Thank you for joining the discussion! I have some points to make about your comments…
The point of the 2 SP limit is to limit teams by GS in order to keep the streaming impact of SP’s in check. There are weeks when you can maybe only throw 8 guys, and weeks when you can maybe throw 12… but, there’s the efficiency of those extra starts to consider, and your offensive performance that week, and the bullpen’s effectiveness (albeit to a lesser influence than I think it should be, and I’d say your team helps prove my point on this). And there’s the variance of the schedule- both the MLB’s and your league.
In other words, baseball.
If there was just one more SP slot, I am 100% certain after seven years of playing and designing leagues of this type that the skew towards SP’s would be greater than it currently is (which I also think was amplified by the recommendation that people chase a 14 GS mark). The SP arbitrage would be too great to ignore; 2 SP’s keeps things level without the ability of a GS limit.
I see nothing wrong with this; this is what it means to play the game.
You’re not blindly streaming whoever has a start because you only have 2 SP’s to play with. And you’re not streaming all the time because of the economic limits built-into the game. What you’re doing is scouting the opponent, looking ahead to MLB matchups, seeing what’s available in the market, and determining the value for any transactions intended for your upcoming week.
Good on you.
This is actually your problem.
You have Jansen, Hader, Doolittle, Ottavino, Davis, Yates, Boxberger, and Morrow. A killer bullpen, and one solid lineup to boot. But Jansen (460.87, 3.20 FIP) has nearly 10% less value, in terms of points, than Zack Godley (507.40, 3.92 FIP); Godley has about the same value as Ottavino (498.37, 2.22 FIP); three months of Anibal Sanchez (3.77 FIP, 1.3 WAR) is 13% more valuable (413.8 points to 366.47) than four months of leveraged performances by Kirby Yates (2.40 FIP, 1.2 WAR). Hader (543.20, 1.63 FIP) is pretty much equal to Sean Newcomb (560.73, 4.05 FIP).
Comparatively, the teams with the best records in the league hardly match-up with their pen- the leader has Knebel, Oh, Stammen, Barraclough, Nicasio, and McHugh; the second-place team has Vizcaino, Edwards Jr., Hirano, Kela, Herrera, and Romo.
That’s not you’re fault; you built your team intuitively. Better players for their roles should mean more success… but unfortunately the scoring formula doesn’t quite reflect that. If it did, you’d find that you wouldn’t “need” 8 RP’s or to rely on streaming, and I think you’d likely have a better record.
You kept using quotes when referring to fairness; do you think this 2 SP format is unfair, or are you acknowledging how others might see the format as unfair?
I look at your league and I see 3/4 of the teams are still competitive in August, with six of those clubs over 1,500 points behind the leader. That is much more competitive compared to Total Points leagues at this point in the year. If people were that turned-off by the format, I think there’d be more dead teams in some of these leagues…
To reiterate my point above: 12 GS is much too high. Anything above 10 GS and you still have the same problem of SP dominance. With FG Points scoring and the deflated RP “leverage” factors, 8 GS is the number to look at. If 10 GS is the compromise, that’s fine, but I’ll fight the RP leverage/FG-Points-as-not-a-good-system-for-H2H/scoring issue as long as I’m around.
I’d be pumped if Niv is able to provide an innovative answer to an industry-wide problem, but in lieu of that I still see nothing wrong with the current 2 SP setup beyond the natural skew that is in the Pitcher scoring formula.
Just as a quick aside, a typical breakdown of the 1,500 IP cap in standard FGPts leagues is about 1,150/350, so I would like to see any weekly GS limit closely match that 1,150 (ish) seasonal IP target, so maybe 8 or 9 GS/week?
Drilling down on this difference of 1,150/350 IP between SP’s/RP’s in FGPoints leagues…
This is what people are referring to when they say the H2H format feels dominated by pitching. If this difference is apparent in Total Points leagues, then it’s magnified by the matchup component in H2H leagues.
I read this 150 IP difference in usage as 6 IP per Week (150/25 Weeks). Which means, for any given range of similarly scoring players, and in any given H2H matchup, it’s worth it more to pick the SP over the RP- as shown by Total Points league usage, where weekly outputs don’t matter.
An 8 GS Limit and 6th RP spot would mitigate this, but the edge is still in the SP game- and that edge would become more apparent in leagues like @astraea.m.k’s where there are managers who play with it in mind. The folks in those leagues who look to more intuitively build a team that includes a strong bullpen would still be at a disadvantage.
Another way to consider this is in terms of “replacement level” for each of these three roles relative to each other; a sixth RP slot would effectively have such little points production that (compared to a deeper SP chart and even with a stricter GS limit) it would be a legitimate strategy to just punt on an RP spot or two for that extra arm or perhaps even bat. In other words, it pays more to be well above ‘replacement level’ in SP’s and Hitters than in RP’s- so (especially with DL trips and such) why should I expend those extra resources for a reliever when I could build my depth elsewhere?
That 300-400 extra points I might get on a full season from a 6th RP could easily come in the form of another 12-16+ per Week point boost in my lineup or rotation by shifting my resources elsewhere; so then I spend that much more on a Hitter, or use another roster spot on an SP for matchups or to help with DL trips, or whatever, but I don’t try to build a strong bullpen because RP’s just don’t pay.
I believe that the game should be equal between all three roles, and take away that edge and effectively force teams to build a bullpen as well as a rotation as well as a lineup and bench depth because the points system requires it. The only way to fix this is to score RP’s so that their distribution among the total pitcher pool is more reflective of their MLB usage/importance.
The best RP’s should be able to crack the Top 10-20 Pitchers in any given year; and there should be 25%-35% RP’s among the Top 50-100 scoring Pitchers for a full season. The fix for this 6 IP per week difference between SP/RP usage isn’t in the bottom-end of the RP pool; it’s at the top.
Great Q, both. “Fairness” is a term of perception, I use quotes sometimes to intone variability of term I suppose. (Ha I almost put quotes around “variability of a term”…)
I also feel it is unfair and I’ll explain.
Why have this imbalance? Why in a week to week format, unnecessarily have one team get more starts than the other. The two start rule is the causative factor for this, not baseball.
If I have 10 SPs and they are scheduled for 13 starts (3 having 2 starts), and my opponent has 10 SPs and they are scheduled for 16 (6 having 2 starts), the causative factor for imbalance is baseball, and scheduling.
However, in the 2 start format, the same scenario will yield that I could have 10 SPs w 13 starts that I only get 8 of due to scheduling and slotting into only 2 daily slots. My opponent could get 11. Due to they way his slot up. I’ll use this screenshot previously posted by @millercharley to demonstrate:
While baseball scheduling unfortunately lined all these SPs up on the same day for him, it’s the 2 start limit that restricted his teams capacity to compete that week.
The starts per week hard cap I have advocated for will eliminate this, what again I’ll call a “restriction”. One team can be restricted to 8 starts, one team is only restricted to 11 starts. I see this as more than a “perceived” imbalance.
In the weekly cap limit model, this would be the above scenario: (we’ll use 10 St/Wk as the cap)
I chose the 10 starts of the 13 my team is throwing that week, and match them up against my opponents 10 of 16 chosen starts. 10 on 10 is balanced and I feel “fair”. It may be that I get 2 starts of Verlander and 2 starts of Cole as 4 of my 10 that week, and my opponent may only get 1 start from each of their top pitchers. That is baseball.
Short answer, because it’s (at least at the time of the initial design, and still is to my knowledge) virtually impossible to have a Hard GS cap. Niv has written on this previously.
If we do have a GS Limit next year, it’ll be because Niv has found an end-around that limits SP spots (not unlike the 2 SP rule, BTW) based on how close you get to the limit (unlike the 2 SP rule, of course). So you start the week with, say, 5 active SP’s… but then end the week with, say, 1 active SP for a Sunday start.
Side note: with a stricter (8-10) GS limit, and a larger (5?) active SP slot, how likely is it that teams will eclipse the limit before the weekend and then complain that they don’t have more GS to use, and that it should be higher? How many people will then see a strict limit as unfair? Just a thought…
I understand, and I’ve played the format many times. It’s how I prefer to design my H2H leagues on fantasy sites where a strict GS/IP limit cannot be used in H2H formats (which is all of them, BTW). I find that it helps lead to the sort of balance in gameplay that we all want from a H2H league, including in talent distribution.
With more than 2 SP’s, then the causative factor is in how your opponent streams his SP’s or corners the SP market- and that is not reflective of baseball. Because, again, a hard cap is (as of yet) not possible.
I don’t agree that the limit “restricted his team’s capacity to compete”, because all the teams play with the same restriction. There are other weeks where he will be in the opposite boat, and more importantly it’s the restriction of the system that forces owners to more actively manage their teams, like you do in scouting your opponent and the MLB matchups ahead. The randomness of the schedule and SP matchups, just as the randomness of the performances from the other parts of your team, is reflective of baseball, and so is the sort of lineup management that a 2 SP format requires.
I argue this is all good for the game; the alternative that we discussed last year (a Soft GS Cap) or more than 2 SP’s would’ve made both the perceived edge in SP’s (due to the pitching formula) and the real strategic value in them much greater, and it would’ve skewed the format. But I don’t see your league as all that skewed, beyond the managers who didn’t expend resources on a solid bullpen anyway.
I love my bullpen of relievers. As it’s my first year of Otteneu I have enjoyed getting to better know MLB bullpens and how they are valued, at least as opposed to other formats I play in. I love that it’s a challenge to manage! I have a new team H2H and an FGpts league. Coming in I wanted to try never have an emtpy RP slot on any day to attempt to get as many high quality RP innings as possible out of the 5 daily slots.
I have to disagree with this. None of these numbers or assessments are accurate in this format. Even more specifically in how I have been able to use them in this league. What i have actually acquired in points from each is not that. Those numbers represent season long points totals players have posted in MLB, not how I have managed them in this league.
“The best teams in the league” have weekly records, not yearly point totals.
I don’t think it’s the scoring formula that reflects that. It’s the 2 start pitcher rule that caused me to lose in weeks when my starting pitchers lined up to be restricted more than my opponent.
Thanks yo! Yet, I’m streaming only make up for the imbalance due to the restrictions of the 2 start rule. I wouldn’t be carrying nearly as many SPs on my team if I didn’t have to hope that my slew of pitchers, slots up to equal or hopefully to outmatch my opponent’s slew of pitchers.
This doesn’t mean I’m abandoning my offensive line-up completely, yet I am compromising it and would like to have a couple more bench players. I’d even add one more RP.
A key point to make here is that there are no IP limits in this fomat, yet there are position limits. It’s not as important to have every offensive slot filled every day, in fact that would be unwise. In SPs every open slot is a loss of potential points. Same with Rps. This is again where the 2 start limit imbalance generates the sense of unfairness. In an week, streaming an SP could give you a 2 start advantage over an opponent. Or, not streaming 2 SPs could leave you in disadvantage.
Of course there is variabitlity in performance, any player can put up negative numbers. Also, the available talent on the market has diminished now and the built in financial restrictions are catching up (I’ve cut over 25 players this year). Streaming is less viable at this point in the season.
Ahhh…an assumption I keep making then, is that a starts per week hard cap is possible.
I’ll keep advocating for it and put forth these ideas, maybe the “end-around” answer will emerge.
I see a separate box on the lineup page for SP that has 10 slots. Once you roster an SP in a slot, it locks out for the week. It must allow you to re-roster a pitcher that has 2 starts that week.
I do understand this to be a “big fix” in terms of changing the site, and that it’s not as simple as it seems … we’re here to dream tho eh?
I’ve spent many years looking for a H2H format (without the ability of using a GS or IP cap) that was as reflective of MLB as possible, as a derivative of the ottoneu format. By that, I mean a design where the total scoring output is 50/50 Hitters/Pitchers, and Pitchers are two-third’s SP’s and one-third RP’s (as MLB RP’s actually account for more than 33%+ of IP’s).
You trying to get as many high quality RP innings as possible out of each daily spot is what has hurt you week-to-week, because- like the two leaders in W-L standings, “Captain TBD” and “Trout of the Park”, whose bullpens I referenced earlier- you could be getting stronger points production, on average, from other parts of your roster if you didn’t use those resources on your bullpen.
Hey, man, I do, too- your pen’s frickin’ sweet.
Just too bad it isn’t being rewarded with a points formula that accurately values RP’s, instead of one that scores RP’s down to ~23% usage (in terms of IP in Total Points leagues) rather than 30%-35% where it should be in order to reflect their MLB importance.
Which is to say, the leverage factor of SV’s/HLD’s (and I argue Blown Saves) should be adjusted for H2H purposes to better reflect the MLB game. Today’s bullpen game is all about leverage, so why isn’t that true here? If an RP enters a game and blows a lead, the importance of that should be reflected here as well.
You should have a better record with a bullpen like that, and Captain/Trout of the Park should have a tougher time with those weaker pen’s.
The FIP numbers are because that’s what the system is built around, and you have to use the full-season points output to balance the format as a whole. So that’s why I was referencing them as the relative imbalance between SP’s and RP’s.
Intuitively, with a formula that scored the best RP’s by Total Points relative to the best SP’s and Hitters- with the RP pool being reflective of MLB’s balance (one-third RP’s, or ~80 players of 240 Pitchers, of a pool of 480 players or 40 players x 12 teams where half are hitters)- you would be getting more ‘bang for your buck’ with that excellent bullpen, and that skew between SP’s/RP’s would close.
Right, and they’ve accomplished this by allocating resources away from their pen. Which is not reflective of the MLB game. An MLB team with a weak bullpen is not generally the best team in the game. A playoff team, sure; but there’s a cost to having a weak bullpen in real life that isn’t reflective in the FGPoints formula (or SABR formula).
Can you quantify this?
Can you say how many matchups you’ve lost if you had one more active SP?
Remember, the other team has that extra SP slot, too- so you need to account for what they would’ve done with that. And you have to be honest, how many additional matchups would you have Lost because the other team could’ve done the same thing?
In a vacuum, I’d say it hardly matters over the course of an entire season. But in practice, that extra SP slot- or that Soft GS Limit- lends to a format that’s all about streaming SP’s. I don’t see the 2 SP format as being all about streaming SP’s, even if you’re using it as a strategy (and a strategy that the leaders, Captain/Park, don’t seem to be employing).
Again, you’re streaming SP’s because your bullpen is undervalued relative to the MLB game. The teams winning your league have weak pens and are not streaming. The value isn’t in building a strong pen, because the FGPoints formula undervalues RP production.
How many SP’s should you carry in a fully balanced format? Part of the debate here is whether all 40-players ought to be used for competitive purposes, as many people like to find/build around prospects.
Right now, you have to assume the entire 40-players are used competitively; so, for perfect balance we’re talking 20-Hitters/20-Pitchers (50/50), and 12-13 SP/7-8 RP (67/33 SP/RP). You have 18 Hitters (including 2 Minor League Hitters), 14 SP’s and 8 RP’s (no MiLB pitchers). Again, you should have a better record because of the strength of your pen, so instead you’re skewing your roster toward Pitching and trying to make use of an SP stream strategy.
Captain TBD also has 18 Hitters (1 Minor League Hitter) and 13 SP’s but just 6 RP’s and 3 Minor League Pitchers. Pretty close to the ideal balance but with 4 MiLB’s, and he’s not allocating resources to his pen.
Trout in the Park has 21 Hitters (1 Minor Leaguer) and 12 SP’s, 6 RP’s, and 1 Minor League Pitcher. Right-on balance, but he’s not allocating resources to his pen, either.
If people were stockpiling SP’s to find an edge because of the 2 SP rule, with all 40 players being useable for the matchup format, the winners of your league would have more than the natural balance relative to the MLB game of more than 13 SP’s on the roster, and more Pitchers than Hitters. That is what you’re doing, and yet you’re playing catch-up. The imbalance here that you’re confusing with the 2 SP rule is in the relative strength of the Bullpen.
What do you think the 40-player make-up should be for this format? If you look at any MLB team’s 40-man roster; how is it made-up? Generally, 50/50 Hitters and two-thirds/one-third SP’s/RP’s. I don’t see the imbalance you think you see. I think you’ve altered your strategy because of a misinterpretation of the meaning of the 2 SP rule, and it’s costing you on your record.
I don’t think that’s wise with this points formula and in a format that encourages all 40 players to be used competitively. That strategy has an inherit disadvantage here, and it’s what I want to see fixed.
I don’t see how it’s unwise not to keep offensive spots filled every day; if you have the SP strength, anyway. Offense is the most consistent source of points, so that should be priority number two after SP’s (in this format, with this scoring formula).
There’s a balance to find in the effectiveness of the performances we’re talking about. If that extra SP start nets you 15 points, but to afford using a roster spot for it you cut a Hitter with a 5 Pts/G week over 5 games, then that extra SP start was a net loss.
So, I think that what you’re referring to is the balance that we’re striving for; for the owner to determine whether it’s “worth” streaming/rostering a lesser player at the expense of some other part of his roster.
This is an excellent, thoughtful exchange. I have a question and a point:
? Are we going to be able to auction for players during the playoffs? They are about to start so we need to know ASAP.
. I think the rule changes should be minimal year-to-year or at a minimum communicated very early (eg All-Star break). Teams will actively make different decisions on their end of year rosters based on what the rules are going to be. I wouldn’t value SP the same going into the end of the year if I knew that the benefit of a lot of SP was going to be less next year. This impacts my trade deadline strategy, etc. So, please let us know of any changes as soon as possible.
I wholeheartedly agree. I know I floated the idea at the beginning of the month to not allow auctions during the playoffs, but since I haven’t followed up or made an official call on this, there will be no change to the auction rules for the 2018 playoffs.
My general plan now is to let this season play out, and work on the hard weekly start cap and an league option to not have auctions during the playoffs for the 2019 season.
I want to keep universal changes at a minimum from year to year and give as much lead time as possible, so please hold me to that standard if you see me slipping in any way.
Thank you. I want to provide my perspective on the potential changes discussed above. For context, my team is currently the #1 ranked H2G FGPts team on Ottoneu (Brass Monkeys). I’ve played for many years rotisserie and H2H on multiple other sites, and this is my first year in Ottoneu.
Overall: Any comparisons between season-long points or categories and H2H should be discarded. These are two completely different ways of playing fantasy baseball. I’ve won championships in each format, but they are very different. H2H is more active, requires weekly strategy, and the playoffs are a totally different game; while season-long rewards quality and longer-term thinking. I decided a couple years ago I prefer H2H, but others may decide differently. But, let’s not compare them.
Further, each league has its own nuances, with different types of players being prioritized very differently. In my Yahoo! league, a SP eligible closer is one of the most valuable assets you can have, while in my ESPN league a RP eligible starter is really valuable. This is the nature of fantasy baseball, in particular H2H.
As an aside, I do agree with the comments above about the difference in value of RP in fantasy vs. MLB, but frankly don’t mind as the volatility of RP makes it much harder to manage as a fantasy owner so I’d prefer if it was less important.
Weekly starts / 2 SP / IP limits: I think people need to chill out and suck it up. I currently am rostering 17 SP, and every week have multiple days where I can’t start a good pitcher (e.g., tonight I have Kluber, Wheeler, Quintana, Pivetta, Fiers, and Gant starting). I need to roster that many pitchers to try to get to the 14 starts a week.
In a format where a team wouldn’t rationally roster 17 SP, it would be easier to strive for both short-term and long-term success at the same time. Instead, in this format I’m rostering Nova, Hill, Erlin, Fiers, Quintana, etc. in an effort to win this year; which means that my competitors are able to roster top prospects for the future. If we move to a weekly cap (say 10) for starts, then I’ll roster fewer SP and be able to carry more assets for the future, which will hopefully enable me to have sustained success, but will also potentially make it more difficult for another team to work their way up in the standings.
Playoff freeze: I personally don’t like the idea of freezing rosters for the playoffs as this would change the game too much for the final, critical weeks, and make it significantly less interesting (e.g., the owner would feel less in control during the time that mattered most). I understand that it is this way in MLB, but those teams also get to switch players in the event of injury and switch players between rounds of the playoffs.
Future: The current format 1) rewards high quality bats as your Pts/G matters a lot because on a weekly basis I probably get close to half of my points from hitting; 2) also rewards high-quality starters as points per game (the real metric in this format vs. points per IP) matters a lot and you want to be able to lock those guys in (I don’t think one will really be able to effectively pick matchups 7 days a week for 2 spots). Therefore, the difference between this format and others is in the rest of the roster (~10 spots): teams looking to compete for a championship will roster a bunch of SP that otherwise would be on waivers, while teams building for the future will roster prospects/young guys. In other leagues, this mix would be more evenly distributed, per the comments above. In the long-run I do believe that the Ottoneu market will figure things out if given time.
In conclusion, the format could go to a weekly start cap (have in another league) or keep the current format. Both have their merits. I think that decisions need to be communicated well in advance to allow teams to plan accordingly.
All excellent points from another experienced owner in H2H versions of the ottoneu format within the limits of the big box services. I agree with everything except, of course, that balancing the scoring between RP’s isn’t important.
As you point out, it is the very reason why some teams- like yours- choose to roster so many SP’s, and I suggest that the only reason why you’ve been successful at the strategy is probably because, as a veteran of the format, you already knew what to look for from the start. Because of teams (like yours) that are early/better at this very particular strategy, the available depth of SP’s on the market disappears quick, and when other teams try to follow the same strategy they find that they aren’t getting the best ‘bang for their buck’ (in terms of Pts/GS) with those extra GS as they otherwise could get from carrying more bats, and then they get frustrated and blame it on things like the 2 SP limit. That’s not going to change with an actual GS cap; there’s just a natural skew towards SP’s in the market and gameplay, and I don’t agree that this makes for the best format for everyone.
The Bullpen ought to be the hardest part of the roster to manage because RP’s are so volatile, and there ought to be a scoring format for H2H that reflects that; I understand why it would seem counter-intuitive to increase the value of RP’s because of this more random part of the game/season… but (as you acknowledge), that is the state of the MLB game today. And isn’t that what we’re trying to mirror here? I’m a Brewer fan, and I like to draw the comparison to their 2012 season- that year they had a top-of-the-league offense, top-five rotation, but dead-last bullpen and they missed the playoffs. In this format, your bullpen can be crap and you won’t have to pay for it as long as you have a stacked rotation, which only a couple or three teams can really do, and if that’s not true in reality then why should it be here?
Without balancing the scoring, the available player pool will always be out-of-whack. How has the FA market in your league evolved during the season? How do you play your Bullpen? How many other teams tried to follow your lead in over-stocking SP’s without it working as well as with you? Are the other leaders in your league also overstocking in SP’s (e.g, more than 13-ish)? Have you been in an ottoneu-style H2H league in the past that has adjusted for the RP imbalance (and if so, how did it play)? I’m asking this in a vacuum of course, without any economic impacts to your team if such a rule change was made, but if RP scoring was more important, wouldn’t you be forced to spend more of your available resources on your pen… and then not be able to carry so many SP’s, which would work to even-out the SP FA market for everyone and then make it a more challenging format for veteran players like yourself?
You (correctly) point out that you cannot draw comparisons between Total Points and H2H leagues because the play so different. Why, then, shouldn’t the H2H format have its own, separate, balanced scoring format? Playing the natural ‘edges’ in the format, like the one you’ve been able to exploit in your league this year, shouldn’t be the point behind the gameplay.
Also on the Playoff-auction-freeze, I want to again suggest that only the players who are cut after the trading deadline are barred from being re-auctioned; any FA who was available or cut prior to the deadline ought to still be able to be auctioned off by any team. It’s now possible to create a “Restricted Players” list who cannot be auctioned at any time during the season; can’t these post-deadline released players simply be added to such a list automatically after a certain date?
On another strategy that had been previously brought up, that of acquiring starting pitchers from the same team to manage the 2 start rule.
I drafted Verlander and traded for Cole early in the season. i just picked up F. Valdez, and at the trade deadline traded for Keuchel. That’s 4 of the Astro’s starting rotation to head in to the playoffs with. Freaks!
Of course, the strategy can backfire on off-days or when the team with your rotation has a series against an offensive juggernaut or they’re on the road at Coors or something. And if the P formula more realistically represented RP’s, the rotation issue as a whole wouldn’t be as notable as it might be right now.
Does anyone know how the rest of the playoff schedule will work? Are the semi-finals this week, and the championship next week with the last week being a ‘dead’ week? (Which makes sense as nobody wants to lose a championship because their top players are resting the last week). Are transactions still allowed through Sept 30th (eg through the ‘dead’ week)?
Longer term, has it been decided that there will be a hard cap on weekly starts next year in H2H (if yes, how many)? Any other changes (eg to scoring system)?
Finally, I’ll follow-up on one thing mentioned above: Ignore the comparison of global leaders. This is the first year of H2H, so no league had teams set up to do well this year and others in rebuild mode. Better to look at August and see if the scoring was similar between H2H and season points, my guess is that it was higher. Separately, the global leader boards have been messed up for the last week, and those of us with a bye didn’t get credit for our stats but they did count against our annual cap for games start.
The rest of the playoff schedule depends on what your league’s settings are. Wild-Card rounds have semifinals this week and a two week championship game starting next week.
There were three playoff options, and you can see how their scheduled here:
I will change the H2H global leaderboards so they don’t include playoff stats, though you’re right, it is a little meaningless since some H2H leagues don’t have playoffs. Teams who had byes last week shouldn’t have had games put against their cap limits either, so I’ll look into that.
Game mode changes will be announced before arbitration, but there will not be any forced changes. New settings will take the form of league options that each league can choose to adopt as they see fit.
I’m excited about the weekly SP hard cap for 2019. I haven’t checked this thread in many months but see many have quoted my extreme week this past season where I had 6 SPs all starting on the same day.
I don’t want to beat a dead horse but… actually I’m totally going to beat a dead horse! As a game designer and product manager, I want to quickly breakdown why this was so frustrating (in a ‘not fun frustrating’ way) as an Ottoneu player as I don’t read this fully articulated as I see it:
It’s not like the situation revised itself the following week. I had 4 or 5 SPs going on the same day for many weeks… and at least 3 SPs starting nearly all summer. It ‘felt’ like it wrecked my season and that I needed to double my SP staff from about 7 to 14+.
The rule of 2 SPs a day max doesn’t mimic real baseball because a real MLB manager can start his rotation in any way he pleases. As a fantasy player without control over dictating which SP starts when, I’m left without control – and no control as a player in any game is not fun. Players need meaningful choices, that’s the very heart of game design.
‘Feel’ is really important to a player and Niv hit on this in a reply. As a player I need to feel like I have options and the autonomy to make a smart decision that affects the outcome.
The ‘weekly hard cap for SPs fix’ gives me the (feel of) control I need to pretend to be the MLB manager and say hey, here’s my SP staff (7?) and I’ll make sure I take advantage of my strengths this week in this manner (ex: 10 starts, leaving 1 or 2 on the bench). I’m no longer forced to simply take the starts that the MLB manager + schedule allows.
Just to reply on this note, as any decent game designer would recommend, let’s playtest it in 2019. I suspect the opposite – I think players will completely grasp the strategy of managing starts over the course of one week… albeit with a small learning curve in April perhaps.
… we’re here to dream tho eh? 
