2018 MLB Thread

[Gabriel]

Who runs EWB Fantasy Baseball?

[Maxx]

12 hours ago, Gabriel said:

Who runs EWB Fantasy Baseball?

[Gabriel]

How do you typically run it? ROTO or Points based? Any thoughts on turning it into a Keeper league this year maybe?

[Maxx]

Head to head, multiple categories is my preference, I'm not sure why people don't like that one.  My stance on keepers leagues are cool, someone else run it if you want one, I might join.  But I run practically every North American sports fantasy league on here (I will usurp the hockey league from SDM ) and that's a whole lot to keep track of and keep up with for one person, so I don't want to further complicate it with keeper stuff.  

The problem is really more of finding someone who will run it that will actually stick around and do it.  Other people start up fantasy leagues on here all the time, but rarely do they last for more than one or two seasons.  Looking back, had I known I'd run EWB Fantasy Football for 14 years straight, I probably would have considered making it a keeper league.  But even then, some years interest was really low, and then entirely too much to the point that we had to create a Bastard offspring, its hard to predict who will stay, who will go and who will go and then come back.  Plus, I like creating a whole new team every year, its a big part of the fun for me.  

[Gabriel]

Well, if you're down for potentially two leagues, I'd love to start a Keeper league for the upcoming season.

Would anybody else be interested?

We'd do head to head with ROTO scoring. I'm not a fan of negative point values, and I would want it to be easy enough for everyone to understand, so we'd likely end up having a discussion about what stats to use for year one. I'm leaning towards no divisions, just one big league, so that the top performers are rewarded as the top performers. I'm also thinking that weekly lineup setting would be best, so that people don't game the system and add/drop starters every day for maximum impact on their pitchers.

[Your Mom]

I'd love to do a keeper league. I like what we do already but keeper is a whole different strategy and I'd love to try it. 

[Maxx]

The only thing I'm keepin' is my championship!

[Gabriel]

7 minutes ago, The Chiksrara Special said:

I'd love to do a keeper league. I like what we do already but keeper is a whole different strategy and I'd love to try it. 

The thing I love about keeper leagues is the same thing I love about sports games. When you're behind one year, it's really easy to retool for the next season if you have someone on your roster that you're expecting to regress, but is killing it down the stretch. Take a big name and ship him off to a contender for two or three pieces that will really help you out in the next season, and you can easily move from last one year, to winning it the next... or the opposite if you put too many chips into the current season.

[The Buscher]

Nolan Arenado sets a new salary record for an arbitration-eligible player, agreeing to a $26 million contract for 2019.

I would say he's gonna make a lot of money next year, but seeing as it's February and Machado and Harper are still unsigned I'm sure the owners will collude to try to drive down Arenado's cost too.

[GhostMachine]

We may be looking at a strike (or lockout) at some point.

[gunnar hendershow]

I can't stress enough how awful this offseason is as a fan of baseball. There are so many unsigned free agents and clear admissions from multiple teams that they have no interest in winning. The crazy thing about this all is that if the Orioles, and their 47 wins last year, actually wanted to they could pick up enough veterans off the free agent market right now that they could likely field a 75-80 win team this upcoming season. They might even give us something to care about into September! But they won't, and so many other teams won't as well. If they aren't in it to win it this year then they have zero interest in even trying. It's annoying, because it just makes it so that there's no middle. If some of these fringe teams would try, they might get in as a wild card and get hot at just the right time. Postseason baseball is extremely imperfect since your catcher who hit .230 during the regular season might go on a 10-game tear where they hit .475 and help you win a few games. But that's the fun of it, and why every team is reasonably in it once the postseason starts.

I'm more convinced than ever that once the league expands to 32 teams it's also going to expand to an 8-team playoff. I know, I'm a purist too. But that would actually push a lot of teams into giving it more of an effort since 81 wins is going to be postseason material. It'll make for a more exciting regular season, with more meaningful games, and likely help the attendance issues that are plaguing baseball right now. It sucks, again, as a purist. But it makes too much sense not to do as well. I'd do it like so--4 divisions, each champ gets home field in a 3 or 5 game series (all the games are at their home), and the remaining best 4 teams round out the wild card spots. Then you have the 5-game divisional round and 7-game LCS. Only hangup is that this adds a week to a season that is already dealing with snow at the start and at the end of it.

Anyway, Sean Doolittle (who is a top 5 dude btw, awesome to follow on social media) had a lot to say about it. He even replied to a lot of people. It's sparked a lot of sportswriters also bringing this up and talking about how fans feel they own the teams and the players should, effectively, play for free. And that's why for the fans there isn't a lot of outcry about the shear number of free agents not being signed and the very, very clear collusion going on. Last time this happened Donald Fehr had the players go on (a very justified) strike. There hasn't been a work stoppage since, but it sure feels like things are headed that way.

 

[The Buscher]

2 hours ago, damsher hatfield said:

I'd do it like so--4 divisions, each champ gets home field in a 3 or 5 game series (all the games are at their home), and the remaining best 4 teams round out the wild card spots. Then you have the 5-game divisional round and 7-game LCS. Only hangup is that this adds a week to a season that is already dealing with snow at the start and at the end of it.

I imagine the regular season would get dropped from 162 to 154 or something.  Wouldn't really impact the league since there would be an extra game going on all season.

[Meacon Keaton]

I’d love to see the regular season dropped to 154 games, but it’s been said by many people in the know that the owners won’t give up those four home games.

[The Buscher]

I don't think there's any incentive for them to drop those games in the current state of the league.  But expanding the playoffs (which to be clear I definitely don't want to see happen, but probably will) will lead to a boatload of extra nationally televised playoff games and those revenue streams will benefit everyone.  Toss in the fact that it'll be easier than ever to make the playoffs which will increase late-season attendance for teams who would've otherwise been out of it and I think they'd bite.

The only other alternative is to start the regular season even earlier but the issues about cold weather cities in the early season will become even more prominent.  You can try to schedule it so that the vast majority of the games in the first two weeks are played in warm weather or domed stadiums, but you'll wind up with a schedule imbalance as well.

[Krabby]

I think an 8 team playoff per league makes sense for the MLB, the season is such a grind so there has to be hope to make it in for a lot of those non-big market teams.

The issue of fans wanting their players to play for cheap I think extends to the issue of no salary cap because the perception, rightly or wrongly, is thst the choices are to play for peanuts with a small market team with little chance to compete or sign a mega deal with a big money team thst wants to compete every year

[Meacon Keaton]

My argument is that the season being such a grind is exactly why there shouldn’t be 8 teams in the playoffs. You play 162 games. The cream rises to the top. You don’t need half the league to make the playoffs to figure out the best. You had six months to do that.

[gunnar hendershow]

1 hour ago, Buschie Van Wagenen said:

I don't think there's any incentive for them to drop those games in the current state of the league.  But expanding the playoffs (which to be clear I definitely don't want to see happen, but probably will) will lead to a boatload of extra nationally televised playoff games and those revenue streams will benefit everyone.  Toss in the fact that it'll be easier than ever to make the playoffs which will increase late-season attendance for teams who would've otherwise been out of it and I think they'd bite.

The only other alternative is to start the regular season even earlier but the issues about cold weather cities in the early season will become even more prominent.  You can try to schedule it so that the vast majority of the games in the first two weeks are played in warm weather or domed stadiums, but you'll wind up with a schedule imbalance as well.

I think there could be a compromise. Some teams drop 4 "home" games from their schedule and instead play a 4-game international series game of sorts. This frees up some of the schedule for early season games in Puerto Rico, Mexico City, Japan, Taiwan, etc. I'd say South Korea but they aren't exactly warm in late March and I don't know how many domes they have in the KBO. Off the top of my head I can't actually think of any. But those teams giving up the home games get some of the revenue from the international series games. Heck Tampa Bay might stand to make more from these games than otherwise.

But even then it has some problems for sure. Do the same teams who struggle with attendance every year have to do these games? Will the Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals, Cubs ever wind up giving up any home games? Does it rotate on a per-year basis?

4 minutes ago, Meacon said:

My argument is that the season being such a grind is exactly why there shouldn’t be 8 teams in the playoffs. You play 162 games. The cream rises to the top. You don’t need half the league to make the playoffs to figure out the best. You had six months to do that.

I think everyone agrees. It's just reconciling this in an analytics-driven environment which tells you if you don't have good odds, don't try at all. Creates a situation where they aren't a lot of solutions beyond making the late part of the season more meaningful for more teams.

[Gabriel]

The current climate of the MLB is a mess. Teams are essentially being forced into trading away good players for prospects in hopes of building a contender through their developmental system... and great players aren't signing with anyone that isn't considered a contending team, or considered to be a team on the cusp of contending because of how many high-end prospects they have that are ready to break through.

Parity in MLB is a huge problem, and the players are starting to see it with the way free agency has been the last two seasons. Though, how many of them are signing with 4th/5th place teams from the different divisions? How are those teams supposed to get any better unless they actively suck for a lengthy period in order to build their prospect pool?

It's looking to me like the best option to fix this issue without compromising the integrity of the post-season is to establish a Salary Cap/Salary Floor system similar to the NHL. In the NHL, great teams remain great teams, but even small markets and last year's complete failures can surprise and wind up on a deep playoff run because of the Salary Cap system in place. A team winds up with too many good players? Well, they probably won't be able to fit them all in under the cap, so they need to look for value with smaller contracts and make tough decisions moving out guys whose performance may not be an issue. Who benefits from that? Teams lower in the standings, or with a smaller Salary Cap hit will be happy to take those established, good players in exchange for prospects, draft picks, depth players, etc... rather than risking losing those good players for absolutely nothing when the cap crunch comes down.

[gunnar hendershow]

I think the MLBPA will block any hard salary cap from coming to fruition. The arguments owners put forth for that is along the lines of "we aren't making money" but the MLB owners have been clear that they are making money. Anything besides a strict floor/cap system like the NHL does basically nothing. Even then, big market teams can afford larger analytics departments and better scouting. But the competitive balance is more equitable and there is more parity. Rebuilds take 5 years in baseball and that is toxic to fans who have so many options for sports now. That process truly needs to be sped up, however they find it necessary. But it'll be tough negotiations to get there.

[Lowerdeck]

We like to think baseball players and other pro athletes as undeserving, because they're already making millions of dollars per year - but in reality, they aren't receiving a rightful share of the revenues that the sport is making thanks to them.  And what we're seeing in baseball is an extension of an economic system in which the owners of an industry are clamping down on workers rights and pay to make themselves richer.  These players are the ones who are not receiving the full value of their labor, which they should be entitled to.  As much as it would suck to go without baseball for a while, these players should strike and demand better.


If you think you should be making $20 an hour instead of $15, it's not a logical jump to think Manny Machado deserves $30M a year instead of $20M