BABS Baseball 2.0 (BABL)

Last year, we introduced a fantasy baseball game format that made best use of how BABS has taught us to build teams. It incorporated players’ skills as well as risk, and pushed us into a more methodical process for roster construction.

The leagues we ran in Year #1 might have been considered live laboratories for the concept, and we learned a lot from them. So, for Year #2, I’ve made some rules tweaks to get us a little closer to the supreme goal of finding the Holy Grail of fantasy baseball experiences. Hyperbole? Nah.

Here are the basics. All rule changes are noted as NEW.

The truest test of our real prognosticating abilities is a league in which player selections are made with the most analytical support. As I’ve written before, “Every player we add to our team during the season means we’re potentially eliminating a player we rostered through more careful analysis.” So BABL 2.0 uses a 50-player Rotisserie Draft & Hold format and allows no free agent access during the season. Your 50 drafted players are all you get for the 2019 season.

BABL is a 10-team mixed league. With 50-player teams, the 500-deep draft population does not require much more pool penetration than a 15-team league with 30-player rosters (450).

The draft is conducted as a standard snake slow draft. These are conducted online and drafts can begin as early as next week.

Each roster will have 23 active players and 27 reserves. BABL uses a standard Rotisserie positional configuration.

NEW: Of the nine-man pitching staff, two slots have to be filled with relievers. Starter versus reliever eligibility will be determined similarly to positional players: 20 games last season, 5 games in-season. This is not necessarily to force teams to compete in the Saves+Holds category, but the evolving MLB bullpen construction does force us to think about how the entire pitching staff is used.

The 4×4 categories have two goals in mind: a) they have to support BABS’ primary Asset and Liability categories, and b) they have to be easily accessible by sticking to familiar boxscore statistics. And so…

Batters

Plate appearances:  A non-standard category, yet this captures playing time risk as well as anything. If you want to accumulate PAs, you have to avoid platooners, players who get hurt, or whose inexperience might cost them playing time.

Home runs: Pure measure of power skill

Stolen bases: Best measure of speed output

Batting average: There was strong demand to replace batting average with OBP but we already account for walks in the PA category, and I did not want to double-count. Batting average is as good a proxy as any for core batting skill.

Pitchers

Innings pitched: Similar to PA above, this captures playing time risk. It also requires that owners stock up on enough starting pitchers – and focus on those who are more than just Openers – without forcing a minimum innings requirement.

NEW: Strikeouts – Walks: Strikeouts alone were a pure measure of dominance, but they tracked too closely to Innings. Also, since WHIP is not a BABL category, we needed to account for walks. K-BB seems like a good fit.

Saves+Holds: Provides value for a wider range of relief pitchers

Earned Run Avg: Easiest proxy for core pitching skill. ERA is the only ratio category, which provides better balance with the batting categories.

Managing your team during the season is a low-maintenance process. There are weekly transactions, each Monday, which are active-reserve-active moves only.

NEW: Given the frustration of an active player hitting the disabled list shortly after that deadline, you can now make DL moves daily (still, active-reserve-active moves only) as soon as the DL notification is posted to the league hosting site.

You can also make even player-for-player trades.

That’s it.

Note that these leagues are open to RonShandler.com members only, so you can be nearly guaranteed a high level of competition. I’ll be opening the sign-up page later this week. Look for the link in the MEMBERS ONLY menu on the right. Once 10 people sign up, a league will be created at OnRoto.com and you’ll receive an email with further instructions. In order to allow enough time for these slow drafts, I will cut off sign-ups on March 8.