Part 1: Head to Head Competition Rules

Over the next 4 days I am going to do 4 different posts about head to head competition. Starting with this blog explaining why head to head competition beats every other type of fantasy baseball league.

I've done rotisserie (and I am presently in one rotisserie league), I've done salary cap, and I've seen protrade.com - but none of them compare to head to head. Don't get me wrong. I love all of fantasy baseball. All the other leagues are as good as the red head from American Pie, but head to head competition is the hot foreign chick.

Rotisserie leagues usually result in half the teams in the league out of contention by May 1. The only way to keep the bottom dwellers interested is to have some incentive for winning a category, but in this case the league actually grows furhter apart. A bottom dweller with Chone Figgins for instance might go after Juan Pierre to try to "steal" the steals category. The easy solution to getting a Juan Pierre or Scott Podsednik is to over compensate overall value players to a contender. Thus, the other contenders suffer and the bottom dwellers grow worse. What fun is it checking the box scores every night just seeing if some guy stole a bag?

Salary cap leagues are more realistic to what a baseball GM has to deal with, but we (Curtis, Sean, Brablc, CA) tried one last season in an AL only format and the results were terrible. We did it through yahoo, who doesn't offer a salary cap, so we had to keep track of the numbers ourselves. ESPN does have auction values, but you and your buddies can all have the same players. It is only realistic to the point that your league is a keeper league. Would the Red Sox really want to trade an expensive player like David Ortiz for Josh Barfield if the league only lasted a single year? ESPN does not offer a keeper league with its salary based league.

Protrade.com is interesting, but you are not competing in a small league but against a large number of people and against numbers. If you are not familiar with it think of a stock portfolio, but with athletes.

Head to head offers the best of everything. Everyone is a contender for at least half of the year. If you start the year out on a sour note (like I have this year, thank you Barry Bonds), one good week can boost you in the standings and also in morale. The greatest strength about my head to head league is that all ten teams compete and follow it day in and day out. I don't think this could happen if it weren't for the playoffs that aren't offered in other leagues. Because of the playoffs the team in 8th place can make a move or two at the trade deadline, work their way into the promised land and try to actually win the league five weeks later. Last year the 5th seed, took home the bragging rights.

Jim from American Pie took Michelle, but this is fantasy baseball not Hollywood. I'd take Nadia any day.