The 2020 We All Wanted is Finally Here

 Well, I had fun last year. Gave us all a chance to draft players we've never owned any probably never will, and now have to part ways with. John's Trout isn't the freshest and prettiest fish in the sea anymore, and he's going to have shortstop blue balls from Tatis for quite some time. Good luck ignoring his texts Russ...

One exciting experiment from 2020 was our playoff structure. Pilot program inspired by the Franchise Fantasy Football league (still waiting for my invite. Not like, desperately or anything. I mean, league sounds kinda cool. But like, not THAT cool. I mean, I don't think about it at all. I guess I'd join maybe...). This brings us to our first objective, which is to create a list of voting topics for the beginning of our zoom draft. Let's start the board:

1. Do we want to always do playoffs in playoffs? Can structure payouts differently so that winning the regular season still counts for something... My initial thought would be to vote this year on how many people would even be interested, and then figure the intricacies out for next year and vote on installing it then. 

2. Buy-in and payout structure listed on draft sheet. Any suggested changes?

3. Eddie's value keeper. Refer to GroupMe for entire details. Personally I like the spirit and strategy of it. My thoughts are two-fold. One, this league seems rooted in simplicity with simple small rosters and simple basic scoring categories and it's taken us this far. I'm worried that this rule change might take us down a rabbit hole of future rule changes / amendments this might create that we can't see yet. And, on a simpler note, I like the level of sacrifice we are currently required to make in order to keep prospect talent. For instance, the first time I kept Trea Turner, if I was able to keep him at the draft pick I drafted him the next year, when he already went to a top 20 or something pick the next year, and also had a 4th rounder... I think it makes the strong stronger and potentially more top heavy. Sorry Eddie, but those are my thoughts.

4. Saves plus holds? I'm a big fan of holds, personally. And the closer carousel is running a lot faster than it has in the past. Definitely down to remove the "net". The relief pitcher category definitely needs some discussion.

5. RF/CF/LF designation instead of generic OF? 

6. Championship bat engraving? Last place pays? Does last year count (no offense Mark)?? I only ask cause like, if we're being honest, does anybody not in LA care that the Dodgers won last year?

I think that's it. 

I was going to do more fun stuff here, but, I'm a big dumb asshole and left my charger at work. So, not only do I have to go there now before the draft, which makes me sad. But, I also have about ten minutes left currently before my computer dies. 

Roundtable starts at 8:30. Would like to have the first pick in by 8:45. And off we go!

 

Decision Time

Ok - here are the rest of the decision.

1. Draft Date is Monday, July 20th at 8PM. Eastern time...

2. We're going to do Head-to-Head with Divisions. Three divisions, four teams in each. You will play two division members twice, one division member three times, and there will be two interleague weeks. There will be one wild card filled by the remaining team with the highest record. Tiebreak will be Season Home Runs.

3. Divisions will be the following:

Division 1:

Jeremy Garside

Jeremy Scanlon

John DeMovellan

Sean Gajewski

Division 2:

Russel Travers

Richie Travers

Dan Alber

Chris Pflanz

Division 3:

Mark Chirokas

Eric Rose

Eddie Perkins

Greg Thompson

Regular Season schedule has been set. I'm pretty sure I did it right but, feel free to check me on it.

4. Playoffs will be an entire playoff long roto season with the ten same categories. You will have the option to save up to four (4) players from your team upon making the playoffs. Similar to our keeper situation, players kept will count as draft picks. Draft order set by best season record. Plan for Playoff Draft Day to be Monday, September 29th. 

5. Buy-in for the league is going to be an even $100.

6. The waiver system will expand to every day.

Please see attached video. I had to get super high to kill the hangover I have after sleeping for two hours so, I'm not saying words. And you know, for suspense. Enjoy Hamilton....... Haha that gets weird. I'm so high.

This Puzzle is Starting to Look Like a Picture

We'll start with the three home runs...

1. Draft Date will be Monday, July 20th, 2020. Probably like, 7pm? 8pm? Between 7 and 9pm? We'll get there.

2. We're doing Saves + Holds. To be clear, this is for this shortened season only as a trial run and we will re-vote prior to 2021 with new formed opinions.

3. Playoffs during playoffs. So - definitely need to hash that out. But I'm excited for the challenge this vote provides.

So now, here's the next thing. 11 of 12 votes were cast for roto vs. head-to-head with divisions, and head-to-head with divisions won 6-5. I do not know who didn't vote - doesn't super matter. I guess mainly I was just hoping it would be more heavy on one side or the other. So, we'll do this - if there is anybody that feels overwhelmingly passionate about roto over head-to-head with divisions, please make your case in the GroupMe. You have until.... Wednesday. If there is enough conversation to re-vote, we will do so. Should a debate not ensue, we will be competing in a head-to-head format with divisions.


PLAYOFFS:
So there will be four playoff teams. Here are my questions:

1. Assuming all four teams are alive throughout the entirety of the playoffs... No eliminations.
2. Are we doing all category rotisserie for the duration of the playoffs or points? Down for either - only reason I would lean toward rotisserie is because the town hall debate surrounding how many points certain things are worth is something I'm not sure we have time for...
3. How many players from your existing roster can you keep going into playoffs. None? Two? No limit? Some offense and some defense?
4. Draft order I assume is just whoever has best record is first pick, and so on? Tie breakers for that? What if a team has less playoff-team players so needs to fill more roster spots - extra picks on front end or back end?


What's left:

1. I was just going to put this question in the playoff section and then figured I would just pose it for the entire season - anybody have any strong feelings about the waiver system needing an adjustment because of shortened season? I think allowing all days during the playoffs would be nice since so much can happen and the end of the week doesn't matter. Just throwing that out there.
2. Buy-in. It's at $150 right now. With playoffs it's a little less than half a season... should we do $75? Even $100? Gambling is fun.
3. Draft order. Just, keep the same order that is set / was lotteried? Start over? If the successes and failures of last season are getting pushed to next season, it may seem to reason that we should enter this bonus year on an even playing field.

This is where I'll leave you. Digest this info and either Monday or Tuesday there will be another round of polls as we keep progressing toward 60 days of super duper fun!

Option #2

Alright, let's dive in to this...


Big decision #1 - Rotisserie or Head-to-Head.

I think the only way Head-to-Head makes sense is to make three, four team divisions and have division winners and one wild card team make the playoffs. I think having it all one league like we've had it would be stupid.

Rotisserie would be fun and have everybody playing all eight weeks, which is a big plus. But then that brings me to...


Big decision #2 - Playoffs during the season or playoffs during the playoffs.

If the playoffs are during the MLB playoffs, that makes Head-to-Head more appealing. We'd all get 8 weeks of action, so that's nice. Now that I think of it, if we did Roto, there wouldn't be playoffs... that's the point of roto.... BUT! If we did roto, we could have the top four teams still do something during the playoffs as playoffs?

Big decision #2b - If we did playoffs during the playoffs, how would that work?

There isn't really much of a simple way to do this? I mean, there is the blueprint from the Football Franchise that some of you are in but that I'm still not....... We could go that direction - keep players on your roster that apply, draft the rest, do points / categories for the duration of the playoffs and the winner, wins. The rosters are so large that we couldn't really redraft every round of the playoffs cause, everyone would have the same team during the world series... If we went this route we'd really have to talk it out and I would need some guidance.


Big decision #3 - Draft date / style.

I think if we really all try hard, we can get a zoom meeting going and draft like brave, responsible Covid adults. All at one time. Together. We're nothing if we're not all in this together. Anytime between the 19th and the 22nd? Sunday - Wednesday. Evening. I mean, we're still like, sort of all couped up in our houses, right?


Smaller decision #1 - Saves or Saves+Holds.

This was a bit of a hot topic in the chat a little bit ago. I think this is a good opportunity to give it a test run. I just think saves are going to be sad. I guess if we do head-to-head, it doesn't super matter. But, if we go roto, I would strongly push for Saves+Holds so that there are like, you know, stats happening.


Smaller decision #2 - Should we let John play this year now that his state is shutting back down.

It just, concerns me, you know? He's just surrounded by irresponsible people doing irresponsible things, getting Covid... I'm worried about the integrity of the league and the precedent it will set to all other leagues if we don't take this Pandemic seriously. We'll put it to a vote.


Important decision that I didn't realize until I was finishing up this post - how are we going to vote on these things? I can put polls up in the GroupMe and we can go from there. Wild idea - we could practice zoom and have a nice little virtual round table about it soon. My brain is melting so, people start saying things in the GroupMe and I trust that decisions will follow.

So, what the fuck are we gonna do?

I mean, fahk. So, July 23rd is night one - Yankees-Nationals and Dodgers-Giants kick off a 60-game season. So, we need to draft before then. Couple things I wanna throw out there right off the bat...

1. If we did head to head, that would only be 6 match-ups. So, you obviously wouldn't play everyone else in the league.
2. There are players deciding not to play. No big splashes yet, but, if Mike Trout decides to sit out, well, John will finally get what he has deserved all along...
3. A 7-day IL stint is missing one eighth of the season.
4. A 10 save season would be a really, really good season.
5. If a player tests positive, I'm assuming he's going to have to quarantine for two weeks. That's a quarter of the season.
6. The odds that the MLB gets through this 60-game prayer unscathed, with no marquee players, or entire teams for that matter, dropping out, would be a miracle.

I'm not going to avoid infusing this post with my personal opinion. Obviously that being said, this will all come down to a vote as we do live in a democratic league. I'm going to lay out a couple of options that I think are viable, with different iterations of them, that we can all add to / take away from.


OPTION NUMBER 1: Do nothing.
We could just, go. Keep all our draft picks, keep all our keepers. Just, business as usual.

1b. We make 3 divisions - you play each team in your division twice. Winners of each division enter a four-team, playoff for the last two weeks - semi-final and final.

1c. We switch it to a rotisserie league. We would have the full 8 weeks of the season. Little more straightforward.

1d. Keep the keepers, push the draft picks to next year. My draft picks suck, so I don't really care. But, if I was top loaded in the draft, and I was expecting to pick a super cool team that I was only going to have for 8 weeks, I'd be annoyed. There's sooo much up in the air, with so much that could go wrong. But, that's just my take on the situation.


OPTION NUMBER 2: One year fresh start and pick it all up in 2021.
As promised, I'm going to infuse my personal opinion, and this is my vote. 100%. My first thought is an argument around keeping the integrity of the league, and ironically I think that could be used to argue both sides of this. However, I think trying to keep all the things that make our league awesome, and applying it to this sad little 60-game season.... we would lose more for the following seasons than we would gain this year. Again, that's just my opinion. What does this look like you ask?

- No keepers. Randomly picked snake draft order. All pick new teams.
- Rotisserie. You can see variations of how we could play in OPTION NUMBER 1, but my vote would be rotisserie. Although, I did come up with that division thing off the cuff as I was writing this and, that feels kinda fun too.
- All keepers and draft picks carry over to the next season.

Essentially, nothing about our league to this point will affect what we do this year, and nothing we do this year will affect our league in 2021.

One important question I see coming up here is, can I change the keepers I locked in for this season prior to the start of next season based on my 2019 roster? My thought would be, for sure. Cause like, someone could retire, or super duper suck, or get traded to a bad situation... I mean all the things. So, I think we would have to re-open keeper decisions from 2019 rosters. But, I'm not too mad about that...


OPTION NUMBER 3: Go straight draft kings with it.
Hear me out...
This is going to be a shit show. Players are going to get small injuries and cost them the season. Players are going to get quarantined. Players getting off to slow start translates into a terrible season. I honestly think a baseball team is going to get removed from the season at some point because they have too many players test positive. More than one of us are going to draft a team full of nightmare situations with four weeks to fix it, which isn't enough time.... I'm just thinking out loud. But, this would be my thought....

1. Beginning of every week, everybody drafts a team. People can have the same players - doesn't matter. Draft Kings style.
2. We either do roto or points. This would not be a week-to-week thing. All roto stats or points would add up over the course of the season. However, you get a fresh start every week by picking new players.
3. I imagine we could set up a league on draftkings that would be weekly, and then I could tally all the scores in a spreadsheet or in this blog every week.


I am very open to any input / entire other options. You guys can send it to the GroupMe or just text me directly. I'm going to leave everyone with a couple other thoughts...


- Do we take the season into the playoffs. Something like, top four teams, re-draft players that are on playoff teams. Roto / points the whole way. Or something different. But, there are options.
- Given the short season, Saves + Holds seems like a really good idea. Even if we just do it this year and then vote on it on a permanent basis for 2021, I think saves are going to be a joke in 2020.
- What do we wanna do about the buy-in? Cause, $150 each is a lot for an 8-week season with a lot of unpredictable factors. I'm a degenerate so, I don't really care, but it seemed inappropriate not to bring up.
- As strange as this all is, at least there is going to be baseball again in three weeks!!

Finally, we need to find a draft date. We're obviously not all getting together. But, I find it hard to believe we can't all carve out a couple hours between now and July 23rd where we can sit and draft. Can people send me a general idea of what their strange Covid day-to-day lives are like so I can start to make sense of what could work and what couldn't... and we'll go from there.

Can't wait for my July 23rd boner.

Draft Lottery!!

Welcome to the Games that Really Count

Well, for half of us at least...

Congratulations to Russ, Pflanz, Mark, Eric, Richie and myself for making sure John didn't make the playoffs this year. Aside from Mark seemingly doing whatever he could to let him sneak in, we came together at the end and really pulled off a beautiful team effort. Suck it, John.

Actual congratulations for us all receiving a $50 playoff berth bonus (that's a thing, right?). Unfortunately, I don't have as much time as I would want to put together a playoff preview, but it would be irresponsible of me to not do something. So here it is - my way too quick playoff preview / predictions.

Week 1 Matchups

Russ vs. Mark:
Upon a brief look, this pitching matchup aggressively favors Mark. He gets two starts out of deGrom, and even though it's D-Backs and Dodgers, it's Jacob deGrom. Hamels get's Petco Park. Lynn and Lester have decent match-ups as well. On the other side we have Russ, who's injury riddled season is not going to have a "Kluber comes back in the nick of time" storyline to it. Furthermore, the Dodgers have decided to skip Ryu and Buehler's starts in the rotation (Eric you lucky bastard), so that's, well, devastating. And the ones that actually are playing are up against the likes of Brewers, Cardinals, Yankees. Rangers and Marlins are decent match-ups but, overall that's tough.
As much as I hate to say it, I think Mark's bats do enough to split the offensive categories, and with the pitching draw being what it is, it seems Mark is in a good position to get most of the pitching. I think Mark wins 6-3-1 as Russ still continues to struggle with the curse.

Pflanz vs. Richie:
Similarly to the first matchup, I think the hitting is going to be pretty competitive. These are two loaded lineups who are going to have to rely on some good pitching to go forward. Pflanz draws a two start weeks from his two best pitchers as well, as Bieber gets the Angels and the Twins and Berrios takes on the Nationals before going head to head with Bieber to close out the week. Richie is definitely going to find a way to watch the Mets - Dodgers game on Friday, as Syndergaard and Kershaw face off in what Richie hopes to God is a masterful pitching duel. Tonight and tomorrow are big for Pflanz - if Bieber and Berrios give him strong starts early and he's flexible at the end of the week to be in a position to not need starts, he'll have a serious advantage. Richie wins the bullpan matchup and it's not even close.
Prediction: I think Richie pulls off the second upset of the playoff 5-4-1 when the Kershaw - Syndergaard matchup is indeed a pitchers duel and the Bieber - Berrios matchup turns poorly for Pflanz to end the week.

Eric and I will take a week to catch our breathe, get some guys rested and healthy (Cruz, Moustakas, Kimbrel, Muncy) and ready for the following week. We have a potential passing of the torch matchup in round two between Russ and I, as well as four of the six teams bidding for their first title (I think that's right - correct me if I'm wrong).

Two teams who sold off the most last year and entered the draft with the most picks wound up on top of the league - best of luck to you next year Perkins. Congratulations to Eric for being crowned the regular season champion. We'll end this the way we started it - Welcome to the the Games that Really Count.