We play in a "Head-to-Head, 14 team, 5x5 Category, Mixed, Keeper League that is mildly deep".

• Head-to-Head means that each week each team plays against another team in a matchup. Only the results from the specific matchup are counted towards the standings. This means that a team can have a really bad week, but still improve their overall position in the standings if the team they are playing has a worse week. Similarly, a team can have a great week relative to the rest of the league, but end up losing ground in the standings, if their opponent has a better week.
• 14 teams means there are 14 teams in the league. There are 21 weeks in the regular season, so this results in a schedule whereby each team plays every other team at least once, and each team plays some of the other teams twice. We use a weighted schedule based on the prior years final standings. This means that the better teams play each other twice and the poorer performing teams tend to play each other twice.
• 5x5 Category means that we compete across 5 pitching categories and 5 hitting categories. The hitting categories are Average, Homeruns, RBIs, Steals, and Runs. The pitching categories are Wins, Saves, ERA, WHIP, and Strikeout. The outcome of a matchup is determined by comparing the two teams results in each category, and assigning a Win, Loss, or Tie to the result for each categorie. For example, if Team1 has more RBIs than Team2 that week, then Team1 wins the RBI category; if they have the same number of RBIs, then they tie the RBI category for the week. The results for all categories are added up affect the standings according. So, if Team1 only wins the RBI category, then he goes 1-9-0 for the week. If Team1 wins RBIs, HR, Avg and ties in W & SV, then Team1 goes 3-5-2. It's important to note that this means, there can be drastic changes in the standings over a single week. If Team1 beats Team2 with a score of 10-0-0, then Team1 gains 10 games in the standings against Team2.
• Mixed means our league uses players from both the American League and National League
• Keeper means that you are able to keep players from year to year. We call these players, "Keepers". In our league, you can keep up to 6 players. In many cases, however, you might not want to. The advantage of keeping less players is that the you will get to draft earlier than teams that have kept more players. A team that keeps 6 players does not get to draft in the first 6 rounds. A team that keeps 3 players does not get to draft in the first 3 rounds, and so on. That said, in our league, sometimes in order to get really great players, you need to get them when they first enter the league and keep them until they become great (or not).
• Mildly deep means that it can be tough to get good players, but not too bad. This is because we have more than the standard number of players and we have more than the standard number of roster spots, but we have some other rules to mitigate things a little.

This most unique rule to our league is the way we handle the maximum and minimum starts per week. Instead of relying on the ESPN system to enforce that rule, we use the honor system. The reasoning behind this is that we think 8 means 8. In the ESPN system, 8 means, "If you don't reach 8 by Sunday morning, you can add as many starters on Sunday as you are able to". That, of course, leads to lots of pitcher streaming, which degrades the quality of the league.

For most weeks the maximum number of starts is 8. The exceptions to that are the first week of the season, all-star week, and sometimes the very final week of the playoffs. Please refer to the box-score of your matchup to find out the specific maximum number of starts for those particular weeks. Please also note that the minimum number of starts is 4.

When someone does go over the limit, it causes great pain for Ron & Rich. If the extra start changes the outcome of the match, then we need to set up an alternate web-site that contains the actual standings and refer to that throughout the remainder of the season to know the real standings. We then need to manually adjust things for the playoffs. So, please try very, very hard not to exceed the limit. It is also nice if you can help police your opponents and everyone else. If you see someone is going to exceed the limit, please contact them directly or contact Kiho, Ron, or Rich and we will try to contact that person.

A good mechanism for avoiding problems is to hold off on managing your Sunday starters until Sunday morning. It is also helpful to count your starts at the beginning of the week and to adjust your lineup accordingly. Also, when viewing your box score, take a moment to check on your opponent.

In the unfortunate circumstance that someone does exceed the limit, we remove the most recent (as indicated with the time of the first pitch thrown in the game) start from the matchup. If we cannot resolve the difference in start times, then, in true baseball tradition, we will flip-a-coin to determine which start should be removed.

The league works best when everyone partipicates to the fullest. We do understand, however, that things come up in life and that it is not always possible to manage your team. That said, at the very bare minimum, you are expected to replace your injured players. In most cases, there should never be an injured player in the lineup for more than a short while.

Beyond the bare minimum, it is generally expected that people will manage their starting pitchers enough so that the minimum of 4 starts is always met. Also, it is really, really, important that this is kept up for the entire season. During those final weeks when several people are trying to make a single playoff spot, it can be really infuriating when one of those folks wins 10-0 due to lack of participation of their opponent.

Of course, just about everyone in the league goes far beyond the minimum participation levels. It really only takes 5 minutes per day to be somewhat competitive.

Important league announcements will be sent through email.

In the unlikely case that two teams finish the season with the exact same records, we use the aggregated head to head matchups between the two tied teams to determine the final standings. For example, if Lights and Crashers are tied, and in their first matchup of the year, Lights won with a score of 7-2-1, and, in the second matchup of the year, Lights lost by 4-5-1, we add those results together and get Lights winning by 11-7-2. This differs from the ESPN model which would consider them still tied. When that is the case, we will manually intervene and correct ESPN.

In the case that the aggregated head-to-head matchup is still a tie, we flip a coin.

For obvious reasons, ties during the playoffs are much more common than ties in the standings after 21 weeks. We still determine the winner of the playoff match using the same aggegrated results of the prior head-to-head matchups. This can often lead to manual interventions. If the agggregated head-to-head matchup results still produce a tie, we revert to comparing the two teams' overall regular season records. In the extremely unlikely case of that still resulting in a tie, we flip a coin.

Our waiver order is set to equal the draft order after the draft has completed. ESPN will initially have it set as the reverse, but we will manually change that. In the case that we forget to do that or there is some other user error, as has happened in the past, we'll just go with what ESPN has set.

• Northern Lights
• The Crashers
• Sunshine Daydreamers
• Lost Coast Beardozers
• The Haymakers
• Team A Star
• Mendo Mavericks
• Redwood Trees
• Mendo Rays
• Delicious Sandwiches

The winner of the pool will be the team that finishes in the highest position at the end of the playoffs, based on our custom playoff tiebreaker. With 10 teams in the pool this year the possibility of none of the teams in the pool making it to the playoffs has moved from improbable to impossible.