As anyone who follows me on twitter knows I’m very much into the Dynasty Baseball game, which came out of the old pursue the pennant boardgame from the pre-pc era. It’s my primary pastime these days beside watching regular baseball.
You can have a lot of fun playing in a league but if you want to run your own remember while it’s a lot of fun it’s also quite a bit of work. If you’ve thought of running your own league here are a few things you should consider:
A: Consider how much time you have:
The first thing you need to consider if you want to run a Dynasty league is how much free time you have to both run the league and play in it. Playing a game itself is not all time consuming, about 30-40 minutes per game is what’s required, but if you are scheduling games 2 days, 3 days or even four days a week can add up, particularly if you are not retired or have a family that likes to do things. Furthermore if you’re running a league you have to leave yourself enough time to put out the various fires that take place. So when deciding to run a league make sure you decide:
- How much time you have for administration
- How much time you have to actually play
What I’d do is figure how many free days I have to play and then subtract one or even two and then set whatever league you create to that length, that will assure that you have time to get it done.
B: Consider what type of league you want
There are three basic types of leagues in order of complexity
- Draft leagues (Hardest)
- Existing team leagues
- Season Replay leagues
All have advantages and disadvantages:
Draft leagues:
Draft leagues involve drafting players from a pool of players from the same season. Draft leagues have several advantages over existing team leagues:
- A: You get to be GM as well as manager building your own team and are thus more invested in it
- B You can continue the league year to year to keep up interest
- C You can tweak the system to add realism, (trades, waiver wires etc)
- D The Draft itself becomes an event
It’s my experience that some people enjoy the GM factor more than the games itself and that you really become invested in the teams and players. I’ve reached the point in my league that I started in 1969 that I even make baseball cards for the folks on my team to wit:
However draft leagues have their downsides:
- A: Considerably more time to manage
- B: Handling the rosters
- C The draft itself may take days or weeks
- D Keeping Competitive balance
- E More things to go wrong
Running a draft league means, handling rosters of every single team, running a draft and trying to do it fairly and if you are having a league that goes from season to season keeping up the competitive balance from season to season. All of these require extra work and time depending on the size of your league: (My current draft leagues are 16 players for 1996 and 20 for 1971) and of course the more players the more work.
Bottom line: Draft leagues are in my opinion the most fun but if I were new I’d start with an existing league first to get my feet wet:
Existing team leagues
Having a league of existing teams takes a lot of work out of the system. The adantages are clear:
- There is almost no managing of rosters
- No trying to get people together for a draft
- No worrying about a change from one season to the next
- If more than one person wants the Yanks, or Cubs they can have them
- You can mix eras
- As soon as you have your schedule made you can start at once
Most existing team league involve GREAT teams which is the pool for tournaments. These tend to be very popular because the teams are memorable although you can spice things up as I did by creating leagues that aren’t just great teams two examples:
All pathetic team leagues: Teams in such a league all have to have a minimum loss level (90, 100 or something in between) This makes for a very odd game where you are constantly hoping for players to roll of their opponent’s cards. Also it gets interesting when one such team has a superstar. A 1967 Mets team with Tom Seaver for example. Can you picture the number Seaver produces when only facing slubs?
All Mediocre teams (the SD Jones league) I ran a league of teams that all had records from 80-82 to 82-80. This makes for an interesting league as there is enough of a mix of slubs and stars to really involve managing games.
Either way with these teams you don’t have the same roster / upkeep issues although with some of the older teams you are more likely to run into situations where a team has no pitcher eligible to use.
The disadvantages of set teams are:
- Teams are static no variation.
- No GM or Draft or Trade type fun
- Balance (think 27 yanks vs well almost anyone)
- Less incentives for teams losing to continue
- The mix of eras can cause anomalies
Bottom line set teams are a good option to start out but tend to be one or two shot deals. They work with teams that
Replay Leagues
With a replay league you play a team in an actual season in order.
The advantages:
- Very realistic. Actual team, actual schedule
- Schedule is pre-made so faster start
- The system handles trades and signings when it happens
- Excellent for solo league play
There are however some huge disadvantages
- Your season only moves only as fast as the slowest player
- Locked into the number of games in the season (162) games
- Unbalanced a bad team is always bad
A season replay league is a great choice if you want to get familiar with the game in a hurry. But you want to be sure that the players in it are committed because you can’t move to July 21 till all of July 22’s games are done. You might impose a 24-48 hour limit to get things in.
You CAN make a season replay league into a draft league but the amount of work is considerable and if you do be prepared for a season to take a full year
C: Consider how many series you want in a week:
Unless you are playing a season replay which is played based on when a day is finished. The Dynasty league system allows you to schedule up to four series a week at any time you wish to set.
As a series can be set for anywhere from 2-4 games that means as little as 2 games a week and as many as 12.
The fewer series played in a week of course the easier it is for people to play without having to resort to autoplay but that also means the slower the season goes. Also consider that a game takes 30-45 min in my experience so a 4 game series can take 3 hours while a two game series can be done in 90 minutes.
Also remember that the more series you have in a week the less likely you are to draw in players who are already in a league or two who won’t be able to squeeze in those extra games.
And the more series a week the less time to reschedule when real life insists on asserting itself over your scheduiled gaming time.
D: Consider how many games you want in a season:
Unless you are playing a season replay which fixes you at 162 games (or 154 if you play 1957 or 60 if you play the COVID season) you have the option to set any number of games.
The longer the season you play the more real it will be and the less impact injuries and suspension will have. Of course a short season the season will be and the more chance that a streak of good or bad luck will carry the day.
Also consider a short season means that you can have multiple seasons in a year while a long season will likely mean two at the most.
And if you have a draft league remember the draft takes up time between seasons it doesn’t finish in a day (unless you play face to face).
But either way remember you are the guy who is going to have to make this schedule and enter it manually into dynasty
E: Consider How many players you want to manage:
Note that I didn’t ask you how many teams you wanted in your league I asked how many players you want to manage.
A smaller league means fewer players and the fewer players you have the easier it is to have guys show up when games are scheduled and to schedule more games in a week etc.
It’s also a lot easier to come up with a schedule with fewer teams.
A small intimate league is fun but of course there is nothing like a large league with 16-20 players and a great variety of styles of play and management, plus you get less “Superteams because so many players are used. For example in my current 1971 league there are only 6 pitchers not on someone’s roster.
But keep this in mind any online league usually involves people you don’t know personally. The only thing everyone has in common is a love of baseball and a willingness to pay for the game.
There are invariably going to be the basic problems, people from different time zone having issues being free etc but you are also going to run into disputes and errors and mistakes and if it’s your league you have to make the calls. Managing people of different temperaments, different ages et/al can be difficult so do your best to impartially stick to the rules.
I STRONGLY suggest that you avoid non-league stuff in conversation or in the slack room and if you’re on social media and are angry about something in the news don’t vent in the league space (I made that mistake a few years ago in a league and it’s a mistake I regret.)
But more than that I suggest not having any kind of cash league with a prize. Once money is involved everything changes and any mistake becomes magnified
Remember in the end it’s all about having fun, make the choices to allow the maximum amount of fun for yourself and all the work will pay off.
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