Baseball DIY

I should get more work done this baseball season. For the first time since achieving gainful employment, I won't participate in a fantasy baseball league.

Last year, after sensing a deficiency in the normal fantasy leagues, I created a custom league on Yahoo. Traditional roto scoring doesn't factor in defense, so I tried to be fair to good defensive players who might not be Albert Pujols with the stick. The defensive stats we used were assists, putouts, and errors. I assumed that first basemen and catchers would rack up the most points because of their high putout totals, and I was right. What I hadn't foreseen was that, since players are available to play at multiple positions on your fantasy squad, the system allowed (if not encouraged) lineup chicanery: Albert, for instance, played first base the whole season, but you could use him at third or in the outfield on your fantasy team. Find a few more players like that, and you've got a team full of first basemen racking up putout points. It rapidly devolved into a First Baseman Fantasy League, which isn't all that hot.

The more I thought about it this offseason, the more I realized that fantasy didn't really do anything for me. The idea behind rotisserie baseball's creation, I would think, was "How would this team of A, B, C, etc, do against a team made up of 1, 2, 3, etc?" But fantasy teams aren't really teams, they're stat depositories; your fantasy players don't interact with each other (unless they're on the same reality team, of course). Isn't that what a team is, a collection of players playing together? And aren't games the interactions between two teams? What, then, is "fantasy baseball," other than numbers?

I don't really find anything lacking in "reality baseball." At least when I listen to a game at the office, I can use my computer for something work-related.