How About A $100,000 Grand Prize In The NFBC Cutline?

[Ichiban]

In regards to OA prize vs league prize, OA prize is definitely the thing I dream about and the main attraction. At the same time, though, I hope to at least break even in my bad years and make money in my decent years when I can't get to the big board. So I don't think I'd want to play in a league with 2,100 teams if I had to finish top 50 to get something back. No, winning league wouldn't excite me much, but in the years I wasn't in OA contention, it could at least keep me semi-interested, give me something to play for, and hopefully get me some money back, that I could then use for the years I can be competitive for an OA prize. So I would rather have the entry fee be a little higher and then offer both a league and OA prize. (Honestly don't know how interested I am in playing the Cutline anyway, but just having an OA only would make me less likely).

[FrozenTundra]

I'm in the camp of not making major changes to what we have. I definitely want to keep leagues with a payout to the winner. Personally, I'm not in this to win BIG money. I am in it to compete and to try to win. And I'm in favor of a flatter payout. I know you plan to make FAAB easier to use, which should ease some of the complaints and reduce FAAB as an obstacle. Must have at least two FAAB periods, one of which has to be in early April.

I found Todd's analysis of when winners draft to be really interesting. Maybe I'll start earlier next year!

[the icon]

love the idea off all the money going to the top teams. I'm really thinking if we're doin 100k for 1st. how about we pay top 100 teams I think it has a nice ring to it. and I'm a firm believer it should be best ball I hate doing faab and lineups.

[EA Sports]

Big fan of growing the contest but I am a fan of the league prize. Would certainly play less without it. Goal every year was to win back all (or most) of entry fees in the regular season and have a free roll into the playoffs. Would much rather see the entry fee at $125 if it meant we could keep the league prize. My two cents.

EA

[jvetter]

I have thought about this for awhile and I probably would not play next year if the league prize was taken away. I was only going to run 1 team again anyways. I already feel that the current Cutline payout format is a bad "investment." I played it because I really wanted to try out the format. It sounded unique and fun. After playing it this year, I absolutely loved it and am excited to play it next year.

BUT, with my small bankroll, I have to at least cover my costs every year to justify spending again next year. Taking away the only safety net to give me a reasonable expectation to cover my costs in the Cutline will push me out.

Also I think this encourages people with time/money to draft a lot of teams to increase their chances to win big. It will discourage low volume players and new players trying to test out the format. Not only do you not have familiarity with a new format but you don't even win money for winning your league. Think about the single team owner who wins their league but fails to place in the overall. They will be proud of that team for having such a great showing in their league but have nothing to show for it. It would be quite discouraging for them to try it again next year.

This comes from a single team owner who would have benefited significantly from the new proposed prize structure this year. I placed 2nd in my league in the "regular" season and was fortunate to place 12th the final money table. I won no money in my league and only won money in the "overall" component of the contest.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Okay, let's open this up for discussion again because I am working on this contest today and tomorrow. And again, thanks for the feedback because this is YOUR contest and we aren't about to force-feed anything you don't want.

But we HAVE to improve it or the Best Ball in baseball won't have a long life. We paid out almost 100 percent last year after selling out the first year of the NFBC Cutline Championship. So we either expected more growth than was there and screwed up with the prize pool or there's something wrong with the contest.

Actually, maybe we did screw up by adding $20,000 to the overall prize pool. And maybe we do need to tweak the rules. But we don't want to go backwards and we are ALL IN on leading the way for Best Ball in baseball, so let's keep moving forward with the game plan for 2018.

We'll talk about prizes shortly, but I hear ya that league prizes are still important even if there's only one. I hear ya.

Now let's tackle FAAB. We realize that so many people love the idea of drafting and being done with a team. Our folks could draft every day, every hour for that matter. But this contest still needs a little FAAB or it's not fair for anyone drafting outside the day before the season. To make each league fair, we need some FAAB for minor-league pickups, veteran starters who were undrafted and to shed some of the players out with season-ending injuries. FAAB is needed in this contest, but it needs to be as easy to handle as possible.

We are working on the software to make managing multiple teams much, much easier. More on that.

We also have only 2 FAAB periods set up: Second week of the baseball season and early June. We even moved those FAAB deadlines off the Sunday FAAB deadline and onto its own Monday time period.

Here's a thought: Would it help even more to do FAAB on Tuesday or even Wednesday so that all your FAAB work is long done from the previous week and even setting Starting Lineups for that week is done. We have programmed this as its separate FAAB system now, so it won't affect Sunday FAAB and we can still include all of the players you pick up in your best ball for that week. So I'm open to moving this to Tuesday or even Wednesday.

Thoughts? Would it help to move this to the middle of the week when you have more time to tackle FAAB in April and June? Let us know and we'll make it happen. Also let us know which day of the week works best.

If we can ease the pain of FAAB, this contest will grow. I'm convinced of it. We're tackling that problem with new technology, but a simple change of FAAB days may help too. Let us know. Thanks.

[Greg Ambrosius]

I'm also looking at the size of the draft rosters to again see if we can ease the pain of FAAB. Last year we expanded the draft from 36 rounds to 38 rounds and it was painless. It added maybe 5 minutes to drafts that lasted between 2 hours and 2 1/2 hours. Maybe 38 rounds is the right number, but there also were some solid players shortly after that who may have made rosters better and deeper.

Would anyone be against 40 players on Draft Day? That's 400 players, which is deep, but not much deeper than an Online Championship. And with 10 good owners the time to draft won't change much.

Let me know what you think. We can stay at 38 rounds, but this would give us 40 players until Draft Day, 42 from early April through May and then 44 for the rest of the regular season and playoffs.

Looking at the NFBC Cutline ADP, here were some of the players taken after Round 36:

361 Mondesi, Raul (2B,MI,UTL, KC) 328.75 174 380 56
362 Schimpf, Ryan (2B,3B,MI,CI,UTL, SD) 328.92 175 378 106
363 Duda, Lucas (1B,CI,UTL, TB) 329.08 216 380 87
364 Duffy, Matt (3B,CI,UTL, TB) 329.14 243 380 66
365 Bandy, Jett (C,UTL, Mil) 329.51 220 378 86
366 Garcia, Jaime (P, NYY) 330.21 258 379 126
367 Saladino, Tyler (2B,3B,SS,MI,CI,UTL, ChW) 330.79 223 375 68
368 Barnhart, Tucker (C,UTL, Cin) 330.99 211 379 99
369 Andriese, Matt (P, TB) 331.73 221 380 115
370 Wheeler, Zack (P, NYM) 331.86 235 380 57
371 Doolittle, Sean (P, Was) 332.08 223 375 13
372 Prado, Martin (3B,CI,UTL, Mia) 332.42 210 379 79
373 Leake, Mike (P, Sea) 333.74 203 380 124
374 Graveman, Kendall (P, Oak) 333.89 255 380 98
375 Suzuki, Kurt (C,UTL, Atl) 333.91 216 379 23
376 Severino, Luis (P, NYY) 333.98 254 379 118
377 Wood, Alex (P, LAD) 334.70 237 380 74
378 Bellinger, Cody (1B,OF,CI,UTL, LAD) 335.30 135 380 23
379 Gennett, Scooter (2B,3B,OF,MI,CI,UTL, Cin) 335.64 274 376 11
380 Smith, Seth (OF,UTL, Bal) 335.70 253 378 20
381 Espinosa, Danny (2B,SS,MI,UTL, TB) 336.11 250 380 85
382 De Leon, Jose (P, TB) 337.06 205 380 49
383 Chatwood, Tyler (P, Col) 337.09 216 380 78
384 Choo, Shin-soo (OF,UTL, Tex) 337.14 285 379 103
385 Simmons, Andrelton (SS,MI,UTL, LAA) 337.47 257 379 53
386 Rosario, Eddie (OF,UTL, Min) 337.50 274 379 8
387 Galvis, Freddy (SS,MI,UTL, Phi) 337.77 219 380 66
388 Castro, Jason (C,UTL, Min) 338.14 259 380 94
389 Vargas, Kennys (1B,CI,UTL, Min) 338.29 253 377 14
390 Werth, Jayson (OF,UTL, Was) 338.43 214 380 46
391 Hudson, Daniel (P, Pit) 338.46 240 379 39
392 Strahm, Matt (P, SD) 338.54 238 379 59
393 Barraclough, Kyle (P, Mia) 338.61 281 380 49
394 Miller, Shelby (P, Ari) 338.70 241 379 90
395 Profar, Jurickson (3B,OF,CI,UTL, Tex) 338.79 212 380 72
396 Revere, Ben (OF,UTL, LAA) 339.00 261 376 40
397 Ryu, Hyun-Jin (P, LAD) 339.15 253 379 72
398 Hundley, Nick (C,UTL, SF) 339.50 248 379 20
399 Maldonado, Martin (C,UTL, LAA) 339.85 294 379 13
400 Peralta, Jhonny (3B,CI,UTL, Bos) 340.71 277 375 7
401 Giolito, Lucas (P, ChW) 340.92 226 379 421 +80.08 85
402 Maxwell, Bruce (C,UTL, Oak) 341.00 319 366 5
403 Cozart, Zack (SS,MI,UTL, Cin) 341.06 181 380 70
404 Adams, Matt (1B,OF,CI,UTL, Atl) 341.92 256 376 13
405 Anderson, Brett (P, Tor) 342.04 258 380 28
406 Eovaldi, Nathan (P, TB) 342.11 255 376 9
407 Souza Jr., Steven (OF,UTL, TB) 342.45 256 377 65
408 Santiago, Hector (P, Min) 342.84 256 380 67
409 Zimmerman, Ryan (1B,CI,UTL, Was) 342.89 242 380 38
410 Schebler, Scott (OF,UTL, Cin) 343.00 236 379 42
411 Garcia, Adonis (3B,CI,UTL, Atl) 343.13 281 378 31
412 Vizcaino, Arodys (P, Atl) 343.42 279 377 12
413 Saunders, Michael (OF,UTL, Tor) 343.53 255 380 60 -283.53 74
414 Smith, Mallex (OF,UTL, TB) 343.62 275 378 39
415 Hardy, J.J. (SS,MI,UTL, Bal) 343.75 308 369 8
416 Morton, Charlie (P, Hou) 343.75 266 380 61
417 Freese, David (1B,3B,CI,UTL, Pit) 343.94 258 379 18
418 Colon, Bartolo (P, Min) 344.60 270 380 30 -314.60 100
419 Kim, Hyun Soo (OF,UTL, Phi) 345.00 264 379 5
420 Berrios, Jose (P, Min) 345.02 273 380 61 -284.02 91

Thanks for your feedback. Now back to the 2018 planning.

[KJ Duke]

42 players was sufficient ... let's just draft 42 and dump roster expansion, that simplifies FAAB time which we all hate in favor of a couple extra minutes of draft time that no one minds. Or 40 is fine too, just get rid of the expansion.

[Gekko]

Draft 42. No roster expansion

[Darik B]

Yeah, we are thinking that is the way to go...draft 42 and no expansion. Thanks, guys.

[Texas Connection]

I had 29 cutline teams this last year. I love the format. I think once most people try the game they will play again. Faab...........the red-headed step child. What do you do with it? You have to have it. Too big of a difference between January and March without it. The problem with only 2 faabs and so many unknowns is how long your strings need to be. In one of my league, only 5 owners participated in the 2nd faab. In another, 10 owners did. In one league I only picked up 3 players and another I picked up 14. There is no way to know if a string of 40 players will even be enough. I then was stupid enough to enter the Colossus world series of poker tournament in Vegas the same weekend as the last faab. All of us that have multiple cutline teams tell our families the 2 dates of the faab periods at the start of the season because it is very difficult.

What about having a modified faab every week on Thursday? You can only pick up one guy each week max. You put 10 guys in your queue at a buck each and you are guaranteed to get one. You start the faab process on Thursday Feb. 1 so the early drafters have the same chance to fix their teams as the late drafters. It takes out all the worries of how many guys to drop and how long to make the strings. You don't have to spend a lot of time analyzing rosters. This would more even the playing field for the veteran faaber against the first timer coming into the game. I tried to help some new players last year and it was very difficult to try to explain all of the ramifications of the faab period to a new player.

I would put the entry fee at $150 and offer discounts on multiple purchases and keep small league prizes and have more overall winners.

Jon

[Greg Ambrosius]

42 players was sufficient ... let's just draft 42 and dump roster expansion, that simplifies FAAB time which we all hate in favor of a couple extra minutes of draft time that no one minds. Or 40 is fine too, just get rid of the expansion.

Darik is in lovely Iola today finalizing our 2018 budgets. He may never leave as this Vikings' fan is just loving Packer Country. It's God's Country, Darik, God's Country!!

We'll convert him into a Packers' fan yet. Just wait and see.

This is a great suggestion. The expansion of rosters is likely the biggest pain in the ass in the NFBC Cutline. It's almost mandatory to add those two roster spots each time and yet you need a string deep enough to make sure you do it. Eliminating that pain in the ass could be helpful. I mean, two FAAB periods if you want them per season isn't so tough, is it?

We are discussing now. I think we've come to a good consensus, but honestly we hadn't discussed this before. I think we need to go to a sports bar tonight to discuss. In fact, we better go right now. See ya.

[benjamincarm]

I played Cutline in 2015 and liked it a lot, but due to moving and some other stuff, I only played a Draft Champions League this year.

I plan on joining a few more Cutline this year, but I want to see the final rules of course. I know it’s been beaten to death, but I would cast my vote for keeping league prizes. You have pros and high volume players who spend their careers with this, I have no desire to going toe to toe with them for a grand prize. The fact they are wanting it tells me all I need to know from a smaller player perspective.

The biggest headache I had with FAAB in ’15 was the churning of players, not only was I trying to get players, but I had to set up all of the contingencies for dropping players. I don’t think there is a great way to avoid that, but I would rather have a 36 round draft and two 4 player expansion with only additions available. Probably not feasible, but if were to use the 5 pack deal you mentioned earlier, my head starts hurting thinking about churning those rosters twice.

Also keep in mind, the more niche and complex you make it, the less chance an amateur would join. I joined in the inaugural year, but if I came in and saw complex rules, I would have passed and just drafted DC or something.

Thanks guys - reading through the replies, you have quite the decision to make.

[VegasVandals]

From someone who played only one Main Event this season due to limited free time, this is what would get me to throw a couple entries into a Cutline.

No FAAB - I only want to worry about FAAB in my most important event(s) and dont want so spend the time dealing with this. Make it 40 or 42 round or whatever the magic number is, but I think no FAAB is key.

Overall payouts - I'm with Greg on this one, this is a lottery ticket, and the carrot that gets me to pay the $100 is a big grand prize. I could care less about a measly $100-$200 league payout, so from the casual low entry player, the big overall payouts are key

No in season management, cheap entries, big grand prizes. That's what will suck me in. My two cents

[Philippe27]

I never played this contest but no FAAB would make it very interesting, much more popular and much easier to market in my opinion.

One other possibility would be to draft 38 players and have 2 faab periods with rosters expanding to 42 and then 46 but no dropping of players.

This means that all you have to do is come up with a list of 40 players twice a year which can be similar in every league for those with multiple teams. This would make it MUCH easier than building different lists for every team, players to drop and tons of contingencies.

[Teufel Hunden]

I like the idea of drafting 40 players and having two FAAB periods. I would suggest the following though:

First FAAB on Tuesday prior to season beginning. Owners can add/subtract as many FA as they like but rosters stay at 40. The lack of roster expansion should make FAAB much easier and the Tuesday deadline would not conflict with other FAAB or lineup setting deadlines.

Second FAAB on Tuesday of Allstar break. Only the five teams that make the cut in each league are involved. Roster size is then expanded to 42. I see the following benefits to this approach:

1) Owners would only need to bother with FAAB for teams that make playoffs.
2) With only five teams/league involved FA trees can be much shorter.
3) All star break is a dead period for owners anyway.
4) Having the FAAB right before playoffs begin seems like a natural fit and should reduce the number of dead roster spots during most crucial portion of contest.

[Gates]

Draft 40 or 42 and no FAAB is just another version of DC. I don't think we address the right issue. FAAB would not be that painful with a better tool. There is a new tool on the way, right, so why not test it and see how it make dit better for us. Then if the tool is not what we thought or not as performant as we thought, only then go in another direction.

Another DC version would not interest me for sure. I am surely not a good DC player as I always find a way to have incomplete line ups and huge amount of DL on any DC teams I put together. Which explains why I barely play the DC format, 3 teams, one serious drafting and the other 2 to size up, see what I can put together and follow latest trends.

EDIT - When will the new tool be ready? After all your testing, can we customers test it and judge for ourselves if it is good enough that we can work with this in the Cutline format. If we cannot test, can you put a vidéo together and show us the advantage of the new revive FAAB so we can make our mind on this. I hear the FAAB scare, I lived it and it was painful.
Show us the tool in advance and maybe we can make our mind if it's worth it or not - is it a game changer or not.

My scare, maybe reading too much into it, is that you have seen the changes ahead and you have already détermined that it won't be enough to be the clincher which is why you are looking for something else...hope I'm wrong.

Gaëtan

[Greg Ambrosius]

Draft 40 or 42 and no FAAB is just another version of DC. I don't think we address the right issue. FAAB would not be that painful with a better tool. There is a new tool on the way, right, so why not test it and see how it make dit better for us. Then if the tool is not what we thought or not as performant as we thought, only then go in another direction.

Another DC version would not interest me for sure. I am surely not a good DC player as I always find a way to have incomplete line ups and huge amount of DL on any DC teams I put together. Which explains why I barely play the DC format, 3 teams, one serious drafting and the other 2 to size up, see what I can put together and follow latest trends.

EDIT - When will the new tool be ready? After all your testing, can we customers test it and judge for ourselves if it is good enough that we can work with this in the Cutline format. If we cannot test, can you put a vidéo together and show us the advantage of the new revive FAAB so we can make our mind on this. I hear the FAAB scare, I lived it and it was painful.
Show us the tool in advance and maybe we can make our mind if it's worth it or not - is it a game changer or not.

My scare, maybe reading too much into it, is that you have seen the changes ahead and you have already détermined that it won't be enough to be the clincher which is why you are looking for something else...hope I'm wrong.

Gaëtan

YIKES!!! Now that's an assumption not worth printing. YIKES!!!

We are totally confident that FAAB will be much improved. I can say that Tom and I are meeting with programmers this week to go over everything for 2018 NFBC and I feel very confident that the tools we have requested to make FAAB, Set Lineup and find injured players on multiple rosters very easily will all be incorporated into 2018 NFBC. That is NOT why we are having this discussion.

We are having this discussion because 1) The Cutline declined in teams last year even though prize money jumped $20,000+, thus leading to an almost 100 percent payout. We can't do that again. And 2) Best Ball has to be THE format that is easiest to manage, yet with the two roster expansions twice a year I've made it too difficult for some owners. So how do we keep the Best Ball format and make it better? Certainly adding 2 more rounds of drafts isn't the problem, so let's figure out those two stingy FAAB periods that seem to turn some folks off this format. We can solve that and the first solution is better technology. The second solution is eliminating roster expansion during FAAB with a little deeper draft. That's the direction I'm leaning.

Our competitors in football have software that allows you to Search for a player on your multiple teams -- let's say Madison Bumgarner after his dirt bike injury -- and find out which teams you have him on. This is certainly something we MUST add in all of our sports. Finding out that information with the click of a key takes 5 seconds. Now compare that to calling up each team (let's say you have 20) and going to each roster to look for him. The teams take a while to load on the STATS site, so this could easily be a 10-15 minute process. Now once you've found him on all your teams you have to make the moves. As for free agents, let's say you Search for Lewis Brinson and with one click of a button you can find which leagues he's available in among your 20 leagues. Again, knowing that information in 5 seconds rather than 10-15 minutes saves you time. Now multiply that over 5-10 free agents and your Sundays are now more manageable.

Can we do that? Absolutely. The guys already have that figured out and I hope to see it soon. So yes, we can make the technology better and make every NFBC game better. And yes I think we can have some type of tutorial about how this will look and work. I'll bring that up for discussion this week and find a way to show everyone in advance.

But the rules need to be better too and I think the roster expansion of 2 spots per FAAB period was needed because we wanted quick, nightly drafts. Then we found out that 38 rounds could be done in less than 2 hours with 10 good owners and in no more than 2 1/2 hours. Adding 2-4 rounds probably adds 10 minutes, tops. We can still have them at 40 or 42 rounds and save you more time during the season with this new technology.

In my mind, a Best Ball draft that you can leave alone except for let's say an hour or two twice a year is a great format. It's a great way to learn the player pool and win $50,000 or more. If we do everything we are promising and the two FAAB periods now on a Tuesday or Wednesday (far away from normal FAAB) is still a turnoff, well then that person just isn't going to play a Best Ball format, and that's okay. Now let's get this format right and let us tackle the technology. I think we can get both right or I wouldn't keep working this thread so hard. Help us out.

But don't assume the worst like you did here my man!! We haven't failed at this yet, trust me.

[Gates]

Greg,
You are absolutely right I assumed the worst and that is not right, I must apologize to you, Tom and all.
Basically, I just hope the FAAB as much painful as it was, won't go away...if it does, this will only be another DC format.

Sorry again Greg
Gaëtan

[Greg Ambrosius]

Greg,
You are absolutely right I assumed the worst and that is not right, I must apologize to you, Tom and all.
Basically, I just hope the FAAB as much painful as it was, won't go away...if it does, this will only be another DC format.

Sorry again Greg
Gaëtan

A Corona in Las Vegas eases all worries!! You buy the first one.

FAAB CAN'T go away in this contest. It's NOT going away in this contest.

But we will improve it all the way around. Stay tuned. Our plan is ready to go. We have finalized our plans for all of our 2018 contests -- the 15th NFBC season of NFBC XV if you will -- and will be ready to roll soon. Enjoy.

[KJ Duke]

I would love to see a new option with best ball scoring and no FAAB, as we have in football. Draft and forget about it.

If the tech guys can set us up with this as a standalone league platform next season that would be a great way to explore a new format and learn what works and what people like. I'd like to see a traditional NFBC league; 26 weeks, 15 teams, 50 rounds, plus the best ball scoring used for cutline but no FAAB, no playoff, no national contest. Effectively, a points-based DC just like football.

[Greg Ambrosius]

I would love to see a new option with best ball scoring and no FAAB, as we have in football. Draft and forget about it.

If the tech guys can set us up with this as a standalone league platform next season that would be a great way to explore a new format and learn what works and what people like. I'd like to see a traditional NFBC league, 26 weeks, 12 and 15 teams options, with deep rosters and the same best ball scoring as cutline but no FAAB, no playoff, no national contest.

You can split up all of these contests two and three ways if you'd like, but at the end of the day the prizes get split up. I mean we can do 10 team, 12 team and 15 team DCs with no FAAB, but the national contests will suffer for sure. And in a year when we have so much to do from a programming and marketing standpoint, I don't think this is feasible for this year. There's so much that still has to get done not only for baseball in 2018 but for all of our other sports, with hockey also being added.

[Bronx Yankees]

EDIT - When will the new tool be ready? After all your testing, can we customers test it and judge for ourselves if it is good enough that we can work with this in the Cutline format. If we cannot test, can you put a vidéo together and show us the advantage of the new revive FAAB so we can make our mind on this. I hear the FAAB scare, I lived it and it was painful.
Show us the tool in advance and maybe we can make our mind if it's worth it or not - is it a game changer or not.
quote]

We are totally confident that FAAB will be much improved. I can say that Tom and I are meeting with programmers this week to go over everything for 2018 NFBC and I feel very confident that the tools we have requested to make FAAB, Set Lineup and find injured players on multiple rosters very easily will all be incorporated into 2018 NFBC.

Our competitors in football have software that allows you to Search for a player on your multiple teams -- let's say Madison Bumgarner after his dirt bike injury -- and find out which teams you have him on. This is certainly something we MUST add in all of our sports. Finding out that information with the click of a key takes 5 seconds. Now compare that to calling up each team (let's say you have 20) and going to each roster to look for him. The teams take a while to load on the STATS site, so this could easily be a 10-15 minute process. Now once you've found him on all your teams you have to make the moves. As for free agents, let's say you Search for Lewis Brinson and with one click of a button you can find which leagues he's available in among your 20 leagues. Again, knowing that information in 5 seconds rather than 10-15 minutes saves you time. Now multiply that over 5-10 free agents and your Sundays are now more manageable.

Can we do that? Absolutely. The guys already have that figured out and I hope to see it soon. So yes, we can make the technology better and make every NFBC game better. And yes I think we can have some type of tutorial about how this will look and work. I'll bring that up for discussion this week and find a way to show everyone in advance.

Greg: This sounds great! I want to quickly second the idea of a tutorial or some other way for folks to check-out how FAAB will look and work early in the upcoming draft season.

The Cutline is not my type of format, but FAAB definitely impacts the number and the type of leagues I do each year. For 2017, I did a bunch of DC leagues and eight FAAB leagues. Honestly, as much as I love fantasy baseball and the NFBC, the eight FAAB leagues turned out to be too much for me. I can't begin to tell you how many hours I spent every weekend doing FAAB. While I actually enjoy FAAB and normally don't mind putting the time in, it began to feel too much like a chore at times. For 2018, I've been thinking about maybe doing the same or a few more DC leagues and cutting the number of FAAB leagues that I do to something around four or five leagues. If you guys really have improved FAAB, and even just the few things you list above sound like nice time-savers, I'd definitely be willing to reconsider the number of FAAB leagues that I'll play. That being said, it would be really helpful to see how the new system works, if possible, before signing up for the live drafts. Thanks.

Mike

[Greg Ambrosius]

I hear ya Mike. I think this will be very possible to show off the new features beforehand. Again, I'm heading down for meetings this week and we'll make this one of the priorities.

Trust me, if we see the features when we're there, we'll spread the love immediately. We know how important this is and we know what a time-saver this can be for everyone. Again, other sites have the things we're talking about already and more features that I haven't even discussed yet, so all of it can and must be done. We're on it for sure.

[FrozenTundra]

Going to a draft of 42 with no roster expansion is OK. However, I think it's mandatory to have two FAAB periods to replace as many of those 42 as you want. We should keep early April; date of the second one could stay where it is or move a few weeks. Day of the week for the two FAABs doesn't matter to me.

And GO PACK GO!