For die-hard baseball fans, the typical 10-team, 5x5-scored fantasy league leaves much to be desired. The BBFL improves on this format by demanding knowledge of practically every player in baseball and awareness of advanced statistical categories. For interested parties and new owners, I present a brief history of the BBFL and the kind of information you’ll see every Monday during the season.
Rules
The league consists of three ranked divisions: Alomar, Barfield, and Carter. Each division has twenty teams with 25 players (13 hitters, 10 pitchers, and two bench spots), and teams play weekly head-to-head matchups. Each week, the league allots wins based on twelve statistical categories. On offense, categories include runs scored, runs batted in, steals, batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. For pitchers, the stats are innings pitched, wins, saves, earned run average, WHIP (walks plus hits per inning pitched), and ratio of strikeouts to walks.
After 22 weeks of play, the top six teams advance to a championship playoff bracket with the top two receiving byes. The final round consists of a two-week match for the Division Championship. The next six teams qualify for a consolation playoff bracket, while the bottom eight teams are dormant.
The league has no interdivisional play but does incorporate a system of promotion and relegation among divisions. At the end of each season, the bottom three teams from Alomar and Barfield must move to a lower division, while the three best teams from Barfield and Carter are kicked upstairs. The Alomar Division is superior to the others, if only in terms of seniority. After several years of promotion and relegation, the divisions might display legitimate differences in quality of ownership.
Each owner keeps five players from the previous year’s final roster, but no owner may keep a player for more than three seasons. Unkept players enter the pool for selection in a twenty-round draft that occurs the Thursday prior to Opening Day.
History
Coach created the BBFL way back in early 2003, when the site’s hit count hovered around 30,000. He extended invitations to existing and future Roster members and some of Batter’s Box’s “early adopters.” We collaborated on a basic set of rules but left many questions unanswered. As Coach wrote on March 17, 2003: “The Constitution was passed, but the keeper rules still could be amended… Other wrinkles -- trading of future draft picks, a farm system -- could be implemented for next year, but that would require a permanent League Secretary to keep reliable records.”
The Gashouse Gorillas won the inaugural regular season title by a comfortable 8.5-game margin over Billie’s Bashers and the rest, but they lost a nail-biter to my fourth-place Nation Builders (now Austin Senators) in the semi-finals. My team held off Billie’s Bashers for the league championship, while the Red Mosquitoes won the consolation bracket.
In 2004, Coach turned over the job of commissioner to Mike Moffatt, who oversaw a slew of ballot proposals and creation of a waiting list to accommodate potential new owners. Most notably, the BBFL expanded to two divisions and implemented a system of relegation and promotion between divisions.
In the senior Alomar Division, Coach’s Toronto Walrus ran the table. The Walrus won the regular season title by 10.5 games, then dominated the semifinal round and championship matchup (over runner-up AGF) by scores of 9-3. In the consolation bracket, the Horse Field Hammers defeated Baird Brain on a tiebreaker.
In the new Barfield Division, Slippery Pete posted the best winning percentage (.634) in BBFL history and won the division title by 11.5 games. Alas for him, second-place Ghost Man On Third defeated Pete in the championship final. They, along with the third-place Edmonton Decepticons, earned a promotion to the Alomar Division for 2005.
The 2005 season brought a yet another commissioner (howdy), some fine-tuning to the promotion/relegation system, and creation of a third division known as Carter. The BBFL now has 60 owners and has become a multinational, transcontinental force rivaling General Electric and Hello Kitty for world hegemony.
Trivia: The BBFL has had three inaugural drafts: the Alomar Division (then the Premiership) in 2003, Barfield in 2004, and Carter in 2005. Of the twenty players selected in each first round, only seven have been selected in all three drafts. Can you name them? (Answer at bottom).
About Roto Stats and Strength of Opposition
I collect all the weekly statistics and convert them into standings like those found in a roto league. The conversion isn’t perfect, as there’s no easy way to collect information on at-bats and plate appearances, but it’s close enough. So, during the season you’ll see tables like this one:
TEAM________________ RUN- RBI- SB - AVG- OBP- SLG IP - WIN- SV - ERA-WHIP-K/BB TOTAL Austin Senators_____ 20 - 19 - 17 - 20 - 18 - 20 13 - 17 - 12 - 14 - 18 - 19 207 Horse Field Hammers_ 15 - 17 - 17 - 19 - 19 - 19 17 - 16 - 1 - 1 - 8 - 8 157 Thunderbirds________ 6 - 16 - 17 - 13 - 12 - 12 12 - 17 - 1 - 13 - 13 - 20 152 Slippery Pete_______ 4 - 4 - 5 - 18 - 17 - 18 18 - 12 - 20 - 6 - 12 - 13 147 Mebion Glyndwr______ 7 - 10 - 15 - 5 - 9 - 14 16 - 20 - 1 - 15 - 14 - 17 143etc.
A common complaint (well, more of a grumbling) is that the roto standings sometimes differ substantially from the H2H standings. This is true, but in my opinion, roto standings are equivalent to batting averages: they impart some useful information about players but leave a great deal out.
For example, Team Dress and Team Casual compete in a head-to-head league. Over the course of five weeks, they play five random teams (not each other) and score runs in the following fashion:
Weekly Runs Scored, Team Dress: 50, 50, 50, 50, 20 – Total of 220
Weekly Runs Scored, Team Casual: 30, 30, 30, 30, 100 – Total of 220
League Average Weekly Runs Scored: 42
Dress and Casual ended up with the same number of runs scored but got there in entirely different manners. Team Dress consistently scored slightly above average and had one terrible week. Team Casual consistently scored slightly below average and threw out one monster week. Which team is better? My review of tons of stats indicates that Team Dress will win more often than Team Casual even though their aggregate roto scores are identical. When viewing the roto stats, keep in mind that not all statistics are created equally.
I also provide what I call Strength of Opposition, which measures how well a team’s opponents have played against that team. These stats are subject to the same potential deceptiveness as the roto stats. Also, a bad team necessarily will face stronger opponents than a good team, because a bad team doesn’t get to play against itself.
These statistics will debut next week.
About Normalized Standings And “Luck”
Because the roto stats present an interesting but warped view of reality (and because I am Nerd Incarnate), I created a new measurement tool dubbed Normalized Standings. Originally, I scored every teams’s performance based on placement on a normal distribution curve. That didn’t work so well because the leagues stats aren’t normally distributed, but I kept the name because it sounded authoritative.
In H2H play, your team gets wins and losses based on statistical comparison to one team in one week. In Normalized Standings, I compare your weekly performance to every team and every week. If your team scored 50 runs in a given week, and the database ranks your performance the 100th best out of 500 week’s worth of scores, you’d get 0.80 “normal” wins for that performance. Just like “Pythagorean” standings, this metric measures the expected value of your performance in terms of games won. Below is an excerpt from last year’s Alomar Division:
TEAM________________ H2H Wins/Rank N* Wins/Rank Luck (Wins) Reykjavik Fish Candy 123.5 15 118.4 18 5.1 Baird Brain_________ 132.5 10 128.5 13 4.0 Billie's Bashers____ 127.5 11 126.5 15 1.0 gashouse gorillas___ 146.5 6 147.2 3 (0.7) Austin Senators_____ 143.5 8 145.0 4 (1.5) Eastern Shore Birds_ 126.0 13 128.1 14 (2.1)
H2H = actual wins in the league N* = normalized wins
I use the word “luck” to describe the difference between actual and normalized wins. It’s not really luck, as there’s no reason to expect normalized wins to correlate perfectly with actual wins. Maybe the difference measures a team’s (in)efficiency. Either way, for most teams, the difference between actual and normalized wins is small. Occasionally, it’s very large, raising the question of how much luck is involved in the league.
In the long run, actual wins should correlate very closely to normalized wins, but in my opinion that long run is much longer than the 22 weeks of a fantasy season. Perhaps the long run is 110 weeks, or 220. In any case, like real teams, fantasy teams must deal with luck. The Cubs won more Pythagorean games than Houston last year, but that didn’t get them into the playoffs.
As with the roto stats, normalized standings will debut next week.
ALOMAR DIVISION
Rank TEAM________________ W L T PCT GB 1 Austin Senators_____ 11 1 0 .917 - 2 Red Mosquitos_______ 8 3 1 .708 2.5 3 Chatsworth Halos____ 7 4 1 .625 3.5 4 Ghost Man on Third__ 7 4 1 .625 3.5 5 Eastern Shore Birds_ 7 5 0 .583 4.0 6 gashouse gorillas___ 7 5 0 .583 4.0
7 Horse Field Hammers_ 6 4 2 .583 4.0 8 Mebion Glyndwr______ 7 5 0 .583 4.0 9 Reykjavik Fish Candy 7 5 0 .583 4.0 10 Slippery Pete_______ 6 6 0 .500 5.0 11 Toronto Walrus______ 6 6 0 .500 5.0 12 Billie's Bashers____ 5 7 0 .417 6.0
13 Edmonton Decepticons 5 7 0 .417 6.0 14 Garces_not_on_roids_ 5 7 0 .417 6.0 15 Moscow Rats_________ 5 7 0 .417 6.0 16 Thunderbirds________ 4 6 2 .417 6.0 17 Baird Brain_________ 4 7 1 .375 6.5
18 hannibals cannibals_ 4 7 1 .375 6.5 19 Homer Jays Simpsons_ 3 8 1 .292 7.5 20 AGF__________________ 1 11 0 .083 10.0
My Austin Senators posted the eighth-best roto week in division history, bowling over an AGF squad that would’ve finished around .500 against most opponents. The Horse Field Hammers and Thunderbirds had the second and third-best roto weeks. Unfortunately for them, they were playing each other. Ghost Man On Third led the four new owners with a 7-4-1 victory over Baird Brain. Defending Champ Toronto Walrus fought last year’s Barfield regular season champ Slippery Pete to a 6-6 tie.
Baird Brain tied division-worsts with 17 runs scored and 13 RBI.
BARFIELD DIVISION
Rank TEAM________________ W L T PCT GB 1 Jay's Ehs___________ 10 2 0 .833 - 2 Good Sports_________ 9 2 1 .792 0.5 3 Pistol Nine_________ 9 3 0 .750 1.0 4 Schroedinger's Bat__ 8 3 1 .708 1.5 5 team junior felix___ 8 4 0 .667 2.0 6 W-A-M-C-O___________ 8 4 0 .667 2.0
7 Vancouver Cyphers___ 7 4 1 .625 2.5 8 Burlington Mazsters__ 7 5 0 .583 3.0 9 K-Town Mashers______ 6 5 1 .542 3.5 10 Lubumbashi Posse____ 6 5 1 .542 3.5 11 Jick's Rays_________ 5 6 1 .458 4.5 12 The Sweaty Guys_____ 5 6 1 .458 4.5
13 MonkeymenCubed______ 5 7 0 .417 5.0 14 Anarchist Archivists 4 7 1 .375 5.5 15 Canadian wannabe____ 4 8 0 .333 6.0 16 Capers______________ 4 8 0 .333 6.0 17 1-Tool Wonders______ 3 8 1 .292 6.5
18 Freddy Beach Fracas_ 3 9 0 .250 7.0 19 Middleclass Elitists 2 9 1 .208 7.5 20 the mighty midgets__ 2 10 0 .167 8.0
In a battle of name changes, the former TMG Ehs hosed the former Ben’s Men to take the early lead in Barfield. The closerless Ehs won every category but saves and WHIP. Last year’s best team with the same owner, Good Sports, rolled to a 9-2-0 finish over the Middleclass Elistists. Two rosterites hooked up this week, with Kurt Lamont’s Pistol Nine dominating Leigh Sprague’s Fraddy Beach Fracas 9-3-0.
Two teams with new owners, the Lubumbashi Posse and Burlington Mazsters, proved to be quick studies to the league and finished above .500. Jick’s Rays and K-Town Mashers, who played in Alomar last year, finished in the middle of the pack.
Jay’s Ehs also had the best roto week. Nobody set any records, good or bad.
CARTER DIVISION
Rank TEAM________________ W L T PCT GB 1 The Angry Gnomes____ 11 1 0 .917 - 2 Dr. Z's Hot Men_____ 10 0 2 .917 - 3 Baseball North______ 10 2 0 .833 1.0 4 Hammie's Rollies____ 9 2 1 .792 1.5 5 Hee Seop Choi_______ 8 4 0 .667 3.0 6 Mechanical Brains___ 8 4 0 .667 3.0
7 Pohnpei Papayas_____ 7 3 2 .667 3.0 8 Magic 9_____________ 7 5 0 .583 4.0 9 Three Bucks on a Hun 6 5 1 .542 4.5 10 @$$kickers__________ 6 6 0 .500 5.0 11 New Jersey Stratuses 6 6 0 .500 5.0 12 Bodell's Bashers____ 5 6 1 .458 5.5
13 Mad Bashers_________ 5 7 0 .417 6.0 14 Garth Iorg Gremlins_ 4 8 0 .333 7.0 15 The Baker 5_________ 4 8 0 .333 7.0 16 Blocked Youngsters__ 3 7 2 .333 7.0 17 Roseneath Rockets___ 2 9 1 .208 8.5 18 Pond. Simon Pond.___ 2 10 0 .167 9.0 19 Team Balla__________ 1 11 0 .083 10.0 20 The Brute Squad_____ 0 10 2 .083 10.0
In stark contrast to the Alomar Division, the inaugural week of the Carter Division resulted in several blowouts. Dr. Z would not concede a single win to The Brute Squad, who actually posted respectable numbers in most categories. The Angry Gnomes and Baseball North also jumped out of the gate. They were helped in that regard by the starting pitchers of their opponents: Pond. Simon Pond suffered through the twin miseries of Barry Zito and Woody Williams, while Team Balla endured two bad starts each from David Wells and Javier Vazquez.
Baseball North had the best roto week, just slightly better than Dr. Z.
Players Selected In Every Inaugural Fantasy Draft
Carlos Beltran, Vlad Guerrero, Randy Johnson, Albert Pujols, Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, Alfonso Soriano.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20050411141227399