Starting CBS league, have some questions

[flytekk]

I've been a commish over at yahoo for football and baseball for years now. I setup a cbs league last night just to check it out before yahoo opens up and i was shocked to see how many customizable tools are at the commish's disposal. I was even allowed to create my own categories using math formulas.
I'm hoping i can get my 15 other teams to make the switch. They're were somethings that i didnt understand. First off my intentions are to create a commish league wtih...

16 teams

5x5:
1 Avg
2 HR
3 Runs produced (rbis+runs-hrs)
4 SB
5 Doubles+Triples

1 ERA
2 Whip
3 Saves+Holds
4 Wins
5 K9 (strike outs per innings pitched)

Keepers
long online draft
3 divisions

First question is what do ya think about the categories. I know some people may or may not like them but can anyone fore-see any fatal flaws through out the rest of the season.

2. I dont understand the rosters. Whats with the inactive min/max, active min/max and total min/max. Whats reserve? Is that bench? Whats the difference between reserves and minors? Whats the difference between inactive and reserve? Im lost.

3. Is it a good idea to leave yahoo for CBS. Seems like im gonna have to choose before yahoo whips out all of their new features.

Thank you!

[Matthias]

yah. the customizable and adaptable nature of sportsline is the reason i won't play fantasy baseball anywhere else.

i don't like your 5th hitting category... if you have HRs as one category and then doubles plus triples as another, you're basically counting every hit except for singles. better to include OBP as a 5th category since not making an out is the best thing a hitter can do.

we use wins minus losses instead of just wins and it makes for a really interesting category. and discourages people from just churning pitchers to accumulate stats. also is fun to hear people bitch and moan about being at -7, worse than they started the season. something else you might want to consider now that you have the ability of sportsline is splitting up starter wins from reliever wins. it always ticked me off when a closer would blow a save and then get an even more valuable win when his team rescued him in the bottom of the inning. so the way we do it is the categories are:
Starter Wins/Losses: Wins - Losses - Reliever Wins + Reliever Losses
Reliever Saves+: Saves + Holds + Reliever Wins - Reliever Losses - Blown Saves

active players = players in your active lineup
reserve players = bench
injured players = umm... injured players
minors players = players who are in the minors, if you want to use minor-league spots
total players (min/max) = all the above added together

so you might have 15 active spots and 8 bench spots. you can just set active min/max to be both 15 and bench min/max to be both 8. or you can let people bench more players if they want so you'd have something like active min = 10, active max = 15. bench min = 8, bench max = 13. but your total max would still be 23. i don't use minimums; just set them at zero.

now... should you switch?

if you want to just do standard 5x5, then yahoo is probably ok. but if you want to use better statistics, combining your own, then it's time to switch. and the price isn't really that big of a deal... $130 split 16 ways is still under $10/head or under $2/month each. and if you get a referral, you get $50 off. fwiw, sportsline also has a much better player database. there's nobody who you would want to get who isn't in there. whereas yahoo always has the run to get the hot minor-leaguer who just got put in on some random thursday.

best of luck.

[rusmo]

Seems like every year I investigate CBS and ESPN yet always end up going back to Yahoo. Feels like home.

About the categories: I don't see a heck of a lot of reason to select any starting pitchers with your current category set. I could rank extremely high in 4 of 5 pitching categories by drafting only closers and elite setup men. This is why the traditional 5x5 leagues use K's instead of K/9. You need to either switch back to K's, set a very high minimum innings pitched limit, or replace K/9 with a different stat that favors Starting Pitchers.

I'm relatively neutral on your hitting categories. You're accounting for XBHs but ignoring BBs.