Off-Topic Forum

Who’s ready for the return of the TCDB H2H Fantasy Baseball PRIZE League? Play fantasy baseball against fellow TCDb members in a Yahoo head-to-head league and win card prizes! All TCDb members are eligible to sign up, whether you're a TCDb veteran or rookie.

Signing up:

• If you were not a manager in last year’s Prize League and want to be in it this year, you MUST send me your email address via a private message (just click on my avatar and then click on "Message") so I'll know where to send your league invitation. You can also include any questions/suggestions you may have about the league.
• If you were an active manager for the full season in last year’s Prize League, you will automatically be renewed for this season. However, I will be PMing you to confirm that you want to be in it this year.

Some important details:

• This will be a Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball league (most likely with two divisions). It will probably be run similar to last year’s league but with a few adjustments.
• All team managers must agree to donate card(s) to the league prize pool. Last year, team managers contributed three items (single card or packs), each valued at $10 and subject to approval of all league managers. eBay “Sold” prices were used to help determine if each contribution was to be accepted into the prize pool. This worked pretty well last year.
• Top six teams make the playoffs and win prizes. Distribution of prizes for last year’s six playoff teams was like this:

1st Place wins Eleven picks from the prize pool.

2nd Place wins Nine picks (selected after 1st Place selected their eleven picks).

3rd Place wins Seven picks (selected after 2nd Place selected their nine picks).

4th Place wins Five picks (selected after 3rd Place selected their seven picks).

5th Place wins Three picks (selected after 4th Place selected their five picks).

6th Place wins the remaining One pick.

• Last year, one of our team managers provided some prizes to whichever team won the consolation bracket (seventh place). This was a great idea as it encouraged the managers of the underperforming teams to stay the course and not abandon their team. Perhaps this year we can somehow provide consolation prizes for all of the non-playoff teams. Abandonment will likely result in not being invited to participate the following season.
• Here's a screenshot of last year's league settings:

Some caveats:

Setting your fantasy baseball lineup and evaluating potential roster changes every day can be a real grind—even for just 10 minutes per day. It takes a lot of determination, research and stick-to-it -iveness.

Due to the MLB lockout, there’s a strong possibility that the MLB season will start late and even be abbreviated. Whenever the date of Opening Day is officially determined, we’ll likely have the draft the weekend before.

The draft order will probably be a semi-random snake draft. If I'm not mistaken, last year's team managers agreed that last year's playoff teams would pick in the bottom half of the first round. The non-playoff teams and new teams would pick ahead of the playoff teams in the first round and then proceed snake-wise (is that a word?).

So shall we count you in?

Edited for typos

MLB baseball is now officially back. Let's get this party started.

I'm ready! I'll start looking into $10+ cards. Do we know if everyone is back in?

Looking forward to it

Update: I've renewed last year's Prize League (Yahoo) and edited the league name from '2021' to '2022'. One manager who did not submit prize cards was not invited back. The remaining managers have been PM'd earlier today for confirmation that they will field a team this year. So far two other members have PM'd me that they would like to join the league (they weren't in the league last year). We had 12 teams last year but we could have a different number of teams this year. We definitely welcome fresh blood into the league (hope that didn't sound weird). And just to reiterate, all managers commit to submitting cards to the prize pool (same criteria/value determination as last year).

In case anybody was wondering, you can be in this league and also participate in the other (free) TCDb Fantasy Baseball leagues. I myself have a team in one of Dan's TCDb leagues.

Some important dates:

Monday, March 28 (9:00 pm Pacific) - Deadline to PM me to join the league (about 2 weeks).

Friday, April 1 - Draft (tentatively 7:30 pm Eastern/4:30pm Pacific) fwiw, this draft will not be conflicting with the other TCDb Fantasy Baseball Drafts (thanks Dan! )

Thursday, April 7 - MLB Opening Day

Fantasy Week 1 runs Thursday, Apr 7 - Sunday, Apr 17. The fantasy regular season runs for 21 weeks followed by three weeks of playoffs (ends Sunday Oct. 2).

Two new potential team managers have been invited to join the league. Of the ten managers from last season who were PM'd for confirmation for this year's league, eight will be returning and two have decided to opt out (including the league champion). As a reminder, the signup window for this league will be closing on March 28.

Excited to be back for my second year

We now have our 12 managers ready to rock 'n roll. We welcome three new managers to the Prize League:

• Double B (manager of the 'Springfield Isotopes')
• family1 (manager of 'Tall Tall Pines')
• jcrimarco (manager of 'Johnny's Boyz')

Our draft will be Friday April 1, 6:00 Pacific/9:00 pm Eastern. Last year one of our team managers had this very interesting idea of having the non-playoff teams (from last year) and new managers choose ahead of the playoff teams in the draft. I think is a great idea that will provide an incentive for the bottom-half teams to stay active and not abandon their team during the season.

So last night I randomized a list of the non-playoff/new teams (using random.org) to come up with the order of the 1st seven teams (four returning non-playoff teams, including my team, and three new teams). Here's the link to the randomization video (sorry for the absence of audio). Then I assigned the five returning playoff teams in reverse order of finish. Here is the draft order:

1. Stadium Fantasium
2. Johnny's Boyz
3. Show Me The Money!!!
4. Tall Tall Pines
5. Cardboard Heroes (the team formerly known as MCGRAL 2022)
6. ItByrnesWhenIPiazza
7. Springfield Isotopes
8. Hamilton Swarm
9. Myrke's Marauders
10. Overkill Nightmares
11. Young Kilo
12. St. Paul Royals

And yes, I do feel weird about the randomization putting my team at the top of the order. It is a snake draft but I still feel weird about it.

And I want to give a heartfelt thanks to our new and returning team managers for their input and participation in this league, MUCH APPRECIATED!

Congratulations to myrke for winning the 2022 TCDb Fantasy Baseball Prize League! myrke dominated the league with the best Won/Loss record also dominated in the playoffs.

So here is how the six playoff teams finished (according to the above fantasy playoff bracket):

1st Place: Myrke's Marauders (myrke) wins first dibs on Eleven picks from the prize pool.

2nd Place: ItByrnesWhenIPiazza (Dtd500) wins Nine picks (selected after 1st Place selects their eleven picks).

3rd Place: Cardboard Heroes 2022 (mccgral) wins Seven picks (selected after 2nd Place selects their nine picks).

4th Place: St. Paul Royals (AbeBauman) wins Five picks (selected after 3rd Place selects their seven picks).

5th Place: Johnny's Boyz (jcrimarco) wins Three picks (selected after 4th Place selects their five picks).

6th Place: Show Me The Money!!! (mlitteer) wins the remaining One pick.

Big congratulations to each of these teams for making the playoffs and a big thanks for their patience in awaiting the posting of the prize pool (36 prizes).

Next up: Because the Yahoo league message boards don't allow for images to be posted there, I'll be posting pics of the prizes here.

2011 Topps Triple Threads - Unity Relic - Emerald #TTUSR-76 - Andre Dawson. 4/18

2021 Topps Tribute - Dual Relics 2 Player # DR2-T-MOBILE -F. Thomas, Y. Moncada # 87/150:

JT Realmuto 2021 Topps Tribute auto 188/199: