Distant Early Warning

OK, after writing that headline, I've had my 80s Flashback (back when the "M" in MTV meant something) for the morning ...but I'm actually referring to some early roster warnings.

Danger Ahead!!! You may be on the way to a 50-100 finish in BWB. But it's not too late!

Here's a repeat of an email I sent out this morning to everyone --

I'm usually very hands off on team management, but after 2 weeks of play it's probably not a bad idea to check in and maybe raise a flag of warning. I assume that you're all looking at your game results and stats and rosters and attempting to shore up holes, but maybe you're not aware of any problems (or not paying attention).

The history of the game shows that you can overcome a bad start, but if you're inactive now and have roster problems, the history also indicates that you're going to check out for the rest of the season. It's your money, so that's fine (or your "expert reputation" if you're in the Expert League), but I also like to keep the leagues competitive and a team that goes 40-110 due to owner neglect doesn't help that.

So, just as a reminder - in case you're not paying attention (and count me as one of the guilty), here are some teams with some holes in the first two weeks. You may have already taken steps to fix, but in case you haven't looked at your roster in a while, you might want to check in before Friday's transaction deadline. Remember it takes a week between the time you sign a player before you can play him.

Or - maybe you play in a league with one of these teams and it's a friend of yours...maybe a gentle nudge from you can get him back in the game.

Not surprsingly, some teams appear on the lists below more than once. And, it's not the ONLY reason, but the fact that all the other teams in the Giamatti Division of the Commissioners League all appear twice may have helped South Park start off 11-1.

** Also - another strategy is to sign major league players making less than 250. You can store them in your minor league roster and they are immediately available to fill injury or other holes.

Links of note:

• Statistics Index
• Your Roster
• Standings
• Game Results

========== Hitting

Benchwarmer Batters - This is almost unavoidable over the course of the season (your starter and reserve will sit out the same game eventually). But if after 12 games you have more than, say, a half dozen BW Batters in your stats already, you might have some problems.

32 of the 272 teams fit that category - here are 14 teams with 10 or more BW Batters:

Reality Bites: Minneapolis (19)...that's me! I'm number one. Wow, I knew I had trouble at catcher, but now I see I've got issues at shortstop too.

Blue and Gray: Southern California (12)
Chevy Chase: Faber College (11) Gashouse (15)
Commissioners: Bellerose (14) Turley (11)
Deuces Wild: Bellerose (10)
Experts: NY/NJ Fantasy Phenoms (18) Lancaster (13)
Golden Throat: Boomer (11)
Longball: Sri Lanka (11)
Shadowball: BALCO LABS (12)
Three of a Kind: Johan Santana (15)
Triple Crown: Pittsburgh (12)

========= Starting Pitching

Pinesitter Pitchers - If you have ANY Pinesitter starting pitchers that means that you've got guys in rotation who aren't pitching AND spot starters who aren't pitching.

24 Teams have at least 1 PS Starter. Here are the 14 teams with 2 or more already.

Beer: Jamaican (2)
Commissioners: Turley (4) Bellerose (2) Shadow Ridge (2)
Deuces Wild: Grand Canyon (2)
Experts: Lancaster (2)
Golden Throat: Fulton Co. (4) Boston (2)
Longball: Southern California (2)
Redbirds: Baltimore (2)
Three of a Kind: Johan Santana (6!!!) Maryland (3)
Triple Crown: Uranus (4) New Brighton (2)

========= Relief Pitching

Pinesitter Pitchers - I know from my own experience that there has been a lot of injured relievers and guys going back and forth to the minors, so this have been tough to avoid. 86 of the 272 teams already have 1 or more PS relievers.

Here are 19 teams with already 6 or more...this means you might have major problems in your bullpen.

Beatleball: Roseville (10) Carlisle (9)
Bleed Dodger Blue: Team Japan (7)
Blue and Gray: Atlantis (7)
Chevy Chase: Gashouse (10)
Commissioners: Turley (23!!!) Shadow Ridge (14) Cleveland (10)
Experts: NY/NJ Fantasy Phenoms (11) Fantasy Bullpen (9)
Golden Throat: Fulton Co. (15) Austin (7)
Hall of Fame: Chincoteague Island (6)
Redbirds: UK (16)
Shadowball: Atlanta (9)
Three of a Kind: Johan Santana (19) Everett (6)
Triple Crown: Baldwin (18) Mars (11)

========= Relief Pitching

High "Innings Short" Average - Part of the bullpen scoring is based on total innings your bullpen puts in. These 9 teams have "average short" values higher than 3 innings per game. You may need to look at rearranging your order or find an innings-eater (or guys that pitch more often).

Beatleball - Brooklyn
Beer - Labatt's
Bleed Dodger Blue - Minneapolis
Chevy Chase - Quahog Faber College
Deuces Wild - St. Paul
Longball - Southern California
Three of a Kind - Vegas Strip
Triple Crown - New Brighton

BWB Primer #5 - The Starting Pitching Queue

The BWB Primer is a series of commentaries to provide rule interpretations and hints - something a bit more than you get out of the rules. See the Primer Index for the entire series.

Your starting pitching rotation consists of your "normal rotation" - P1 through P5, and your "spot starters" (S1 & S2). In recent years, we've also allowed backup relief appearances to come from the spot starter postion, but for our discussion here, we'll consider them as starters.

One of the main ways in how your normal pitching rotation differs from your two spot starters is the size of the start queue.

The 3-start Queue

Your rotation has the ability to queue up 3 starts, beginning as soon as you put them into the rotation. It's a "first-in, first-out" queue, so when the pitcher's next start occurs in Benchwarmer Baseball, we pull out the earliest start remaining in his queue to use in the game. This allows us to have starts available whenever it's his turn to pitch in BWB.

For example, let's say your 4th pitcher is in real-life an Opening Day starter - and that MLB team will be starting off with a 4-man rotation for a couple weeks...

• So he'll pitch in MLB games #1, #5, and #9. His first start in BWB will occur in BWB Game #4 - which for hitters and the cut-off for pitching stats is MLB Game #9 (See mapping MLB games to BWB games). Thus, at the time he makes his first start he now has 3 starts in his queue - and for our purposes, we use his performance from MLB Game #1.
• Now, the other advantage of the 3-start queue is that it may allow you some regularity in your rotation even if your guy misses a real start or two. Continuing our example, let's say your guy strains his shoulder in MLB Game #9, so he's going to miss a start (say in MLB Game 13 or 14). But as his turn comes around again in BWB (BWB Game #9), we still have 2 starts sitting in his queue, so he doesn't miss a start in your rotation.

In practice, this extra padding usually only exists for starters that you have in the rotation at the beginning of the season - or only after a significant time passes for guys you stick in there mid-season.

Spot Starters

Spot starters fill in only if the scheduled pitcher in the rotation cannot pitch (either due to no available queued starts or has not had 4 games of rest). We see if the 1st spot starter can fill in and if not, check the 2nd. If neither spot starter can go, we see if one of your other pitchers can move up. 4/14: This paragraph is a correction of the way I originally wrote it.

A spot starter only has a 1-start queue. As soon as he has another real-life start, it replaces the unused start sitting in the queue. But that start will remain until used or replaced. Teams in the past have had a spot starter at the beginning of the year stow away a starting performance and then doesn't start again (maybe he's hurt, or moved to the bullpen, or demoted). But that start stays there and at some point - maybe even in September - if that pitcher is needed, his major league start in April counts for your game in September.

Removing pitchers from the rotation or moving them - how does it affect the queue?

If you move someone to a different spot in the rotation, there's no effect on his queued-up starts - they move with him. But, if you take someone out of the rotation, his queue is cleared and he'd have to start over if you put him back in the rotation. Thus, there can be some risk for plugging guys in and out of the rotation. You might get away with dumping a horrendous outing, but it's just as likely you'll miss a good performance when trying to put him back in, plus you lose the possible cushion of 1-2 extra starts.

If you move pitchers between the spot roles and the main rotation or vice versa, you don't lose any queued starts, with the exception that a pitcher moving from the main rotation to a spot position can now only have one saved start instead of three, so only the most recent one is retained.

Too many starts for the queue - losing a start

Finally, there may be occasions where you lose a start from someone in your rotation because he has too many queued starts. Let's say your #1 pitcher already has 3 queued starts, and is next set to pitch in BWB Game #96. But now he gets another start in MLB Game #100, which corresponds to BWB Game #95. At this point, the earliest start in the queue is discarded. This situation occurs mainly around the All-Star Break, as some teams retool their rotation after the break or skip a couple pitchers. It also may show up if a team switches to a 4-man rotation (your guy gathers statistics every 4 MLB games but uses them only every 5 BWB games).

BWB Primer #4 - Pitching Tips

The BWB Primer is a series of commentaries to provide rule interpretations and hints - something a bit more than you get out of the rules. See the Primer Index for the entire series.

There's a page on the web site that's probably not worth reproducing in whole here that gives some basic tips on setting up your pitching. Check it out here. The page was written many years ago, but for the most part still holds up. But, here are some things of note taken from the page:

• Just like for the hitters, for individual games it's the totals, not the averages that matter. The number of IP and ER a starting pitcher has is important.
• The more IP your starter gets, the fewer innings your bullpen is needed (and the fewer number of relievers needed).
• Pitchers need 4 games of rest between starts. Be careful between weeks if you change your rotation. Most of the time you can safely move a pitcher DOWN in the rotation and not miss a start. But don't forget that one of your pitchers in every 6-game week will pitch twice, so sometimes even moving him down will make him miss a start.
• Saves count in the bullpen formula only count for the first two relievers used in the game. If your bullpen has 3 closers, it's possible that the saves are going to waste (though the pitchers other stats may be helpful).
• The more relievers you need, the more total innings you need before your bullpen score starts getting deductions. You want your lower 3 relievers to be innings eaters.

BWB Primer #3 - Batting Order Tips

The BWB Primer is a series of commentaries to provide rule interpretations and hints - something a bit more than you get out of the rules. See the Primer Index for the entire series.

There's a page on the web site that's probably not worth reproducing in whole here that gives some basic tips on setting your lineup. Check it out here. The page was written many years ago, but for the most part still holds up.

But, here are some things of note taken from the page:

• Hard numbers generally mean more than averages. For example, one part of our scoring formula is based on the number of hits and total bases in the game, not a players BA or Slg Pct.
• In order to be used in a BWB game, your bench players also need to play in real life. If you can get an MLB starter as a BWB bench player, that's valuable.
• "Minor Leaguers" in BWB can be any player making 250 or less. You can put cheap MLB players there who can fill in roster holes for you later on without needing to resort to free agency/trades.
• Multi-position eligibility is valuable for Bench Players.
• Since the DH is your first fielding substitute, multi-position eligibility is also good. For example - if you have 2 guys to put into OF and DH, if one of those guys also plays 1B, he is the probably the better DH candidate.

Build your batting order like you would in real life - top guys for runs and getting on base at the top of your order, weak guys at the bottom, probably your best overall hitter at #3.

Don't forget our new sample score page that will let you experiment with different lineups and see how that affects your hitting score.

BWB Primer #2 - Weekly Deadlines

The BWB Primer is a series of commentaries to provide rule interpretations and hints - something a bit more than you get out of the rules. See the Primer Index for the entire series.

Weekly Deadlines and the effect on game scoring

This goes back to Primer #1 and what MLB games are used for scoring BWB games.

As a quick review, ML Game #6 stats are used for the hitters in BWB Game #1.

Thus, in order to score the game, all major league teams must have played 6 games. In 2009, that's going to occur for most teams somewhere on or near April 11-12. That's the reason why we don't need lineups on the Opening Day of the major league season. (We used to do it that way, but for much of the season teams needed to submit their weekly lineups far in advance of when the games would actually be considered - making it tough to be responsive to slumps, trades, and injuries).

Rainouts and such also play havoc in getting all the teams at the same point, so quite often it will appear early in the season that it takes forever to get game results. I'll try to get them done as soon as I can. Be happy this is the Internet age and that you don't have to wait for U.S. Mail to deliver you the results as was done by the predecessors to Benchwarmer Baseball.

Eventually, most teams get into a groove where they end up playing 6-7 games per calendar week, so in order to make sure that by the end of the season you are still submitting lineups before the major league games are really played, we instituted a sliding deadline schedule in 2003. Every 5 weeks, the weekly transaction day advances one day earlier. So at the beginning of the season, transactions and lineups are due on Fridays and by the end of the year it's Monday. This has worked out pretty well.

For many of you who just joined, the never-ending (and irregular) deadlines to get your draft done may have been confusing and overwhelming. From this point, everything is regular. Once a week - the same day every week - the same time (midnight Pacific). Then, once every five weeks we shift the day forward to better match the MLB schedule. Occasionally, we'll shift a day or two - but almost always that's to give more time rather than less time (like this current Week #1 to push back to Saturday due to a drafting league).

BWB Primer #1 - MLB Game to BWB Game

The BWB Primer is a series of commentaries to provide rule interpretations and hints - something a bit more than you get out of the rules. See the Primer Index for the entire series.

What games count in BWB?

First, the very basic idea (that I'll contradict in a few moments) is that a single game in major league baseball corresponds to a single game in BWB. And by this, we don't mean a given date - when some teams might be playing and others do not. To synchronize everything, we determine the game number that a major league team is playing.

Thus, when a major league team plays their first game - well, all the stats for those players now count in BWB Game #1. Whenever it might be that MLB teams play their game #45, then those stats count for BWB Game #45.

Here's the contradiction, however - how do we deal with pitchers?

It would be nearly impossible to line up pitching performances so that your starting pitcher performs in real life exactly when you needed him in your rotation. So, we allow a pitcher to queue up starting performances so that they can be used in BWB whenever they are needed. A member of your five-man rotation can queue up three starting performances (when teams use a 4-man rotation or at times like the All-Star game, it's possible for your top pitchers to pitch more frequently than once every five games).

So what happens on the first game of the season, when only one pitcher for each major league team gets a chance to start? Do you need to have an Opening Day starter on your roster and then must you pitch him in your first game?

No - instead, what we do is start the pitching queue in MLB Game 1 and allow the queue to build for 5 more games before we use any hitting stats. MLB Games 1-5 are for pitching only. Then, with MLB Game 6, we start off the BWB Season. That game is the final game that your #1 pitcher has to appear in order to have a qualifying start. With MLB Game #6, we check the pitching performances from games 1-6, and the first one in which your first starter pitches provides the stats for your opening game. For BWB Game #2, we check the the queued starts from MLB Games 1-7, and the first one in which your second starter pitched is used for that game. And so on...

That takes care of starting pitchers...what about the bullpen?

Relievers have a similar "problem" - they don't usually appear on an everyday basis, so it's tough to make a performance in a Major League game correspond to a BWB game. So instead of queuing up their appearances, we accumulate their stats over a sliding 6-game period. This accumulation is then used to build averages for your entire bullpen, which is later used in the scoring formula (and too complicated to divert to in this chapter).

So bullpen stats for MLB Games 1-6 are used for BWB Game 1. MLB Games 2-7 used for BWB Game 2. MLB Games 56-61 used for BWB Game 56. And so on.

What about hitters?

Now, we could make hitters games just correspond exactly from MLB performance to BWB performance (MLB Game 1 = BWB Game 1, etc.). However, since the pitching stats for BWB Game #1 are cutting off at ML Game #6, it then becomes more consistent (and believe me, easier to administrate) to use that same "cut off" game for the hitters. Thus, we end up with BWB Game #1 using stats from MLB Game #6. BWB Game #78 uses MLB Game #83.

We lose some stats from the first week of the season (let's hope your slugger waits until Game 6 to have that 4-homer game), but we're also losing some at the end since we only have a 150-game season, so don't lose any sleep over it.

Because we play a full 150 games in the regular season, the playoffs need to get handled with a random selection of games from the last half of the season. More on that to come at another time (and the 5-game gap isn't handled the same way in the playoffs).

If you lose track, check out the Transaction Schedule/Deadlines links found on the main transaction page and on your league's home page. There's a chart that indicates which MLB games are used for hitters in any given BWB week.

The BWB Primer

A few years ago I drafted a series of standard emails designed for new players. I don't think I've mailed them out in the last couple seasons - and who has the chance to read a long email anyway?

So, the Blog seems like a good place to stick these. And that gives experienced players a chance to review some things.

They are wordy. But they are meant to be interpretation and added details to the rules.

It looks like 2006 was the last time I mailed them out. I'll try to make sure I update where things have changed since then. If you see a problem or inconsistency, please let me know. As I add new updates, the table of contents below will be changed.

BWB Primer Index

• #1 - Mapping MLB Games to BWB Games
• #2 - Weekly Deadlines
• #3 - Batting Order Tips
• #4 - Pitching Tips
• #5 - The Starting Pitching Queue
• #6 - The Bullpen
• #7 - Off-season Money
• #8 - Multiyear Contracts
  
• More coming in September to cover off-season details...

As always, places to find information:

• BWB Rules
• BWB Help Page (a collection of sources)
• This blog, Dinks and Dunks, Save the Dome
• FAQs
• The BWB Home Page - there is a lot of communication and many updates made there.
  

Season opening things to remember...

This is generally a repeat of the email sent out earlier today....

The MLB season opens up Sunday night, but we don't kick off for another week. As a reminder, we don't count the first 5 games for hitters. Your Opening Day lineups must be set by Friday, April 10.

Here are some reminders about this week's transaction deadline (Week Zero - Monday night 4/6, midnight EDT). These are scattered throughout the rules - this is an attempt to give you one recap.

Deuces Wild - since you're still drafting, these do not apply to you just yet.

• You must have a legal roster after signings/cuts/trades on Monday. (26 players minimum, all mandatory slots filled). If you're short in any way, the league office will sign players for you.
• So - starting this week, you can't have any cuts or trades that would leave you below a minimum roster.
• Starting this week, the salary rebate for cut players goes up to 80% from 50% (except some of the new leagues who are still getting 100% - see your sign/cut page for details).
• All teams get an extra 2 million in cash. Technically, this is awarded after the transactions are done - but in reality you can figure in that extra cash in for your Week Zero transactions.
• Returning leagues only - You can only take $5 million into the season. Now would be the time to get your balance below that mark by signing players or creating multiyear contracts. The way it works - we run the transactions - check cash balances - anything above $5 million is cut down to that level - then all teams get $2 million (so you'll have 7 million when all is said and done). Again - if you drafted in a new league this season - the 5 million limit does not apply to you.
• Moving someone to Injured Reserve (IR) is permanent for the season. Use the "Taxi Squad" as our version of the shorter-term disabled list (or minor leagues if a player is eligible). You may find you need to cut players.
• Despite "real life" status, in BWB a player can only be put in the minors if he makes 250 or less in salary. You may need to make cuts.
• So far, I haven't made corrections to anyone's lineups. During the Week Zero transactions, if you have 15 minor leaguers or 8 guys in your rotation, etc. I'll be removing excess. I won't fill in missing holes until Week 1.
• Though lineups aren't due until Week 1, it helps the process if you start setting them ASAP as that helps me find teams missing a position. If you don't set a lineup by Week 1, the league will do it for you.

To see how BWB will automatically sign missing players or set your Opening Day lineups for you, see section 13 of the rules ("Inactive Owners"). Moral of the story - do it yourself.

Questions? Consult the rules, the FAQs, or email your League Admin ("Email BWB" link at the bottom of any web page).