Fantasy Judgment - The Commish Speaks

When to End Your Fantasy Baseball Season

With the Major League Baseball playoffs well into their League Championship Series, most if not all fantasy baseball leagues have completed their 2009 seasons.  I thought this would be a good time to address an issue that exists in all fantasy baseball leagues, but might be one you really haven’t given much thought to (unless you are an attentive league Commissioner).  The issue with which I speak of is when to officially conclude your fantasy baseball regular season and begin its playoffs. 

Of the four major sports, baseball allows the most flexibility towards the end of its season for teams to rest their players.  With expanded rosters and limited teams in pennant races, there are several instances where star players (i.e., people on your fantasy team) are not getting regular playing time down the stretch.  While that MLB team’s results don’t matter much to you, it sure as hell bothers you when your fantasy players are sitting on the bench 3 or 4 days a week for no reason.  This has serious effects and consequences on fantasy baseball leagues.  So what can be done to prevent this from having such an impact?

In the 11 years I have run my 18-team fantasy baseball league, I have always had three weeks of playoffs which include a Wild Card round, League Championship Series, and World Series.  In order to combat the potential for teams to rest their players, or essentially nullify having quality players on either dominant or pitiful teams, I make sure that the World Series of my league concludes with at least two weeks remaining in the MLB season.  It is very rare for a MLB team to clinch a playoff spot or a division with that much time remaining, so it is likely that most teams will still be putting their best players on the field.

If you have a large league like mine, you may be wondering how to work out your league’s schedule to ensure it is balanced and maintaining a competitive nature.  My league has 6 divisions comprised of 3 teams each.  As a result, I have 7 inter-divisional doubleheader weeks scheduled where teams play their other two division rivals in the same week.  This keeps the league very competitive and exciting as these doubleheaders are spread out throughout the season, including two of the last three weeks.  I also combine the truncated All-Star week with the following week’s worth of games for one extended scoring period.  In this 11-game scoring period, I have each team play three out-of-division opponents for our annual tripleheader week.  This tripleheader usually has significant impact on the league’s playoff races and makes it quite exciting down the stretch.  Doing a schedule like this allows me to have every team play each out-of-division opponent once, plus 7 inter-divisional doubleheaders.  I can then end my regular season early enough and have plenty of games for the regular season.  This ensures that by playoff time, everyone’s players are presumably still playing competitive baseball and screwing anyone over in fantasy leagues.

And most importantly, if you are fortunate enough to have your favorite team in the playoff chase or actually in the playoffs, you can root for your team with no conflicts in your fantasy baseball league.  I am a Mets’ fan so I don’t have much to worry about there.