Head2Head; Playoffs Optional

[dogra]

Hello,

I'm new to this board, and I was wondering if anyone could help me with a question. I posted it in a newbie forum and was told I should post it in this section.

I have been a fantasy manager at Yahoo for a number of years now -- mostly basketball, but also a couple of years for baseball.

My baseball league is strongly considering a move to a head-to-head style of scoring. Most of us love it as it adds the excitement of teams playing teams, and opportunities for good-natured trash talk on a weekly basis.

Here's the problem -- none of us like the playoff system very much. It seems to give you two winners; one the regular season champ (usually the best team overall), and the playoff champ (usually the hottest team at the end).

Do you know of any reliable site that offers head-to-head leagues WITHOUT playoffs?

I honestly don't see why this isn't an option at Yahoo. About 80% of the managers I've spoken to love the head to head style, but think the unrealistic playoff system cheapens the ultimate championship.

I've done a bunch of google searches but come up empty. Can anyone help me? Does H2H without playoffs even exist?

[dogra]

Since originally posting this. I did find one website that seems to offer fanatasy baseball without playoffs -- Sandbox.com.

http://fantasygames.sandboxplus.com/200 ... lcount.asp

I don't know much about them, which makes it hard to convince my leaguemates to make the jump. It also, unfortunately, is not free. I think it will cost each manager about $30 or $40. This is also leading to some resisitance.

Any help out there guys? Other alternatives?

One other thing, the way this Sandbox site does head2head scoring doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I'm used to the Yahoo way, and I assumed that a non-playoff H2H league would work similarly... just skip the playoffs at the end and make them regular games.

Here's how Sandbox describes the H2H season --

Head to Head
Head-to-Head (H2H) leagues must have 8, 10, 12, or 14 teams and standard Sandbox scoring (see chart above) is used. Each team plays a schedule of 51 games throughout the season starting April 2nd, 2006 and concluding with final weekend on October 2nd, 2006. The schedule is automatically generated and cannot be changed. H2H leagues play two games per week; one game from Monday through Thursday and another from Friday through Sunday. All Waiver Wire, Free Agent and Trade transactions are effective as of the following Monday or Friday. Any transaction/trade entered after the 1st game time on Monday will be effective the next Friday. Any transaction/trade entered after the 1st game time on Friday will be effective the next Monday.

The tie breakers for individual games for H2H Leagues are as follows:

(1) Most wins by pitchers (2) Most runs scored by hitters

(3) Fewest earned runs allowed by pitchers

(4) Most sacrifices by hitters

Huh? 51 games? How would that work? I'm confused. I guess I was thinking of Yahoo's weekly matchups -- every week you play another team in your league and your wins and losses in individual categories get turned into a "final score."

[sach0032]

I played Sandbox for a few years before they went to a pay site in 2002, and still like their system more than any other I've played - we model our Yahoo leagues after Sandbox's scoring system as closely as we can. The 51-game schedule breaks down to weekday matchups (Monday-Thursday) and weekend matchups (Friday-Sunday). In this instance, I prefer Yahoo's one-week scoring, because there are times your rotation just won't have anybody scheduled to pitch over a three day stretch.

[dogra]

Thank you. Yeah, I've read/heard a lot of positive things about how Sandbox works. People seem to love it.

But a few things bother me and my fellow managers. One is that odd scheduling style that you say even bothered you a little.

The other, and this looks like it will end up being the dealbreaker, is the dearth of scoring options.

Sandbox does not let you use On Base Average, Slugging Percentage, WHIP, etc. What the hell? That's pretty lame. Those stats are the core of our league.

I doubt I'll ever convince the other managers to make the switch in light of this. It's a shame. Why in the hell won't Yahoo add a non-playoffs option in head2head?

I don't get it. There have to be a fair number of fantasy leagues that would use it, no?

Oh well, I guess I'll have to start looking for next year early.

[Ender]

I'd love to see this as an option in Yahoo. I'm not sure whether I like Roto or H2H more overall, they both offer different flavors and I try to play a couple leagues of each, however I really do hate the H2H playoffs. Last year I took 1st by between 10 and 20 games in 3 different leagues and took 2nd and was only a couple losses away from 4th in the last league. Because of the playoffs I took no better than 3rd in any of the leagues I dominated and I won the league that was close.

Its just lame that 2-3 weeks where half the players are sitting to rest up for playoffs or letting the kids play some wipes out what you worked the rest of the year for.