1.) Out offensive categories are: RBI, HR, R, SB Strikeouts, On Base Percentage, and Slugging Percentage. This balance gives more value to lead-off guys as their traditional bane – not having guys on base when going to bat in the 1st – only directly impacts 1/7th of their offensive categories. Further, the things they do best (getting on base and being driven in) have a greater impact (2/7ths of the stats rather than 1/5th).

2.) For pitching we use W, L, K, WHIP, ERA Holds and Blown Saves. Further, you’re limited to 5 SPs and 2 RPs. A player pitching RP (in real baseball) may not be started in an SP slot. This forces teams to try to get that 1 great closer and a reliable set-up guy. If they try to do the old fashioned ‘collect as many closers as possible) technique, they can’t start them all and the cramming of relievers into the game has a neagtive impact on blown saves. It rewards quality over quantity, and it helps us keep a decent pool of middle quality RPs in the free agent pool in the event of an injury.

3.) We reduce the maximum games and innings pitched by 5 or 10%. That makes it easier for teams to get to 100% of their totals even if they get an injury on day one of a week long vacation away from the internet.

4.) We have a dynasty keeper league. We use this site to generate cap numbers for the league using league settings and a $100 cap and each team can keep $100 in players at the end of the season. Some teams end up with less than $100 in players at the end of the season, while others have $150 and need to cut a lot of talent to get under the cap. Some teams keep 18, while others keep 11. We then have a 7 round draft at the start of next season to fill out rosters. This year I had to drop Wright, Hamels, Rivera, McCutcheon, A Cabrera and a bunch of solid young guys to get under the cap… but a team that struggled could keep all of their developing young players and then pick up one of those studs in the next draft.

(For the record, we just determined keepers from last season this week and plan to draft next week).

I think a pivotal part of the fun in fantasy is trying to think about how many R or RBI a player may have. I even think the Batting Average guessing makes it fun. If we use simple rate stats or those with more consistency across seasons (like FIP or BABIP, etc.), we take out some of the uncertainty involved in making the game fun. The external factors that determine our fantasy moves are much more enjoyable than everyone using the same WAR projection system.

It turns out that if we take the traditional 5×5 roto categories, they tell us very well who the best teams are in the game (correlating at about 0.98). Predicting R and RBI, W and SV is much harder than predicting more consistent stats…that’s what’s so fun.

R, RBI, Net-Steals, OBP, SLG
Quality Starts, K/BB, SVS, ERA, WHIP

We feel it makes for a more realistic league but not too extreme. We started with the traditional 5X5 and have tried categories such as Holds, Net-Saves, OPS, and Winning Percentage (for SPs), but are currently quite happy with what we have.