Believe it or not, our little sports site celebrated its first birthday yesterday. We’ve tried to inform you, educate you, give our opinions, make you smile, perhaps make you cringe.
Now, as we start Year Two of the site that began 2/22/22, we may be able to make you a tad richer.<
Starting today, we are accepting sign-ups for the debut season of DOTBL–The Double Overtime (Fantasy) Baseball League. For a mere $50, you can compete with our writers, and other nerds from the world once known as Rotisserie Baseball (named for a classy New York French restaurant where the sport began in earnest in the 1980, long before the internet and even before the birth of USA Today, whose expansion of the traditional baseball boxscore beyond the basic categories made possible the ability to even manually track players’ performances. As someone who competed in leagues like that, one learned not only patience, but also enhanced reading and mathematical skills.
And it is with that nuance that we offer the following unique twist for our league: Insurance. Because having played many years of head-to-head weekly competitions where a position player is injured early in the week, or a rainout forces a shift in the starting rotation where a key start opportunity is lost, I cannot begin to tell you how many weeks’ games have been all but decided before even the weekend.
So, if you’re open to ponying up an additional $20, you will earn the right to make 10 mid-week replacements from your roster only for players who are injured or where rainouts cause a scheduled start to be moved. Replacement players will become active effective the day your replacement notice is received via e-mail to our commissioner, and only their statistics from the games they play in from that point on in a given week will count. Those statistics’ points will be manually added on to final scores upon the completion of the Sunday night schedule, and final results will be announced Monday mornings on this site.
Yes, it’s a little work, so your investment will be going toward servicing those of us who will be working a little extra hard to give you a maximum shot at being a winner. We will otherwise use the scheduling and scoring system of CBS Sports’ Fantasy site, one that I’ve”donated” to for decades, and which provides a wealth of easily accessible rankings and statistics, not to mention an outstanding daily audio podcast and several daily shows on CBS Sports HQ, both also available through the site or the app.
Other key info points:
— DRAFT will be held Tuesday, March 28th, beginning at 8 PM ET. Autodraft options are available for who desire or need it.
— DRAFT ORDER will be determined via a random draw on Sunday, March 25.
— Leagues will be made up of 12 teams each, divided into three four-team divisions. A maximum of two leagues will be formed for the 2023 baseball season.
— The regular season will consist of 23 weekly head-to-head competitions. Division rivals will square off three times; seven of the eight remaining teams will be opponents twice, while one randomly selected team will go head-to-head only once.
— Points will be awarded for batters as follows: all safe hits (one point per base), home runs, RBIs, runs scored and steals. Caught stealings and errors will result in points being deducted. For pitchers, wins, saves and strikeouts will score positive points, home runs allowed, blown saves and losses will result in points being deducted..
— Playoffs will be held over the three weeks prior to the season’s final week. Seeding will be as follows:
1-3: Division winners, ranked by won-loss record and total points scored as a tiebreaker. The top two division winners will receive first-round byes.
4-6: Three next-best records, regardless of division,
Just like real baseball, 6 will play 3 and 4 will play 5 in the first round week. The lowest remaining seed from the winners will then play the 1 seed, the highest remaining will play the 2. That week’s winners will then square off for cash prizes.
We will pay off as follows:
$300 for first place
$100 for second place
$50 for last place (regular season only).
$50 will go to site and maintenance fees. All insurance buy-ins will go toward your co-commissioners’ manual amending of any impacted teams’ weekly stats–just like it used to be back in La Rotisserie days.
We will only activate leagues with 12 teams. First come, first serve. Latecomers who may not be able to form a large enough league will be given the chance to reach out to those who have signed up to try and split teams, but that’s on them. The early bird catches the worm, so to speak.
We’ll have a weekly update that will spotlight performances. We won’t be using ChatGPT, either.
We really hope to see you in our league!
Ready To Sign Up?
League registration has closed for 2023 Fantasy Baseball. Stay tuned for future fantasy sports leagues on The Double Overtime!