Tips for Maintaining an Active Fantasy Baseball League

I certainly have a few pet peeves when it comes to how people play fantasy baseball. More or less, I maintain that it’s your team to do what you want with it, but there are a few exceptions. The main one is that you have to try all the way through. Now that we’re into the season and the contenders and pretenders are starting to show themselves, the deadbeats are about to be exposed.

It doesn’t matter what format you play, effort matters all the way throughout the season. You may be well out of contention in a roto league, but battling for position in one or two categories with contending teams. If you give your best effort and lose those categories, nobody has the right to criticize you. If you don’t, then other contending teams have every right to rip you a new one and if I am an LM in that league, you had better come up with a good reason for doing that if you want back in next year.

For the record, I am not talking about a few days where you’re not as attentive. People go on vacation, have families, jobs, and all that good stuff. Life getting in the way for a little while is fine. But if life is going to be getting in the way over the course of a full six-month season, then you should have never joined the league.

If you’re new to the world of being an Fantasy Baseball League Manager, you may have a question like this. How can I be sure that non-contending teams will continue to show effort?

That’s an interesting question. The end of the baseball season coincides with the beginning of football (and fantasy football) season. If you’re out of contention, it’s easy to put fantasy baseball on the back burner. So, for you LMs and prospective LMs, please consider any or all of these steps.

1. Come up with a prize for avoiding last place

I’ll give you a perfect example of this. In 2011, Clave wanted to introduce a new trophy to our Tunacorn league. Before 2011, the trophy was a Torii Hunter bobble head, glued on top of a can of corn, glued on top of a can of tuna. Clave wanted something a little more formal looking.

So, he was trying to figure out what to do with the original trophy. A few ideas came up. One was the bottom team of the top half of the standings (seventh place), another was the middle finisher (eighth place), another was the top owner in the bottom part (ninth place), while the last suggestion was to give it to the team that finished in second-to-last place.

Any one of those would have worked fine. The point is that none of those teams were anywhere near contention, but they all had a reason to keep trying.

2. Penalize a last-place finish

In that season, I traded for Buster Posey early in the year, and acquired Adam Wainwright early in the year. In a 15-team league with a thin bench and only one DL spot, I was doomed.

So, I decided to keep both, as it’s an auction league. It led to a tough season for me, but I got some pretty good keepers for 2012 at a cheap rate. So, I took a last-place finish, and it cost me.

I had to pay for the engraving of the new trophy, which is now a tradition. Another idea would be to make the last place team pay for shipping, if the new winner lives out of the area.

I wasn’t being a deadbeat. No, I was making a calculated decision. I could have made some moves, but I was not a contender when Posey got hurt. So, I kept both of them on my team knowing that last place was a risk.

There are a few other things that you can do. One idea is to invert your draft order. Traditionally, the last-place finisher receives the first draft pick. Think about doing a modified version of that. For teams in the top half of the standings keep the same policy. So, the best team still picks last, second to best team picks second to last, etc. For the teams in the bottom half, invert it. If you’re in a 12-team league, have the seventh place finisher pick first, eighth place second, etc.

That puts the last place team one year in the middle of the draft for the next, which is the worst place to be.

In real sports, teams often finish in last place because they just weren’t that good. So, giving them the best chance to improve in the draft is fair. In fantasy, bottom finishing teams are generally there because they stop trying. I have no problem punishing that.

The bottom line is that every league is going to have teams at the bottom of the standings. When it comes to prizes, most of the thought revolves around the top finishers, which is fine. The only problem is that it may not take too long to realize that you’re not competing, so the potential is great for people to check out.

If an LM keeps the whole league in mind throughout the entire season, it will go a long way towards keeping all members active. Of course, even if there are reasons to stay involved, not everyone will. Well, if an LM gives reasons for non-contenders to play the whole season out and some people still don’t, it’s time to look for new members.

So, now it’s your turn. Do these ideas not work? Do you have any other suggestions? Am I being too rigid? Feel free to let me know in the comments section.