What have I done?
I went ahead and joined a 30 team dynasty, complete with contracts, prospects, rule 5 draft, salary cap, the works. Pretty much this league is as close to a real MLB GM experience as you can have.
Why did I do this? Well, I thought it would be fun, and would give some content, and maybe some of you psychos who do a league like this (or 2, or 3, how on earth do you keep up with THAT?) would relate. And if you haven’t found this to your liking, you can laugh at me. But first, some Kelder history.
I have done all kinds of leagues, from redraft, roto, head to head, points, dynasty, some keepers, etc. I have done a 30 team in the past, which I kinda didn’t know what I was doing, got a 108 win squad that lost, but in the process got taken to the cleaners for my prospects and draft picks. That part was okay, I was cashing in on a chance to win. What killed me was that they had zero prospect limits. You could own as many guys as you wanted. Some guys had over 250 prospects! I knew it was time to rebuild, but found it tedious to try to get guys I liked when they were all owned anyway. I found a good replacement owner and moved on for a few years. I couldn’t justify an expense at all for a league that was increasingly causing me frustration.
Upon scrolling through Elon Musk’s dystopian wasteland, I spotted a respected writer posting a 30 team league opening. What appealed to me about it was just that I was bored and didn’t have anything else to do. I sent an email, half expecting them to be like “Thanks for your interest, but we found an actually competent owner to take this spot and you should go back to play with your toys.” Instead, they sent me 8 questions to answer.
The questions were simple.
- Why would you be a good owner?
- What type of leagues have you played?
- Who is an undervalued prospect? Detail my thinking.
- Tell me about yourself.
- Are you okay if you have a guy to approve moves before you finalize them?
There were a couple more but I can’t remember them. What this league doesn’t know is that about 16 years ago I was laid off and interviewed over 20 times for various jobs, so I know how to sell myself. They either liked what I wrote or had very few applicants, and I was in.
Number 5 up there was a big one. There’s 3 commissioners and one has been very generous with his time and texting to bounce ideas off of and walk me through the processes needed to start off in the league. There’s a lot to do and I’m really bad at details so that was no big deal. Mr. Commish gave me this list to do after I got in.
1.Discord and Proboards entry: Discord is awesome for leagues like this, and they have a nifty site set up with a roster spreadsheet and everything. That was easy. I think a league chat is great for any league, helps you get to know the guys and gals you’re trying to bury in the standings.
2. Assess my roster and it’s needs.
This is where I’ll go to and then leave off until the next steps. I had to be the Yankees which was only a little bit soul crushing. One time, my wife was being nice and found a Yankees shirt for 2 dollars and bought it for me because it was baseball and it almost caused a divorce. Not really, of course. What I really did was wear it a lot, but kinda strategically so that I wouldn’t be seen out in public with it. She never knew and now the shirt is retired. But I digress.
My roster made the playoffs last year, but with the salary cap constraints I would have to lose several of those good players as free agents. This theoretically is how real baseball works, but my previous owner chose to cash in to make runs in the playoffs, leaving me with one top 100 prospect. This is obviously not a good situation, right? My first homework assignment, then, was to figure out how to shed some salary and reset a little bit.
My pitching was a strength, and my hitting was not as much. But my pitching has a lot of high dollar guys on it and the hitting will need some work.
Will it be a full rebuild? Quite possibly. You can’t sustain a team by letting all your free agents go and count on one AA OF to come up and save the day. Clearly there are a ton of choices to make here.
I think I’m enjoying this way too much. The guys in the league are all super responsive. I’ve already made trades to clear cap space and will explain them more as we get further into the process.
Thanks for reading, keep reading all the offseason content here and don’t forget the NFL and fantasy basketball (which I also write for) starting up this week!
