Fantasy baseball

Fantasy baseball is a game whereby players manage imaginary baseball teams based on the real-life performance of baseball players, and compete against one another using those players' statistics to score points. It is one of the oldest and most popular forms of fantasy sports.

History

Early forms of fantasy baseball were sometimes called "tabletop baseball". One of the best-known was Strat-o-Matic, which published a game containing customized baseball cards of Major League Baseball players with their stats from recent seasons. Participants could then re-create previous seasons using the game rules and the statistics, or compose fantasy teams from the cards and play against each other.

The landmark development in fantasy baseball came with the development of Rotisserie League Baseball in 1980. Magazine writer/editor Daniel Okrent is credited with inventing it, the name coming from the restaurant where the game was invented. The game's innovation was that "owners" in a rotisserie league would draft teams from the list of active Major League Baseball players and would follow their statistics during the ongoing season to compile their scores. In other words, rather than using statistics for seasons whose outcomes were already known, the owners would have to make similar predictions about players' playing time, health, and expected performance that real baseball managers must make.

Rotisserie league baseball proved to be hugely popular, even in the 1980s when full statistics and accurate reporting was often hard to come by. The traditional statistics used in early rotisserie leagues were often chosen because they were easy to compile from newspaper box scores and then from weekly information published in USA Today. The use of statistics like pitchers' wins and RBI are often scoffed at today by fans of a sabermetric bent. Sabermetric thinkers argue wins and RBI often misreprensent the performance of players, since it is largely influenced by "outside" factors like run support and bullpen support (for wins) and runners on base (for RBIs).

The advent of powerful computers and the Internet revolutionized fantasy baseball, allowing scoring to be done entirely by computer, and allowing leagues to develop their own scoring system, often based on less popular statistics. In this way, fantasy baseball has become a sort of in-time simulation of baseball, and allowed many fans to develop a more sophisticated understanding of how the real-world game works.

Game Details

Rotisserie leagues and their descendants typically draft teams before the season begins (or very shortly thereafter). One approach is to hold an auction, whereby each owner has a fixed amount of money to bid for players, and he must fill his team's roster within his budget. Another approach is to perform a round-robin draft of available players until all teams are filled.

Some leagues allow teams to keep some players from one year to the next, allowing savvy owners to build fantasy dynasties.

Many leagues allow teams to trade with each other during the season, as well as to replace players who get hurt or stop performing well with players from the pool of those who are not presently owned. However, some leagues prohibit such in-season "free agent" replacements, feeling that the game is more interesting when teams must live and die by the quality of their draft.

Also, at the league's discretion, there are only so many free-agent moves that a fantasy team can make per season, and a team may not just "drop" all of their players if they are not progressing well during a season.

Many fantasy leagues are played for money. Owners ante up an entry fee at the beginning of the season and may also be charged for in-season activity such as trades and "free agent" acquisitions. The pool of money is collected and then distributed to the winner(s) at the end of the season.

The statistics compiled by the players are then ranked, and the team with the best statistics at the end of the season is determined to be the winner. The original Rotisserie League used the following statistics:

• team batting average (total hits divided by total at-bats)
• total home runs
• total runs batted in
• total stolen bases
• total wins
• total saves
• team earned run average (9 times total earned runs divided by total innings pitched, the lower the better)
• team WHIP (total number of hits and walks allowed by pitchers divided by total innings pitched, the lower the better)

Later modifications to the rules added a minimum number of at-bats and innings pitched; teams that did not make the minimum were awarded last place in the respective categories.

An alternate, head-to-head, system states that each team competes against only one team each week. At the end of the week, each team tallies their points based on whatever criteria are set by the league and the team with the most points is the winner for the week. Opponents are dictated by a round-robin system. At the end of the season, the team with the best win-loss record is the victor.

External links

• Statheads Fantasy Sports (http://www.statheads.com/)
• Strat-o-Matic official site (http://www.strat-o-matic.com/)
• CSFBL.com (http://www.csfbl.com)
• La Ligue des amours - A fantasy baseball league from Montreal (http://com4.runboard.com/blaliguedesamours/)
• Rotoworld - fantasy sports site (http://www.rotoworld.com/)
• Fantasy Baseball Cafe (http://www.fantasybaseballcafe.com)