SnakePit Fantasy Baseball has been one of the longest-running traditions here on the site. It actually goes back to the 2005 season, when the Pit had barely started; that first season, the league name was still But It’s a DRY Heat... reflecting my pre-SnakePit site. So that makes this now its 13th season - and dammit, I’m going to keep going until I actually WIN the damn thing. :) [My closest being a second-place finish in 2011] It didn’t go well for me last year. Perhaps being there for the draft, in hindsight, might have been a good thing...
Anyway, if it’s like last year, there will be two divisions: the Premiership and Division 1. The Premiership is by invitation-only, and will contain the previous year’s returning teams, plus invites have been sent out today to the first- and second-place finishers in Division 1 from 2016. Congratulations to Wango Fangdango and Yasmany Mo B There, who will be movin’ on up top the Premiership this season. Division 1 is open entry, available to all. If you want to take part, here’s how:
- Make sure you have a public email address on file for your SnakePit account (because that’s where the invite will go)
- Speak up in the comments below.
SnakePit user Incomplete Translation has kindly agreed to commish Division 1 again this year, so thanks to him. Technical details,, should you care. There’s a non-auction live draft, typically held on the Sunday before Opening Day; details to be established. Both leagues use a standard 5x5 format, with five hitting categories (R, RBI, BA, SB and HR) and five pitching (W, Sv, K, WHIP, ERA) categories. Teams face off head-to-head, and you get a point for each category in which your daily line-up beats your opponent, over the course of the week. Top teams at the end of the regular fantasy season (typically 3-4 weeks before the actual baseball regular season) move on into the sudden-death knockout states, which determine the champion.
There’s no fixed number of spaces, but it will be first-come, first served. A league can have any (even) number of teams from 10-20; if we end up with more than twenty, we can (as we have in the past) split it into Divisions 1-A and 1-B, with the winner of each getting promotion next season.