Re: The Four Way Fantasy Sports League
Reply #1 –
This league is in a unique position of expansion with a well-laid plan. We will be expanding from eight teams back to ten after a contraction of two teams following the 2017 season.
4-Way FSL Expansion Draft
Expansion drafts will serve as setting up all teams eight keepers and up to five farm players and will start with the 2019 MLB season. The league website is the same and here is a snippet of information. We have a solid lead on one spot, so we may only have one spot to be filled.
“In my league I just traded Steph Curry for Bryce Harper.” It was a random comment like this that was overheard in 2007 and led to the birth of this league.
The Four Way Sports League
If you are a professional sports fan that enjoys looking to the future by following the college or minor professional leagues for the up-and-coming talent, then this is the league for you.
This is a year-round keeper-league that consists of five separate leagues. There are cash prizes for the first, second, and third place finishers in the overall standings and first place in each of the five individual leagues.
Our year-long season begins with baseball. We have one AL Only and the other NL Only league. It is a big deal to get off to a good start in baseball, but if you have an off year in either or both there is an avenue to rebound. We draft for the NFL in August and then NHL in September and NBA in October. Our full-seasons do actually overlap as our NBA and NHL end the full season, our next one has already begun.
What Makes Our League Different?
Other than being five separate leagues and lasting (more than) a whole calendar year, you have the opportunity to carry up to five players that have not exceeded certain thresholds and are thus minor leaguers in our league. These players don’t count toward your active roster.
Minor Leaguers Explained
This is one of the more complicated and thus most confusing to newcomers, so please allow me to explain further.
In baseball you may carry on your farm a position player that has accumulated less than 200 career at bat or pitchers who have no more than 70 innings pitched or 10 saves in their career. Players must be minor leaguers or major leaguers who have not reached their particular limits. No College players.
In football QBs can be carried on a farm team with fewer than 120 career pass attempts. Running backs can have 80 total rushes and receptions combined prior to losing farm eligibility. Tight ends or wide receivers are no longer eligible to be placed on a farm after accumulating 40 receptions. Players in this sport may be in college or the NFL.
Hockey and basketball farm limits are similar. In hockey a goaltender can be farmed with fewer than 20 games started. Forwards or defensemen must have fewer than 40 games played. In basketball the games played limit is 40 games for all players. Players in both of these sports can be other professional leagues, collegiate, or in the case of hockey - junior leagues.
How Do the Drafts Work?
Each year, each team can keep 8 players from each sport. Additionally, up to 5 farm eligible players can be kept. The players are kept a round ahead of where they were drafted in the previous year’s draft (regardless of which team drafted them). A player drafted in round 2 would be a 1st round keeper the next year. Any players picked up during the season who were not drafted can be kept in any round (usually as late as possible). Our drafts are long enough to draft a full active roster plus the 5 farm eligible players. So, yes….college basketball or football players can be drafted in our league draft.
How Does the League Play Work?
Each individual league plays out a full season. The person who finishes in first in an individual sport accumulates one point in the overall standings. We play five different leagues and in the overall standings the player with the lowest score wins. Cash prizes (from the league fees) are paid to the top three teams in the overall standings at the end of the NBA and our year-round season. Additionally, each team that wins an individual sport wins a cash prize as well. 100% of the league fees collected are used for the cash prizes.
What Happens If I Decide to Join?
The underlying question in this is “Will I get stuck with all of the players that are leftover?” The simple answer to this is no. We are moving from an 8 team league to a 10 team. Your team and the other new team will take part in a hybrid of an expansion and orphan draft to be held no less than one month prior to our actual draft. It will be an e-mail style draft moderated by the league president.
All the teams will take part in this draft. The 8 returning teams will have their rosters of players to choose from and prior to the 1st round they will each protect one player off their roster. Prior to the first expansion draft which will be the National League Only the commissioner will flip a coin to determine which of the two new owners will pick first in the 1st round of that draft, and the expansion draft for the NFL and NBA. The other owner will draft first in the AL and NHL drafts. Each round the first pick will alternate. So, the first new owner pick in the 1st round will pick second in the second round, alternating each round. When you draft a player in the expansion draft their previous year’s draft round goes with them.
As previously mentioned each team will pick a player (along with his previous year’s draft round) in the 1st round. The one caveat is that if Expansion Team A picks a player from returning team 1 in the 1st round Expansion Team B can pick a player from any of the other 7 remaining returning teams that round. No returning team will be forced to surrender more than one player in any round.
After the expansion teams have picked one player each and prior to the second round, the returning teams will again protect one player. The two teams that surrendered players in the first round will get to protect an additional player to supplement their loss of a player. Then Expansion Team B will select followed by Expansion Team A.
The draft will continue until each team has 8 major league eligible players. Farm players will be eligible to be drafted as farm players or major leaguers. Each returning team will have up to 5 farm players at season’s end. They may also have players with farm eligibility on their roster. As long as a player hasn’t exceeded their eligibility they can be drafted and declared a farm player. There is a chance that not everyone will end up with five farm players after this draft and that’s fine. Typically, teams keep 3 to 4 farm players entering into an individual sports draft and then try to land a previously ineligible to be drafted player. So, teams can opt out of protecting anymore players anytime after they have protected their 8.
Following the expansion draft your keepers will be set. As previously mentioned you draft the player and draft round. So, you drafted a 20th rounder from last season. He is your 19th round keeper. We will then have our individual sport draft a few weeks later.
This draft serves help make the expansion teams competitive right off, giving them some ownership of their roster as well. It also helps us correct how we previously handled teams leaving the league. New owners would inherit a roster that had typically been owned by a manager that had lost interest several months before leaving. As you can imagine, it was tough for these new managers. This was the way we have handled it and it has proven to be nothing more than a temporary fix to a long term issue.
In Summary
This league is definitely the most unique I have ever been involved in. One of my favorite aspects of the league is that an owner needs to actually have a strategy during the entire season and needs to stick with that to be successful. The owners in the league that have straddled the fence have always struggled. The owners who either commit to winning or rebuilding have consistently been the most successful. I think one of the most important pieces to remember is that you own a franchise across all the leagues. You can build your franchise by putting your focus on becoming great in a couple of leagues, or becoming solid across all 5 leagues. You can build around young farm players and young pros, or you can build around proven veterans who still have long-term keeper value.
The most important thing to remember when joining the league is the keeper value of players alter dramatically based on the round the player can be kept in. Someone like Ben Simmons is considered more valuable than LeBron James, because Simmons can be owned for several years to come.
If you are interested in learning more, please respond or contact the league president at tommystokes1976@gmail.com, his email is included on this as well.
Here is our league website:
4-Way FSL
Topic: The Four Way Fantasy Sports League (Read 1288 times)
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