Not A Fantasy Baseball Post

I mean, this is going to start off being about fantasy baseball, but then it's going to head elsewhere, and I figure if I title it "Fantasy Baseball" most of my readers are going to skip it.  But this way maybe some of you give it a chance.

I've spent more hours than I can justify over the past couple of days putting together a pretty nifty Excel spreadsheet dealing with my fantasy baseball league's auction a week from tomorrow.  It's a pretty competitive league, we do an all-day auction, get to keep 8 players year-to-year through a set of one- and two- year contracts we can assign, there's a scoring algorithm that goes beyond the traditional rotisserie categories, we each pay $125 into a pot to be divided among the winners, the "rules" are a 4-page single-spaced word document.  So it's somewhat more complicated than most leagues.  I've been trying to figure out ideal auction prices, factoring in position scarcity, the amount of fake dollars left for bidding once everyone assigns their contracts, the scoring algorithm, etc. 

It's a points league, adding pitcher and hitter values to get one overall number for the team... so the overarching principle is simply that you want to fill each slot with a player who will earn you as many points as possible, and the biggest risk is wasting a spot with some guy who isn't going to earn enough points, regardless of whether you got a "bargain" or not in the auction.  So there's a premium to pay for the handful of big earners, and a lot of mediocre players who are pretty much replaceable.

So I set up some scarcity formulas, plugged in some stats, and have been playing around with it.  I've got a nifty little spreadsheet now, with all sorts of interlinked columns and rows of data.  My point, though, is that it was a lot of fun to make, and rewarding to think about the problem in a way that the writing isn't always.  It's like exercise for another part of the brain.  I miss having to think in an analytical way, having to try and solve problems or puzzles or challenge myself in ways other than the creative kind of thinking that the writing requires.  I'm not sure that legal work necessarily would hit those buttons in my brain, but something would, and I kind of want to seek some more of that out, whether it's a class I could take somewhere, or something, I don't know.  I miss thinking.  I don't get to think enough, about hard things, and make myself solve problems that don't involve plot structure or finding another laugh on a page.

Anyway... that's all I wanted the fantasy baseball-ness of the post to lead to.  Nothing too profound.

Comments

[Bryan]

Good stuff - feel the same way. Or I would... if I was in your league. Yeah.

[waydayWob]

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