You feel it building. A powerful groundswell sending shock-waves that ripple from your toes to your temple. Electronic, supersonic, a bit ironic, and admittedly, histrionic - it is time for the Nephews of Jody Reed to assemble!
Welcome to the 4th year of the league. This promises to be one of the most enjoyable and active years yet, and I look forward to playing with you guys. In the following blog post, I'll give you some of the background on the league in FAQ format.
Who are the Nephews of Jody Reed?
We are! The name of the league is a play on the Sons of Sam Horn community, a renowned Red Sox message board with sophisticated baseball analysis. Similarly, we are a community of elite fantasy baseball GMs... our analysis is just a bit more proprietary since we also compete against one another.
Why Jody Reed? Mostly a flight of whimsy, but as a budding Red Sox fan in 1990, I'll never forget going to Fenway Park for the first time and seeing him hit one of his league-leading 45 doubles off of the Green Monster. I believe that all us baseball fans have a similar memory that converted us into the loyal fans we are today.
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| His moustache inspired a (Red Sox) nation. |
What can you tell me about the history of the league?
Like I mentioned earlier, this is the 4th edition of NoJR. The league has fluctuated a bit in size and GM activity, but overall has been rather steady. At 12 teams and high activity already, I believe this will be the best year yet.
I have written end-of-year draft recaps for each of the past 3 seasons - feel free to read at your own leisure:
- 2011: link
- Champion: Hughes Drubbers
- 2012: link
- Champion: Rip City Reavers
- 2013: link
- Champion: Rip City Reavers
I've never done an auction draft before - what should I expect?
Every GM has $260 to spend as they wish. Since each team needs to draft for every starting position and bench spot, Yahoo will make sure that you have enough money to draft for every position.
Players generally go for roughly their Yahoo predicted value, although it's fairly common for GMs to go into a bidding war for the best players. Generally, a top 5 fantasy player will go for $50+. GMs should value players based on their personal expectations of performance, though.
Nomination time will be set at the minimum of 30 seconds, and bidding time will be set at 20 seconds. Any bids made with less than 10 seconds to go reset the bidding timer at 10 seconds, so there's no sneakery.
I don't want to influence draft strategy at all, so I'll just say that it helps to do a mock draft or two to make sure that you're familiar with the process and what to expect.
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| Don't let this figuratively happen to you on draft day. |
What's the deal - are we doing keepers or what?
The 2014 draft will not include keepers from the previous year. Since 5 out of the 12 GMs this year are new to the league, I wanted to encourage competitive balance (and of course, get them to join in the first place). Therefore, every team is starting with a blank slate.
However, we WILL have keepers starting this year, so players you draft in 2014 will be eligible to be kept in 2015 and beyond.
Each team can keep up to 3 players for the next season, and keepers are eligible to kept 3 more years following their year of draft. The draft values of those players will be deducted from the next season's auction budget. E.g. if I kept Mike Trout at $50, my draft budget for the following year would be $210 ($260 minus $50).
What are the stat categories?
Hitting: runs, homeruns, RBI, steals, batting average, walks
Pitching: wins, saves, holds, strike outs, ERA, WHIP
Basically the only differences to the standard categories are walks and holds. I originally added walks because I wanted to preserve hits as a component of offensive contribution, and I felt that there was too much double-counting with slugging and homeruns.
Meanwhile, I've continually seen the immense value of quality middle relief in the real game, and felt the virtual game skewed too much toward glorifying closers, who are but a sub-segment of overall relief pitching.
Keep these categories in mind as you devise your own strategy for draft day.
Anything else I should know?
We're adding a new roster spot for this year - the "NA" slot. Players who have that tag are typically minor leaguers who aren't even in the pros yet. Given that we are doing keepers going forward, this is a great opportunity to stash a prospect for the future.
When's the draft?
Sunday, March 23 at 7:30 pm Eastern. If you miss it, the ghost of Honus Wagner will haunt you. Actually, Yahoo will just auto-draft for you, which is just as bad.
Where's this league been all my life?
Let's not dwell on the past, let's just enjoy a prosperous fantasy baseball future.
Thank you for playing, and good luck this season!
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