My Take On Points Leagues

As we all know Fantasy baseball has been around for a few decades now. It has evolved over time and different categories, formats and scoring systems have emerged. While the original concept has stayed the same to determine a champion the way to achieve that has taken on new methods.

One of the more popular offshoots to a scoring system is “points based leagues”. This was my first foray into such a league. Before the draft I read as much as possible about Points Leagues and was excited to try my knowledge against others.

I drafted late in the snake draft and ended up with Votto as my first pick and saw the commish of the league take Kershaw with his first pick. He had around the 3^rd overall and I was 11^th. That should have been a tip there. Anyway, I drafted what I thought was a good balanced line-up for a H2H weekly points based league. What I came to realize in about week 4 was teams that had the most 2 start pitchers for the week seemed to be winning every week. I attributed this to the QS category which gave 10 points.

After about week 6 someone posted in the notes wondering if everyone was still engaged in the league. I made some comments about a SP heavy league and that no one had a real sense of player value so no one wanted to make trades. It may have just been a feeling out for other managers like me who were new to points based leagues or they were just bored with the format.

I stayed active all year and currently rank 5^th in points but will not make the playoffs due to losing so manyH2H matches by single digit. I am literally 300-400 points ahead of 2 teams that will make the playoffs. That is about an 8.5% increases in points for the year. That would be like having 92 points in a Rotisserie league but having a team with 83 points take the title. Discouraging to say the least.

So my take on Points Leagues is a little jaded. Maybe if it was a daily league over weekly lineups it may have been more exciting. Just knowing you out played so many others but was denied a playoff berth or that is was way to much of a SP dominated league left me soured. Most teams didn’t even carry a closer which is hard to believe in Fantasy formats too. Will I play another Points League? Not sure at this time.