long/short relievers, lefty/righty specialists)... they could go through almost all of them in a long game.

There are only really a handful of great closers out there, so limiting RPs to 2 slots would in effect, I think, eliminate most of the use of middle relievers. And with only 2 RP slots, you could easily go days without any pitching points whatsoever. There are only 5 Bench slots for your entire team (if I remember correctly?), so I don't think 2 RP slots would cut it unless we increased the Bench limit; otherwise most of the RPs will be unused in the free agent pool.

Another thing to consider is that SP's get 30-something starts/season... RPs can pitch 60-80+ games/season, which is a lot of innings. Non-closing RP's also are more susceptible to getting awarded with W's and L's than closers are, so I think we need them.

To be most realistic, we'd have 5 SP's and 6 RP's. But obviously most of the fun in fantasy is with offense so I don't mind putting more concentration on that. But we can still only play 9 offensive players/day.

I think we should consider lowering SP's from 6 to 5, leaving RP's at 4-5 (altho 6 would be most realistic), and creating another Bench slot(s) for however a manager chooses to use it/them (hitters or pitchers).

Thoughts?

Even if we lower the number of active pitchers per day, I still plan on having the same amount on my roster. If we lower active RP from 5 to 2 or 3, I'll still probably have at least 5 on my roster.
I just feel we don't need to get points from scrub pitchers everyday. It also makes drafting good RP more important, and will eliminate any RP manipulation, if that is a concern.

Also, if you lower the active SP from 6 to 5, it will be next to impossible to reach 162 starts since most every pitcher misses a start here and there. It will also make it next to impossible to
adjust your staff if you want to bench a starter in an unfavorable match-up.

I haven't gotten my head entirely around this "RP manipulation" concept yet. RP's may go days between appearing in games -- even if you have 5 RP's in your lineup every single day of the season, there's absolutely no guarantee that more than a couple, or even any, would appear on any given day. Dropping RP's every day would freeze them for the 2-day waiver period, so there's no guarantee you'd get them back before someone else snagged them anyway. I just can't see how such a strategy would benefit anyone; if anything, it'd be a comical exercise in futility I would think...

I think the best RP strategy -- in fact, for any position -- despite how many active roster slots we get, would be to carry and play the best RPs you can. No one in their right mind should drop a good RP just because his team isn't playing the next day! (I wouldn't complain if they did, tho! )

Or am I missing something here?

I agree with you. I don't think RP manipulation is really a potential problem. That's why I don't like the RP innings figuring into a "Max Innings Pitched".

On another note, I would like to present here ALL the options I have, as Commish, in this game - as far as stat categories.

I think what we have now is fine (designated with astrisks), but someone may notice something else that'd be cool, too:


The only other one I'd consider, perhaps, is -1 for Errors. Maybe add a bit of a defensive element to our hitters? Just something to consider as we could add 4 more stat categories to Batting if we wanted.


Currently we're at our 15 category max for pitching stats, but perhaps someone will notice a better one. Nothing pops out to me right away, but I don't recall if IBB's were counted under BB's or not...

Again, just presenting all our options...

I don't think using "Max Innings Pitched" would help anything at all. Sure, 9 innings x 162 = 1458 innings/season, not counting extra inning games. The max I can set is 2000. But no fantasy team will ever come close to even 1400 innings probably, maybe not even 1300, since our lineups cover many different teams, not just one.

I don't think that'll help. But at the same time, I still don't feel there was much of a problem ("manipulation") last year, and as I wrote in a previous post, don't think one could really use it to their advantage much. I would like 4-5 RPs still, tho.

BTW - I wrote to the Yahoo Commish suggesting that they add "Maximum games played per position (SP's)" to the game, and (after a reply that was unrelated to my suggestion ) they thanked me for it and will "consider it" for the future (yeah, right).