Tief, Phone Home

Just as an FYI to everyone, we have gotten rid of our home phone (262) 628-1102 and have gone cell phone only. My cell phone number is (414) 587-8391 in the event you ever need it. You are also welcome to call the office at (262) 502-7003.

Please make a note of it.

Turning 1000

Just after 12:00 noon on Friday the FNFT roster system registered it's 1,000th login since the system went live on the night of the draft. Joel hit the milestone at 12:12 p.m. Granted, almost a third of the logins are me either doing my daily check that the system is working or trying to fix my pathetic team, but still...

From my perspective, the system is working better that my wildest dreams would have imagined for a first-year effort. I hope you all feel the same.

The Jake and Joe Rule

I'm going to create a new rule next season that says you (Jake and Joe) can not start making pickups for the next FNFT game until the day after the previous game starts. In FNFT-speak, that means you (Jake and Joe) must wait until Saturday after a Friday game or Wednesday after a Tuesday game to make your next pickup. It can be one minute after midnight the next day, but it must be the next day.

Right now I when I pull down the lineups I manually reset the "Next Game" number. Next year I'm going to automate all of that and it will be much easier to deal with only dates (i.e. pickups made on June 12 count for Game 14 - pickups made on June 13 count for Game 15) rather than dates and times.

It's not that it ever bothered me that people people (Jake and Joe) started making pickups on Friday afternoon for the next game and I had to make mental note of it so that I didn't include those pickups in the game that I was currently working on and then half of the time that I would forget to post the pickup in the next game. Wasn't any of that. Because now with the new system it's easier to keep track of those things. It's that right now, I sort of dictate (to everyone except Jake and Joe) when you can start making pickups for the next game by when I update the site. This gives me an advantage in that I get first dibs on pickups (even though some people [Jake and Joe] will just make their next pickup anyway even though I haven't update the site yet.) With an automated system based on real time rather than when I get around to it, it puts us all on the same level playing field and make my job of running the league that little bit easier.

If you want to start practicing the new policy this year, that would be great. But know that Jake or Joe will probably get the guy you wanted if you wait.

DL

Does anyone besides me think we should have a DL? I have 4 players on the DL right now and 3 of them are too good to cut.

I think I'll propose that for next year - maybe a 2 player DL. You can only put players on who are on the MLB DL. Would you get an extra pickup then if you put a player on the DL? Or just get your regular weekly pickup but not have to cut anyone?

We had a DL back in the day and it was kind of a pain. It allowed teams to basically hoard players by putting them on the DL and then never take them off. Let's say I put my shortstop Cabrera on the DL. If my other SS is playing better, I could just leave Cabrera on the DL until I need him and when I do I essentially get a free pickup. I think we had a rule saying that once a player is off of the MLB DL you had to take him off of the FNFT DL, but that was very difficult to police.

Then if we had a DL I would have to figure out how to program it into the roster system - I don't know - maybe I just talked myself out of it.

Beside the Point

Just a little thing... I don't know if nobody noticed or if everyone noticed but nobody said anything, but on the roster view pages, the FP/G column always ended in zero (e.g. 4.20, never 4.23). I've fixed that.

Back Home Again

Back Home Again in Indiana

As most of you are aware, it's getting close to the time when the FNFT Commissioner's Office shuts down for a few days while Tief and Jacob go to the Danica Patrick show.

I will post the usual web updates (daily stats) through Wednesday this week, but after that... who knows. I am on a free trial of GoToMyPC courtesy of my Rush Limbaugh promotional special offer. I am taking my ASUS mini-laptop along (whose value has diminished to the point where I feel comfortable bearing the risk of it being stolen.) I have tested the laptop with GoToMyPC and while clumsy - it works. In fact, I did yesterday's web updates from the comfort of my patio while enjoying a cup of coffee and a scone right after my schvitz. I am going to try to make regular web update from Indy. I don't believe there will be Wi-Fi access where we camp (there wasn't last year), so that means I'll have to drive somewhere to make the updates.

Worst case scenario is that I won't make any updates until I get back Sunday night or Monday. Best case is that you won't notice that I'm gone. The likely scenario is somewhere in between. If there is no Wi-Fi where we camp, I wil certainly not be able to make updates on Sunday morning as it is impossible to drive anywhere in Indianapolis on race day.

As per usual, if something gets f-ed while I'm gone, just default to email and I'll sort it all out when I get home.

Follow the Walks

I've made an interesting discovery. I clicked open Grady Sizemore's Game Log this morning and saw the following:

Sizemore started the season hot but has been in a slump the last couple of weeks. If you look at the chart, you can see exactly what's happening. He hit 4 home runs in the span of eight days from April 16-23, probably thought he was all of the sudden Babe Ruth, and since has been swinging at every pitch he sees. You know that because of the walks. He had 11 walks in the bottom 12 games on the chart and only 4 in the most recent 12 games.

It strikes me that players probably score more points in games they draw walks than in games they don't - that walks are a leading indicator of success. But it doesn't take Einstein to figure that out. That's not unlike saying that players score more points in games they hit home runs than in game they don't. Duh.

So I did a little study to see if I was right. I pulled the game logs for all of the batters so far this year into Excel. I kept the games in which the batter had at least 3 plate appearances. I split them into two piles: games in which the batter had no walks and games in which he had at least one walk. There were 4,523 games in the first pile and 2,342 games in the second pile. Then I averaged the FNFT Points (FP) for each of the two piles of games, except in the "walks" pile I subtracted the number of walks from the point total - I wanted to only consider other plate appearances in those games; the ones where the batter didn't walk.

The "no-walks" group averages 3.43 points per game. They average 4.18 plate appearances per game for a ratio of 0.82 points per plate appearance.

The "walks" group averages 3.67 points per game (again, excluding the points from walks) in 3.25 non-walking plate appearances per game - a ratio of 1.13 points per plate appearance.

So, even eliminating the points from walks, batters score more FNFT points in games they draw walks than in games they don't. In fact, the average number of points per non-walk plate appearance is 38% higher in "walks" games than in "no-walks" games. That's a lot bigger gap than I was expecting.

(Running late - gotta get ready for work...)

Executive Decision

Now that the FNFT roster system is up and running, I have a handful of ideas for enhancements. As I've previously mentioned, I have an idea for a process to post trades. I'd like to show a notice about how many new messages there are since you last checked them. I'd like to enhance the message editor to allow for more formatting, links and what not. In the game logs, I'd like to highlight the FNFT games in bold. All of this stuff.

When I make updates to the system I do so by writing some computer code, posting it (called 'publishing'), then log on to the system and see if it works. Usually it bombs about 15 times before I get it right.

Well if it bombs for me, it's going to bomb for you too if you try to log in. I have also lost some data in the trial and error process (dates of a few of the early messages). Because of this, I have made an executive decision to not make any more changes to the system during the current baseball season. I'll save them all for the off-season and make them when system uptime isn't as important.

That means that I will continue to post trades manually. I'll program the trade posting system in the off-season and perhaps figure out how to make it better.

(Unless, of course, I change my mind.)

Feedback Needed

I've been working on a way to allow all of you to post FNFT trades without my involvement. I can only devote about 20 hours per day or so to FNFT. If someone wants to post a trade during the 4 hours I'm unavailable, there is no way to do so. As another example, I'm going to be heading down to Indy in a couple of weeks for the race. This new system add-on would allow you to post trades while I'm gone. (What are trades, you ask? Well, back in the day...) I'm hoping to get some feedback as to whether you think this would work.

Here's my idea. Trades would still be hammered out the old fashioned way - in person, over the phone, through email, through the message board, etc. Then, once a trade is agreed upon, you can post it to the system. Somewhere on the main roster page there would be a button or link or something that says "Trade Players". If you click it you will get the following screen (with YOUR roster):

(Click on image for a larger view.)

The pull down boxes would show all of the FNFT owners (as shown). There would then be a "Submit" bottom at the bottom to complete the move.

What you are doing here is moving a player or players from your team to some other team - the team you are trading with. The person you are trading with would have to do the same thing as you - log on and transfer the players he is trading to you. Once both players have done this, the trade is complete. Follow that? Both owners would have to do the same thing for the trade to go down.

Is this workable?

There are some obvious drawbacks. The players would move immediately so you might be waiting a bit to get your players if the other guy is slow. The other issue is that like the rest of the system, this will allow you to do things that your not supposed to (like send players to the wrong team) and cause me a lot of headaches to fix. But I think were all good on that. So far I haven't had to fix anything in the database brought on by clumsiness or skulduggery.

I still need to do some programming to do all of the behind the scenes stuff like posting the trades to the transactions table and what not, but I could probably have this up and running sometime next week.

Let me know what you think.

Emailing Joe

I got in fine after you posted the message that the problem was resolved. Prior to that, I was having problems. I believe I did manage to get in once during the period you were diagnosing the problem.

I think Max may have said something to you about an issue we have at work. I’m quite sure were firewalled somehow but I just find this strange. We can gain access to fnftbaseball.com. We can open all links on the page except the LineUp/Pickups. I get an error message stating this web page is currently not available. It’s a conspiracy theory. Someone does not want me picking up players one minute after the first pitch thrown on Tuesday or Friday afternoon games.

Joe

Glad you got in. I’m pretty sure I know the reason you can’t get in from work. The FNFT website itself is hosted by a 3rd party Internet hosting service called HostMonster. I purchased the domain name fnftbaseball.com and that domain is hosted by HostMonster. The roster system however runs off of my home PC. They are really two completely separate websites. The reason you probably can’t access it from work is that my home PC is not set up as a domain name server (DNS). What that means in English is that instead by reaching the site via a normal web address (http://www.something.com) you access it by my computer’s IP address (http://69.29.23.10 or some such thing). The IT departments at many large companies block sites that are referenced only by an IP address because many of them are run by schmucks who are trying to do something much more deviant than run a fantasy baseball league. The solution (perhaps) would be for me to host the roster system on a 3rd party service as well. I’m hesitant to do that because the cheapest one I can find is $169 for the season and there would be no guarantee that your company wouldn’t block that either – that would lend credence to your conspiracy theory. It would also be a bit more cumbersome for me to run everything in that I would always need to be posting all of the files to a different site rather than just copying them to my hard drive. I may do that at some point anyway - it would probably work for you if I did. If I go through another few days like the last few, it would be worth the money to me to have the guaranteed up time that a 3rd party service would provide.

Tief

Game Tuesday

The first Tuesday FNFT game is this week on April 28. In Tuesday games, you are playing against only the teams in your own division.

In the 5-team division, one team goes 4-0, one goes 3-1, one goes 2-2, one goes 1-3, and the last goes 0-4. In the 4-team divisions the top team goes 4-0, the bottom team goes 0-4. The second team goes 3-1 if their score is closer to the top team or 2-2 if their score is closer to the #3 team. The record for the #3 team is the mirror image of the #2 team.

Tuesday games will be played every other Tuesday from here until the end of the season with the final Tuesday game being on the last week of the regular season.

FP Revisited

Most of you will find this to be minutia, but I've slightly changed the formula I use to display "FP" or 'year to date FNFT points'. The FP score is based on the year-to-date cumulative stats rather than summing each players' individual games (which would me much harder to program). Therefore it's an estimate and not an actual sum. The basic formula is the same as our single game scoring formula:

R + H + 2*RBI + 2B + 2*3B + 3*HR + BB + SB

The part that FP doesn't take into account is the bonus for getting at least one run, hit and RBI in a game. To account for this I've always added:

min(R,H,RBI)

to the score - or the lowest number among runs, hits and RBIs.

I've dumped all of the game-by-game stats from 2008 into a database and based on this figured out that the formula for FP would be slightly more accurate if I instead added:

0.5 * min(R,H,RBI)

So that's what I've done. If you've noticed that the total points (FP) for some of your hitters has gone down by one or two, that's why.

Like I said - minutia. I'll probably do something similar for pitchers to account for 10K games although that will be a much less noticable adjustment. I'll let you know.

Make The Call

I've gotten a request from Bill Hicks that I send him a list of everyone's phone number. He'd like to "make some deals." I'll leave it up to everyone's own discretion whether you want me to give him your number. He obviously has mine. The telephone is his only lifeline to the league. Imagine if that was you.

I'm not even 100% certain I have everyone's current phone number or the number at which you'd prefer to be called. I've taken phone numbers off of the FNFT directory on the website for security purposes. His phone number if (414) 456-0534 if you'd like to call him and work out a fair (and I'll be watching) trade. He doesn't have an answering machine. Either he or his brother will answer and it's easy to tell who's who.

Drop me an email or comment with you number if you'd like me to forward it on.

I've Gotta Get a Message To You

By popular demand, I've added a simple and crude message board to the FNFT roster system. You'll find it listed on the main menu as "Messages". You have very few formatting options. It's mainly just for text.

You can use it for whatever you want - propose a trade, gossip, jokes, or to leave me a note letting me know how cool you think the new online system is.

Enjoy.

FP

I've made a few small tweaks to the FNFT Roster System. Most notably, the columns for FNFT points and FNFT points per game which used to be abbreviated "FNFT" and "FNFT/G" are now abbreviated "FP" and "FP/G" respectively. It saves a little bit of space. I've also rounded all of the decimal numbers like FP/G and ERA to the same number of decimal places so that they all line up.

Amazing Grace

Before anyone asks, I'll answer.

The grace period for changing you mind on your weekly player pickup is 15 minutes. If you pick up a player and then decide to pick up a different player instead, you have 15 minutes to submit the new pickup (by cutting the player you earlier picked up.)

Today Avery picked up Orlando Hudson and then cut him and picked up Scott Rolen 14 minutes and 16 seconds later.

So he's good.

Rule Change

Unless most of you have an objection, I’d like to make a rule change. I thought of this last year but forgot to bring it up at the draft.

I’d like to rescind the Craig Haralson rule which states that once you cut a player you can not pick him up again for one month.

My recollection is that the rule was written before the dawn of the Internet – back when you waited for your results in the mail. One crafty owner made a habit of effectively having a 24 or 25 man roster by shuffling players on and off of his team before anyone else even knew they were cut. Today, everything is right there. Once a player is cut, everyone knows. The rule was also written before we started limiting pickups to one per game and before we had a 24 hour waiting period before a cut player could be picked up. With these other two rules in place, I really don’t see a whole lot of point in keeping the Haralson rule.

Another argument against the rule is that the FNFT schedule is much more compact than it was back then. Today, one calendar month is almost one fourth of the FNFT schedule. That’s a long wait. Finally, it would let me scratch one thing off of my to-do list since I don’t yet have this programmed yet in the lineup system.

Comments welcome.

Playoffs? Playoffs? Your Talkin' About Playoffs?

As promised at the draft, here is a complete rundown of how the FNFT playoffs will work this year.

WHO'S IN?

First of all, who is in? The three division winners and one wild card team as determined by win-loss record. The wild card team will be the second place team with the best record among all non-division winners.

In the playoffs, the team with the best overall record will be the top seeded playoff team and play the wild card team in the first round in a 4-game playoff. The other two division winners will play each other in a best 3-out-of-5.

TIEBREAKERS

If there are ties in win-loss records at the end of the regular season, the following scenarios will set up a 1-game playoff to be held on the Tuesday following the end of the regular season, August 25th: (Ties will be broken in this order as well)

1. If two or more teams are tied for best record in their division, the 1-game playoff will determine the division champion.
2. If two or more teams are tied for the wild card position, the 1-game playoff will determine the wild card.
3. If two or more teams are tied for best overall record, the 1-game playoff will determine the top seeded playoff team.

Here is an outrageous example of how this works. Suppose the following are the standings at the end of the year:

Division 1
Team A 90-72
Team B 90-72
Team C 90-72

Division 2
Team D 90-72
Team E 90-72

Division 3
Team F 90-72

Teams A, B, and C go into the playoff to determine the Division 1 winner. Teams D and E go in to determine the Division 2 winner. Team F must also go in to determine the top seeded playoff team. And then the playoff will also be used to determine the wild card among the teams not winning their division in Divisions 1 and 2.

Suppose the 1-game playoff goes down like this:

Team A - 96 points
Team D - 84 points
Team B - 62 points
Team C - 58 points
Team E - 42 points
Team F - 16 points

Team A would win Division 1 since they beat Teams B and C in the playoff. Team D would win Division 2 since they beat Team E in the playoff. Team F would win Division 3 since they had the best record in their division - the tie breaker doesn't even matter here. Team B would win the wild card since they had the highest score among non-division winning teams. Team A would be the top seeded playoff team since they won the tiebreaker between themselves and the other two division winners - Teams D and F. Got that? In this scenario, Team A would play Team B in a 4-game playoff and Team D would play Team F in a 5-game playoff.

PLAYOFF FORMAT

In order to win the 4-game playoff, the top seeded team (best overall record) needs to win 2 games, the wild card team needs to win 3 games - whichever comes first. The other playoff series is a traditional best-of-five. The two playoff series winner will meet in a best-of-seven World Series as usual.

Mathematically, if you assume that the chances of either team winning a playoff game are 50/50, the top seeded division winner now has a 68.75% chance of winning their playoff series against the wild card team, rather than a 50% chance if they had played a best-of-five. I still like this rule change. It makes the regular season and having the best overall record a little more meaningful, but not so meaningful as to not give the wild card a chance.

FLEX SCHEDULING

The playoffs this year will use a flexible schedule system. The days on which playoff games would take place are:

Tuesday, August 25
Friday, August 28
Tuesday, September 1
Friday, September 4
Saturday, September 5***
Tuesday, September 8
Friday, September 11
Tuesday, September 15
Friday, September 18
Tuesday, September 22
Friday, September 25
Tuesday, September 29
Friday, October 2

If there is a 1-game playoff, it will be held on Tuesday, August 25. The playoff between the top seeded team and the wild card will start on Friday, August 28. If the teams in the other, best-of-five series do not need to play a 1-game playoff, their series will start on Tuesday, August 25. If they do need a 1-game playoff, their series will start on Friday, August 28 - the same day as the other series. In this case, the series would use Saturday, September 5 if necessary to play Game 4 of their series in the second game of a Friday-Saturday doubleheader. This is the only scenario in which a double header is used in the playoffs.

The World Series will start on the next Friday or Tuesday after the last playoff series ends. The earliest the World Series could possibly start is Friday, September 4. This would happen if there is not a 1-game playoff, the best-of-five playoff series is a 3-0 sweep and the 4-game playoff is a 2-0 sweep by the top seeded team. If the World Series started on Friday, September 4, the earliest it could end would be Tuesday, September 15 if it were a 4-0 sweep.

The latest the World Series could start would be Friday, September 11 (baring a tragedy). The latest if could end if it started on this day would be Friday, October 4 - the last Friday of the MLB regular season.

If you want to keep looking further ahead, the 2010 FNFT Draft will be on Saturday, April 3 - which is also my wife's birthday so you'll have to bring her something.

Sad, Sad News

If you haven't heard this news, a fantasy baseball blog is a grossly impersonal way to find out, however duty requires that I post this. I got a call this morning informing me that Dale Johnson passed away last night - the same night he won his 3rd FNFT Championship.

I don't have many details. He apparently fell ill early last night after walking his dog and called 911. From there, his life was in God's hands.

Dale joined FNFT in 1993. He played every year except for one-year sabbaticals in 1994 and 2004. He will be sorely missed. May he rest in peace.

Millers Maulers FNFT Champs

There's a new modern day king of FNFT - and a new Buffalo Bills. Dale's Millers Maulers have defeated Jake's Wretching Weenergies four games to one to win to the 2008 FNFT World Series. It is Dale's 3rd FNFT crown and second in four years. Jake has now lost three of the last four FNFT Worlds Series.

And oh, by the way, the first ever FNFT wild card team won the FNFT Championship.