If you’re a commissioner of a fantasy league, your role goes beyond the common everyday yearning for baseball we’re all going through. Your league has a lot of rules that need to be considered depending on the state of 2020 baseball. Discussions, suggestions and polls will abound centered around payouts, keeper inflation, contract increases and more.
Here are some things you should consider bringing to the table in your league.
The Money Question
If you’ve paid your buy in, start having the conversation about how to handle payouts dependent on when baseball picks up again. If baseball returns for 81 games, I think all leagues, not just redraft, can remain status quo.
But what if it’s only 50 games? Or 30 games then a month of playoffs? Ask your league if they’re comfortable continuing to award full winnings. Head to head leagues will have a considerable amount of variance and the scale tips toward luck rather than skill. Is everyone comfortable giving someone $200 as a payout for that? $500? $1,000?
One option could be to use only a quarter or half of 2020’s buyins for the sake of 2020 payouts, while rolling over the rest of the money to 2021. That way there’s still something to play for, but you don’t feel like you lost out on a legitimate chance to win some cash.
Contracts and Keepers
I’m in a contracts league and one of the issues I’ve raised is the possibility of not tacking on a year. I have Adalberto Mondesi and Shane Bieber on very valuable contracts for a limited amount of time and I’d hate to only use them for a couple of months.
Again, the big variable is how long until we make major changes. That’s all about the tolerance your league may have. For keepers, if you inflate five rounds year over year, consider lessening that inflation depending on how much baseball we have. Half a season? Maybe 20 percent less. A fourth of a season? Perhaps 75 percent less inflation.
FYPD Ramifications
A couple of weeks ago, Matt posed a question.
The ramifications could be pretty significant based on how you tackle this. The tweet has a few good responses and there’s no right answer.
Who should have the right to a Spencer Torkelson, Asa Lacy or Nick Gonzales if there is little to no baseball played in 2020? First, talk about a plan of action if there’s no baseball. In this scenario, there was no consolation ladder, or bottom of the barrel finisher, so you can’t award the worst team the top pick. Do you feel comfortable simply repeating the draft order for the most recent FYPD? One argument is that the worst team didnt’t have a chance to improve in 2020 so he/she should once again get a crack at the top pick. Another suggestion is a lottery based on end of season 2019 standings, not unlike how the NBA does it. Ralph suggested an auction, though that might be more appropriate if your league already has FAAB installed. Perhaps what you bid is removed from your regular season pool. Another suggestion was simply randomize the draft order this one time. I know these FYPD drafts are a big deal, especially if you’re drafting near the top, so treat this topic with care.
If there’s some baseball played, then maybe you’re OK letting the standings do what they do and following your normal league rules to decide draft order.
Roster and Move Limit Settings
If there is baseball, it seems all but confirmed that there will be some sort of expanded rosters to help pitchers reacclimatize to the new normal. I envision a scenario where fantasy teams might need slightly larger benches and more moves to help navigate the added MLB players and the constant transactions from MLB teams.
Side note: For weekly leagues, this year might really, really suck. Can you imagine how pitchers will be handled?
Innings Limit
Whether you’re in a H2H league or a roto league, you more than likely have some sort of Games Started/Innings minimum or maximums. This will have to shift. In H2H leagues, lowering the weekly innings limit might be prudent to accomodate your traditional pitchers not going as deep. An alternative could be simply leaving your innings minimum per week as is, but you might have some jaded owners who won’t like having to rely on swingmen, excess relievers or Triple-A pitchers to fill the quota.
The same applies to an innings minimum per year in roto league. If your league has a 1,000-inning minimum per year and there’s only three months of baseball, consider cutting it in half. Using said minimum, each month accounts for about 166 innings, so just do the math whenever (if?) we get a final schedule.
Trade Deadline
I’m not sure where I sit with this one. Trading is integral, perhaps more so in a season like this where some might want to sell fast or make a push, but deciding when — or even if — to have a deadline is tricky. Traditionally you want to avoid deadlines that butt up against the start of playoffs or the last three to four weeks of the fantasy season because you don’t want someone pulling off a monster trade right at the end.
But if there are just a handful of months in baseball, it’s also unfair to commit your leaguemates to a deadline just four or five weeks into the season. The hope is there’s at least, say 12 weeks of baseball so that a deadline could be week seven.
AL/NL Leagues
With talk that MLB is considering splitting teams up by Arizona and Florida divisions, I'm not sure what this means for mono leagues. This is more of a platform question rather than a commissioner thing. My assumption is that the platforms treat every player the same and nothing changes, but it’s just something to have on your radar.