Offseason Moonball Adjustments

Since it’s the moonball off-season, it’s a good time to look forward to next year and address some issues that came up during last year’s play. Plus I'd like to propose some changes for the coming year. Please read through this post, and then reply with your comments.

Why make changes?
I've noticed a general discontent with TQStats over the past couple years. The site has been quirky, the waiver wire is broken, some position listings were wack. By the end of last season, it seemed like there was a league-wide interest in leaving TQStats for greener pastures.

On top of that, we had the NBA rule changes -- with the league’s new inactive rules and 2nd day box score verification to see who was actually played on any given night, there were some legitimate concerns about moonball injury replacements being too high-maintenance.

I will be the first to say that I have enjoyed playing Moonball at TQStats, and that last year was as fun and exciting as ever. But I also feel that the moonball league could be improved with the website doing more of the heavy lifting. By moving to a new website and implementing a few rule changes, we could simultaneously take more advantage of the tools that fantasy websites have to offer and change the way we deal with player replacements by using a bench.

Therefore for the advancement of moonball, I propose a new moon order:

Hosting: Change from Total Quality Stats to Yahoo

Rather than have the commish manage all the player movement behind the scenes, like the great and powerful Oz, why not have a website that manages it for us?

Yahoo features automated trades and player replacement, so each team does its own transactions in real time. It also still has a message board and personal messages similar to TQ Stats.

According to esteemed co-commissioner Sneep, who played in a Yahoo league last year, Yahoo is smoother, it has a number of better tools, and it can even e-mail you when new messages and transactions are posted. (That would be nice for me, since I can no longer monitor fantasy league sites from work, because of corporate censorship.) There are also better player metric reports, so we won’t have to be poindexters to figure out player averages and other key stats. Yes my friends, slack is back.

Yahoo’s league registration opens in September. I have reviewed Yahoo's custom league rules, and they should be able to accommodate most of our scoring and style of play. The biggest changes that would happen by moving to Yahoo – they set their own positions (so, no more exciting discussions about what position Rasheed plays).

My biggest concern is more cultural – that the message board would be less integral to the functioning of the league, since you don’t technically have to “post” your transactions.

When HP posted last year’s message board a few weeks back, it reminded me how much I liked it when everybody stuck their head up to say their peace, as they were making a move. Therefore, I would propose that each team post their trades and acquisitions on the board as they happen, so we can still nickname players, create excitement and make fools of ourselves (for all to enjoy).


Rule Changes
To take advantage of Yahoo’s automated transactions, and to try something new in our moonball league to change how injury replacement works, I am suggesting the addition of bench players. Here’s how I see it working:

Teams:
All teams will have 14 players. Each team will be composed of 10 active players and 4 bench players. The 10 will be 4 guards, 4 forwards and 2 centers. The bench can be any combination of the 3 types.

The bench can be used for reserves and injury replacements. Each team is responsible for adjusting its lineup each week, to determine who is an active player and who is reserved on the bench.

You can make as many adjustments as you’d like to your upcoming lineups during the week. Then, the week's lineup is set each Sunday at midnight.

Injury replacement
Injury replacement will now be accomplished by using players from your bench. If one of your players is hurt during a given week, you may replace that player the following week with a reserve from the bench. There will be no injury replacements from the free-agent pool. Free agents can only be picked up by supermove or trade supermove.

Supermoves
There will be 4 supermoves and 4 trade-supermoves per half-season. More supermoves have been added to account for injury replacements. Supermoves would work as before…allowing teams to replace their players with players from the free agent pool. Waived players would go to the waiver wire, and could be claimed the same way as in the past.

There is no Rabinowitz exception. (Just like any player replacement, season-ending injury replacements can only be made by supermove or waiver pickup.)


The addition of a bench is a big change, but one that I think will be fun and strategic. Having a bench will allow teams to think ahead about replacements, and keep a few interesting fill-in players around. And we’ll be able to hang on to injured (or suspended) starters without having to wait for them to be deemed “inactive”, putting them back into our lineups when we feel they're ready...not just after they've been active for a week. You can also demote players to the bench without giving up on them entirely. In other words, you're more in control of your own destiny.

Another big benefit of a bench is that it encourages trades. There would be a lot more combinations where bench players could be swapped for active players, and vice-versa.

Lastly, this arrangement will require less hands-on work from the commissioner. It’s not just that I’m lazy...but it’s nearly impossible to find a fantasy site that is not blocked by the filtering software used at my workplace. Therefore, the more transactions that can happen automagically, the better for all.

That's what I've got so far. Please use “Comments” to discuss this proposal, or post any questions or ideas you wish to offer. Happy offseason!