History of Rotisserie Baseball

[mwj777]

? What was the logic of having 9 pitchers and 14 hitters when pitching is 50%? Is that logic still valid in 2022 standard formats?

[usualsuspects]

Boy, it was tempting to write something lengthy and grandfatherly!

Instead here is one stat that I found:

In 1983 (take that as roto year "zero", so 1984 would be 1 A.R., or, after roto) there were 389 pitchers who recorded an out. Of those 84 tossed less than 25 innings.

In 2021 there were 907 players (note, way more position players toed the rubber) who recorded an out. Of those 379 tossed less than 25 innings.

Conversely 50 threw 200+ innings versus four.

There also used to be a statistic called a "complete game". This was when, the same pitcher pitched the entire game! In 1983 that happened 745 times! And in 180 of those 745 games, the pitcher did not allow any runs either and that used to be called a "shutout". Last year those things happened 50 and 29 times respectively.

Wait, what was the question again?

[Michael@HQ]

? What was the logic of having 9 pitchers and 14 hitters when pitching is 50%? Is that logic still valid in 2022 standard formats?

It was trial and error based on the level of depth of available players on MLB rosters. Back in 1983, the year before the first edition of Rotisserie League Baseball was published, there were 14 AL teams and 12 NL teams, 25 man active rosters and well over half of the rosters were batters. None of that remains the case now, so the logic isn't still valid.

The "founding fathers" landed on 12 teams in an AL-only league, 10 teams in an NL-only league, and thought that mixed league player was a terrible idea. It was originally 14 batters and 8 pitchers with a $250 salary cap, but that seemed to leave too many pitchers in the pool, so they added the extra pitcher. [Source: p. 37 of the first edition]

[Howie M]

the typical roster in that era was 15 batters and 10 pitchers, so they left out the last ones as fodder for IL replacements - which were far, far less common that they are today.

also, in that era roughly 14 batters and 9 pitchers had relevance.

the pitchers 11-14 in 2022 are ever in flux on many terams, and few of them pitch meaningful innings. it would strike me as silly to add 3-4 pitchers to each roster, since so many would have to be replaced on a regular basis.

the number of relevant hitters and pitchers hasn't changed all that much over the years imo.