We intend readers to receive benefits from these columns whether you are a current player in the National Fantasy Baseball Championship, a prospective player or neither of the above.
To that end, let’s get caught up on several items that are NFBC-related, but yet still might also be applied to your local leagues.
KDS update
First, the NFBC has been a pioneer in a new, innovative method for league draft slotting called Kentucky Derby Style Drafting, or simply KDS. In it, league participants rank their desired draft positions from one through n, where n is the number of league entrants.
To determine the actual draft order, teams are chosen randomly. When it is a given team’s turn, they are assigned the draft position of the lowest number on their list not yet taken by another drafter.
In this year’s NFFC main event, not surprisingly, the number one draft position was the favorite choice of owners. Still, every single draft spot had at least four owners who chose it first in their KDS preferences. Here are all the top KDS choices in 2008, courtesy of NFBC chief Greg Ambrosius.
No. 1 - 224 teams listed this as their number one preference
No. 2 - 11 teams listed this as number one preference
No. 3 - 12 teams
No. 4 - 17 teams
No. 5 - 26 teams
No. 6 - 15 teams
No. 7 - 19 teams
No. 8 - 19 teams
No. 9 - 8 teams
No. 10 - 11 teams
No. 11 - 9 teams
No. 12 - 7 teams
No. 13 - 4 teams
No. 14 - 4 teams
No. 15 - 8 teams
79 teams (20.2%) left their KDS as the default of 1 through 15. 166 teams had a number other than one as their top preference. The average KDS was for the main event was estimated to be in the 4.5-4.7 range.
If you are not in a keeper league, consider KDS to spice up your 2009 draft. If you’re interested, don’t wait until next spring to nominate making the change to your constitution. Act now!
Lineup timing changes
This is a relatively minor change, but one that makes such complete sense, you wonder why it took so long to implement. Take a look in the context of when your league requires rosters to be frozen for the week. If you’re in the NFBC, remember this change and use it to your advantage.
Previously, if there was a 1:00 game on Monday, you had to set your entire starting lineup for the week five minutes before then and no changes could be made after that. Now, any players playing in that 1:00 game still have to be in your starting lineup five minutes before that game, but you can now still make lineup changes later in the day for any players who games are scheduled that evening. Those changes can be made for all other players five minutes before the first game on Monday night.
This gives everyone several more hours to make starting lineup decisions and provides more time to evaluate the latest injuries and roster moves.
Adds and Drops
Want to get a good feel for which players are being added and which are being dropped across a large number of leagues of knowledgeable players before you have to make your similar choices in your local league each week? Well, the NFBC can help you with your decisions.
The NFBC transaction deadline for Free Agent Allocation Budget (FAAB) acquisitions is on Sunday evening. Correspondingly, each Monday morning, the NFBC honchos post a list of every player added in every league that week, including the amounts of their winning bids and a separate list of every player dropped is provided, too.
These are located on special threads in the league’s message board and are available to anyone, whether you are an NFBC player or not. Seek out this information and use it to your advantage!
The threads are new every week, but here are links to last weeks’ adds and drops:
Adds: http://nfbcboards.stats.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=003181
Drops: http://nfbcboards.stats.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=003182
Brian Walton’s work can also be found daily at stlcardinals.scout.com.