CDG question

[SteveL]

So, two of my leagues are going to a "swing" position, in which either a pitcher or a hitter can occupy that spot on our rosters. We have been using 10 pitchers and 13 hitters (only one catcher) in each league and the swing position will take the place of one of the pitching slots.

I'm a very big fan of the Custom Draft Guide. How would you suggest I configure the CDG to accommodate this new wrinkle to my leagues? I've tried reducing the P's by 0.5 and adding the UT's by 0.5 but it just reverts to the previous.

It probably doesn't make that much of a difference from my usual settings. And after experimenting with this idea for a year, I'm guessing the swing position will prove to end up being mostly one or the other (pitcher vs hitter) and next year I can just go that way.

Any thoughts?

[RAY@HQ]

Yeah, I think the effect is pretty marginal. I guess on the outside, the biggest impact it could have is if multiple people in your league budgeted a noticeable amount of money (like double digits per team) into buying that 14th hitter. That seems unlikely, though... more likely is that there are just a few more $1 hitters and fewer $1 pitchers.

You're right that you can't really account for this in the positional allocation on CDG. But if you set it up as a 14/9 split and also bump the hitting side of the hit/pitch split by a % or two, I suspect you're pretty much covered from a budgeting aspect.

[SteveL]

Great, makes sense. Thanks.

[PHIL@HQ]

I do what Ray suggests and it works well. The only time I’d consider doing something else is if you have a plan coming into the draft to use 10 pitchers pretty much every week. The reality is you’re probably going to play the extra hitter more often than not. I believe someone (Todd Z?) looked at the Tout Wars only leagues a few years ago to see how often the swing player was a pitcher and it was a low percentage.

[crotex]

As leagues evolve, IMO the CDG needs to add some additional position choices. I'd like to see a choice for IF (1B,2B,SS,3B), a choice for 1B/OF, and a choice for 2B/SS/3B. As leagues move towards 13/10, all of these "new" positions are now being used. Any comments from the HQ people?

[RAY@HQ]

I’ve honestly never been asked for those before. But if they are becoming “a thing”, we can work on accommodating them.

[crotex]

Thanks. That might be an interesting poll. How many 12 team 'only' leagues have moved from 14/9 to 13/10?

[JonE]

As long as the "new" positions constitute combinations of the old ones, then there shouldn't be a need to create, e.g., 1B/OF as its own thing; in your query you could just filter the positions to include 1Bs and OFs.

In many ways that is even better than a combined function. One of my gripes about the CBS website is that they combine positions poorly. If you have a 20-game eligibility rule, and an MI and CI position, and a player has played 79 games at 3B, 14 games at 2B, and 7 games at SS, then this player magically qualifies at MI even though he hasn't played 20 games at either MI position.