Recommend Me a Stats Service

[RagerXS]

I know it might be a bit premature since most sites don't have baseball open yet and most if not all will have new features coming, but I am on the lookout for a new stats service for 2011. Over the years I've used many - Yahoo, ESPN, Fox, Fanball (football only) CBS, and of late OnRoto (guys that ran TQ Stats). From where I sit, nobody has the clear best offering. For example, many love CBS but I think their FAAB system blows. On the flip side, OnRoto's FAAB has no equal, but the user interface isn't intuitive and in many cases just plain sucks - you need to hit several pages to see data that many other sites show together on a single page.

Anyone have insight on new features for 2011, or any other suggestions that might be helpful?

Fred

[bigmck]

If you are not doing a Salary Keeper League, use the ESPN Custom League. It has FAAB, Waivers, whatever you need and it is free. It just does not maintain salarys and contracts from year to year. == If you are doing a salary Keeper League then there is none better than CBS Commissioner League. It is a pay service but well worth it. I am not sure of the problem you see with the FAAB. It works like it should. Everyone secretly bids on a player and high bid gets him. If there is a tie, CBS breaks it for you. What could be wrong with that?

[RagerXS]

I don't like how CBS has a single set of bids/drops that you can enter, and how they get automatically prioritized based on bid. Let's say I want to drop a guy and would like to add a cheap SP as my first priority, but if I miss out on him then I'd like to go for a guy that just took over the closer role as my second choice. There is no way I could do this with CBS without severely overbidding for the SP or underbidding for the closer. Just because a FA will cost more to acquire doesn't mean they are the highest priority or the best fit for my team for that given transaction period.

On the flip side, OnRoto has a system that allows the kind of flexibility I want and more. You enter multiple sets of claims, one set for each player you want to drop. These sets are prioritized by whom you most want to drop, and within each set you get to prioritize your bids regardless of the bid amount. Further, if your league uses a waivers system as well as FAAB (we do), you can also mix waiver claims amongst your FAAB bids and set the appropriate priority for who you most want.

I'm told with CBS the commissioner must manually set the salary after FAAB processing. But with OnRoto, RotoWire, and maybe others that gets set automatically to either the winning bid or some default value based on league settings.

I'll agree with you that CBS has almost everything nailed. Solid, intuitive UI that provides loads of info in consolidated views so you can use it with ease. OnRoto doesn't. But for some, the huge difference in FAAB contingency bidding is more important. I guess I'm greedy because I want a site that has the best of both.

Fred

[bigmck]

You are correct that the bidding on two players can sometimes be a problem. It never has for me but other guys have talked about it. Yes, you are correct about the Commish having to add salary and contract years. I do that and it is not really a problem, but if CBS would do it, it would be nice.