Possible to begin 16 team leagues? Several people I know hesitate to join due to smaller leagues. Forming that size leagues would increase the complexity and challange of building a team.
I have one experimental 16 team league out there. It was created at the request of @murph3699. I’d love some feedback on how the season went, as this could make 14- and 16-team leagues a standard option.
Thanks and let me know how that worked out…
I’m currently battling for the championship so my season is going well.
I was planning on getting some feedback from the members after the season to see where we stand. Some background, this is an established league of 16 dating back to 2005. We were on CBS and moved over to Ottoneu for this season.
The things that people like and dislike probably mirror what most in H2H this season felt. There is so much that is positive I’ll just go over the negatives.
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Starting pitcher limits. I had a feeling this would be unpopular and it was the SINGLE biggest complaint I received across the board. People felt that it was unfair that they had to leave points on the bench by virtue of bad luck. Its not like Football where you can plan for a bye week.
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Games played limits. It makes sense in Roto but in H2H everything should reset each scoring period.
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Playoffs. There should be an option for 8 teams in a 16 team league.
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Customization/Price increase. These kind of go hand in hand. If the price is going to double there should be more customization. That includes adding categories as an option (instead of points), adding the extra playoff teams, and changing the starting pitcher limits.
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If 14/16 team leagues became standard, and it sounds like they very much could be given this feedback, more playoff options would go hand in hand with that.
Also, nothing definite, but the hard game start cap, which then would allow 5 SP slots when 5 or more games under the cap seems like a good solution and technically possible. The number of GS would probably have to be league-customizable, I think?
Thanks for this feedback, don’t hesitate to reach out or post here if there is more.
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I’m good with some sort of weekly cap. Just not a daily cap. My league mates feel the same. Also, I would do away with the final few days of the regular season as part of the playoffs. Previously we ended the season the Friday before the final weekend. Kind of like Week 17 in football. I think ultimately, with the forthcoming price increase, adding more customization will take care of all our needs. Thanks, Niv!
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Just to be clear, 5SP slots is a 5 start daily cap. Just, usually that number is high enough that it doesn’t affect people.
More playoff options will definitely be coming in 2019, including more ways to avoid this last week of the MLB regular season.
5 is plenty. I can’t recall any scenarios where a team had 5 guys going on the same day.
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I would be in for a 16 team league!
I’m not quite understanding how this works? Am I right in reading this as: If say the league has a 10 game start cap, the lineups page would have 5 SP slots each day until the day that 6 starts are reached (5 or more games under the cap). Will it then revert to 2 SP slots each day?
No, the number of slots on the lineup page would be reduced to how many starts you have left in the week once it is less than 5.
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I also played in @murph3699’s league (losing to him in the championship game). It was my first Ottoneu experience and I enjoyed it. I will piggyback onto his comments above:
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Starting pitcher limits. Agreed with @murph3699. This is easily my biggest complaint. Nevermind the frustration factor of being unable to use starts on any given day (one figures that over the course of the season, these things even out - unless you get bitten by this during the playoffs), in a 16-team league there are almost no starting pitchers available. I found it advantageous to roster some pretty sketchy arms just to get as close to the 14 starts per week as possible. It serves as a strong disincentive to roster prospects, using the slots for replacement level starters instead. From reading this and other threads, it sounds like this will be scrapped in favor of a hard weekly cap. I strongly support this approach, but would be fine with a season cap as well as a next-best option. The number of starts per week should be customizable per league, as the number will determine the balance of quality versus quantity, and would make player value environments variable per league.
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Games played limits. I disagree with @murph3699 a little bit here. I didn’t like them at the beginning of the season, but they grew on me. To me, it added another layer of team management and disincentivised stockpiling position players. But the combination of the games played limit for position players and the need to get as close to 14 starts per week as possible made it even more advantageous to stockpile starters. Just for consistency purposes, going forward, if we go with hard weekly limits for starters, we should do the same for position players.
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Playoffs. Personally, I think if you are one of the two best teams over the first 22 weeks of the season, you’ve earned the right to not have to risk getting bounced out by a mediocre team in week 23, so I like the 6 team format, even in a 16 team league. But options are good.
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Customization/Price Increase: I think this goes without saying that a doubling of price should be accompanied by some additional value.
And then another observation of my own: I don’t know if this idea of the “bullpen game” will continue to catch on in 2019 and beyond, but when one of my relievers this year (namely Lou Trivino) was used as an opener by the A’s during the last week of the season, I did not get credit for his outing. Obviously, he was not used as a traditional starter, and sometimes the “opener” is not necessarily announced ahead of time, making it difficult to make the appropriate roster move. Any ideas on how to deal with this if it becomes more prolific?
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Lots of good feedback here but I’d like to focus on this. We use GS as an indicator if a pitcher started a game. Whoever pitches first in a game gets a GS recorded. So, this sounds like it was maybe a bug - do you have some more information about the day this happened so I can look into it?
No bug. I had him in a RP slot on the day he was the opener, so I correctly did not get credit for it. My 2 SP slots were already occupied by pitchers in a traditional starting role that day. But that is part of the point: Trivino is a relief pitcher. He is being used with no expectation of getting through the lineup more than once (1-2 innings), consistent with the traditional relief pitching role. But the A’s decided his “relief appearance” would be in the first inning that day. Thus far, this blurring of the lines between setup guy/starter has been limited to the Rays for the most part, with a few other teams doing this on a very occasional basis. If it doesn’t spread much farther than that, it may not be something that needs a solution. But it was more or less successful for the Rays, and if more teams try this approach in 2019 and beyond and don’t announce the “opener” until they release their lineups 3 or so hours before gametime, this will become a more frequent occurrence, even with the expansion of active starter slots to 5.
Again, I don’t think this merits action today. Having 5 SP slots will help. Just wanted to plant the seed that this is something to look out for in 2019, and may necessitate the need for a “swing” pitcher position at some point in the future, or some other creative solution so these appearances from good relief pitchers don’t disappear into the ether.
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Ok, I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t a bug. The approach you laid out mirrors my thoughts exactly.
I agree with this, that I liked the position caps as the season drew on and would like to see them next year.
I had six in one day more than once this year. But if I ranked them, the sixth guy was some replacement-level scrub. If we had a hard weekly cap of 8, 10, or even 12 starts per week instead of the daily cap, that sixth guy would never have been on my roster to begin with, so I agree that 5 is plenty.
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