Fantasy sports aren't for everyone. You need to follow a certain sport, enjoy making predictions, and have some free time on your hands. If any of those three ingredients is missing, I'd say it's probably not for you.
If, however, you like at least one sport, cherish the fine art of prognostication, and are looking for ways to kill time, then fantasy sports -- and this blog post -- are for you.
I'd like to accomplish two things today in regards to fantasy baseball: brag about my domination in my current league of friends, and argue for the particular type of fantasy baseball we play.
1. My fifteen minutes of glory
One of the exciting but frustrating parts of fantasy sports is that you can destroy your competition all season long then have one bad week in the playoffs and finish in 2nd, 3rd, or 4th place. So, if you're destroying your competition all season long, as I'm now doing in my league, you have to enjoy it while it lasts. I've thus decided to brag now, in the event that I lose my bragging rights when push comes to shove.
All I'm going to do to brag is proudly display a graphic I've made to illustrate how far ahead I am of the competition. In case there's any confusion, I am the blue dot all the way to the left. The chart indicates by how many games each other team is trailing me:
2. Two types: Head-to-head vs. Rotisserie
While anyone can enjoy a good old bragfest (umm... now that I'm reading that statement...), this point will probably appeal mostly to fantasy baseball veterans. But in case any brave cool person is still reading, I'll explain the two main types of fantasy baseball leagues.
In a rotisserie league, each team accumulates the stats of its players all season long. Then, at the end of the season, you just look at where each team ranks in each important statistical category (e.g., for baseball, Runs, RBI, Batting Average, ERA, etc.). The team that ranks highest in the most of these categories is the champion.
In a head-to-head league, you instead face off against one other team each week. At the end of the week, each category you win counts as a "win" for your team, and each category you lose counts as a "loss." So, if at the end of a week I've outscored Scot in 7 of the 10 categories, my team's "record" is 7-3 while his is 3-7. In such a league, you have 1-3 rounds of playoffs to end the year, and whoever goes undefeated in those rounds is the champion.
The common aphorism about the two types is that rotisserie is more fair, but head-to-head is more fun. This is because the best team always wins in "roto" leagues, but they mostly lack the excitement of 1-on-1 playoff matchups. I've always accepted this principle (and chosen head-to-head accordingly, because if I'm not trying to have fun then what am I doing pretending to be a baseball manager?). Until now.
I now think that head-to-head is more fun and more fair.
Well, "more fair" might not be completely true, but I think head-to-head definitely better represents actual sports. Which (I think) is the aim of fantasy sports.
In real baseball, we don't wait til the end of the season and compare home run and ERA totals and crown a champion based on the numbers. No. We take the top teams and they square off 1-on-1. While we'd like to think that the best team generally wins, with so many crazy factors (weather, injuries, distractions), there is a definite element of luck.
So even the undesirable parts of head-to-head -- like the seemingly arbitrary strike of a "bad week" that ends your season -- are part of the reality of professional sports.
If anyone made it this far, please comment!!!
Comments encourage me to keep blogging.
Are you currently being dominated by me in fantasy baseball? What are your thoughts on fantasy sports?
Jon
I'm commenting because I made it that far. Ok, now that I'm here I guess I should say something (I was planning on not doing it). First off, good job Jon!
ReplyDeleteSecond, and this deserves a new paragraph, is that I detest fantasy sports. The way I see it, is that the game, the competition, the excitement of the real sport should be enough (especially in baseball which has games every night 18.5 months out of the year, except for the day before and after the all-star break, I believe). Also, I'm annoyed at those people who root for teams simply because they have a fantasy player on that team. And I loathe the times when someone cheers for their true favorite team to only squeak out a win so that the other team might do well in hopes of gaining fantasy sports (I realize fantasy sports are normally predicated on having individual players rather than teams, but the principle remains the same). It disgusts me.
But that's just me. I respect peoples' irrational love of fantasy sports and I certainly don't mean to insult anyone. For all I know, I'm the crazy one (it happens often enough).
Wow, that line break for my new paragraph for my second point doesn't really show (at least on my screen), but I assure you, there is a (semi)very important line break up there.
ReplyDeleteWill, according to one Economist's research, "Fantasy Sports is estimated to have a $3–$4 Billion annual economic impact across the sports industry." In the words of Stephen Colbert, "the market has spoken." :)
ReplyDeleteTim, I know everyone does it, I still don't like it.
ReplyDeleteBut, I didn't wait two weeks just to say that. I only respond because PTI mentioned this tweet from Arian Foster: http://twitter.com/#!/ArianFoster/status/107817162659479552
Two hypothetical reactions to Arian Foster's injury:
ReplyDelete1. I want Arian Foster to get healthy so that the Houston Texans win more games and I can feel happy about that.
2. I want Arian Foster to get healthy so that my fantasy team can win more games and I can feel happy about that.
I just don't see why one of these is, in Foster's words, "sick" and the other is normal. To me, they both seem to be reasonable reactions. It's not as if professional sports teams are something to be taken seriously, while fantasy teams are just silly forms of entertainment.
Now, if you are trying to argue, via Foster's tweet, that anti-fantasy sports fans somehow care about the personal well-being of athletes more than pro-fantasy sports fans, then I think that is clearly mistaken. Sports fans of all kinds care very little about athletes as people.
Oh I agree. Cowherd spent half of last week complaining about how no one cares about Foster's personal life (fantasy player or not). I just thought it was funny and apropos.
ReplyDeletefor three years running i've been in the top 3 of the fantasy baseball league for which i'm the commish.
ReplyDeleteand in each of those three years i've been booted from the playoffs in the first round by one guy on the opponents squad who has a crazy week and destroys me. this year it was Rangers SP CJ Wilson and his statistically phenomenal yet entirely impossible to duplicate complete game shutout crazy win.
and so now i'm playing for fifth and riding Avila, V-Mart (both draft picks) and Delmon Young (FA pickup - woo woo!) to a slim margin of victory because my Tigers have decided that it's actually impossible to lose now. 12 in a row, baby.