The purpose of the blog here can be was summed up in the initial written blog post here. Fantasy baseball has been a year long passion of mine since I begun a just for fun league back in 2004. I was a college student at the University of Sioux Falls and I found seven other guys who knew enough about baseball to actually hold a competitive league. From then to 2008 we dramatically change the rules of the league to better represent something that we wanted. During the summer of 2007, I had graduated from college and begun reading for fun again. I picked up a pair of books based on suggestions found on USSMariner.com.

The first book I read was Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game is Wrong. I started reading the book during a 20+ hour car ride to Fort Jackson, South Carolina with my family to go observe my brother’s graduation from basic training. On the way back from the trip I had finished the entire book before getting back home to South Dakota.

I was fascinated.

I immediately started soaking up all this new baseball stuff I could like a sponge. I continued my reading splurge by tackling Tom Tango’s, Playing the Percentages in Baseball. Among learning many other things, Weighted On Base Average (wOBA) was my new fascination. I immediately started researching it, and found fielder independent pitching (FIP) was pretty great as well. I started to apply these new statistics to a fictional baseball league I was in, using Out of the Park Baseball 8, to better evaluate players that we were attempting to get into the fictional hall of fame.

Immediately I started work on developing a fantasy baseball structure based on these new statistical metrics. I eventually derived a setup that was close as I could get using ESPN’s fantasy baseball commissioner. The league setup is further described in this post.

I started this blog to help others see the light that I did, and while not everyone will agree with my methods, I’m just pushing for leagues that go past the categories of old. Keep in mind that I do not mind those who participate in, what I refer to as category leagues (roto 4×4, 5×5, and category based head to head leagues), I just want to help open doors for those who are looking for something different.