Once again, it's that glorious time of the year!! Since our inaugural season in 2006 I have annually sent out an invitation through a Daily Kos diary inviting people to participate in my free Yahoo fantasy baseball league, oh so eloquently named "Cub Hater's Club 'xx" (where xx is the current two digit year). There's a pretty good response rate each year, and the league continues to fill fairly quickly.
After a devastating 2011 campaign that saw me slip to 3rd, 2012 saw my boys grab another championship banner. I've now been lucky enough to win 4 championships in the seven years of this league's existence. Once again at the top of the mountain - and recovered from my humiliation and shame in 2011 - I seek to defend my championship, and thus "Cub Hater's Club '13" is born!
We currently have seven returning league members (down a bit from our nine that returned from 2011 to the 2012 season), and thus we need five more managers to fill out the league. So if you have any interest in participating you can read the details after the jump.
It's a free Yahoo league, so it requires nothing more from you than having a Yahoo ID. The live draft is scheduled for Thursday, March 21st, at 9:00 pm Eastern (that will be 6:00 pm for anyone on the West Coast - everyone else can do their own time conversions). A Yahoo fantasy baseball draft usually lasts about 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
The league id is # 139413, and the password is cubssuck. (Always pithy, I know!!)
To sign up, go here: Yahoo Fantasy Baseball Signup Page
and enter the league id and password in the appropriate places.
Cubs fans and Cubs hater's are especially welcome - but anyone with an interest can join. I only ask one thing from you: be active, and participate until the bitter end. Nothing is worse than a league where half or more of the managers give up at the All-Star break.
A few more details:
1. It's a head to head league (H2H) (that means you compete against one other manager each week - and collect wins and losses or ties depending on your statistics in several offensive and pitching categories).
2. Yahoo has eliminated PLUS leagues (the "premium for-pay" leagues), and thus are now giving away all the "extras" for free. So you have access to all the draft kits, live-scoring during the season, etc.
3. Yahoo also made some changes a few years ago to the standard settings for a standard Yahoo league. They've added an extra UTIL spot and a weekly transaction limit (6 acquisitions per week). That being the case, I decided to modify the league settings that year to use the standard Yahoo settings with one exception, instead of using my usual tweaks.
3. Here is the entire breakdown of the roster positions: C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, OF, OF, OF, Util, UTIL, SP, SP, RP, RP, P, P, P, P, BN, BN, BN, BN, BN, DL, DL
4. The one exception to a standard Yahoo league is that I will continue to add an extra DL spot compared to standard leagues.
5. The stat categories will be the standard Yahoo H2H league categories (i.e. there are 5 offensive categories & 5 pitching categories you compete in). The categories for this league are thus: R, HR, RBI, SB, AVG, W, SV, K, ERA, WHIP.
6. The minimum innings pitched each week is 7.
7. Trades are subject to approval/disapproval by the commissioner.
Ok, that's it. If you're interested, you're welcome to join. The league is limited to 12 managers - so once that limit has been reached we'll be out of space. Thanks for your time, and to those who are interested, I hope you join and have fun!!