Dynasty League with Unique Scoring

First off, I'd like to offer a disclaimer that I know posting of fantasy league openings aren't generally tolerated and have avoided the practice up to this point - however, I think you'll see why the upcoming post will be a little more educational beyond a normal league advertisement.

This league in question is enterting its 13th consecutive year in operation, and cannot be defined as a Roto or points-based league. In its simplest terms, the teams in this league play against itself - each team assembles a 25-man active roster (40-man maximum, so up to a 15-player reserve squad) with a 9-man lineup (even the NL-only leaue uses a DH slot), 4-man bench, 5-man rotation, and a 7-man bullpen. The league has two divisions: an AL-only and NL-only.

A team only plays a game when its pitching staff combines to pitch 9 innings on a certain day, and the amount of runs that your team allows is determined by the amount of earned runs your pitchers combine to allow. For example, if Roy Halladay pitches 6 innings giving up 2 ER; Brad Ziegler pitches 1 inning with no runs; Jesse Crain pitches 1 inning with 1 ER and your closer Joel Zumaya pitches 1 inning with no runs, your pitchers combined for 9 innings and allowed a combined 3 runs, thus your offense must combine to score more than 3 runs to win this game. A queue is created in the event you have multiple starters pitch on the same day, so you can use a starter's game within a couple days of it actually happening.

Hitters in your lineup use their hits to determine how many (if any) runs they drive in. Without going into extreme detail, hitters in your lineup use their hits to drive in batters within 3 spots of them (simulating the three outs per inning). Here's a crude example:

                     AB 1B 2B 3B HR
Pedroia        4    1    0   0    0
Rios              4    0    1   0    0
Upton            4    0   0    0    0
A.Rodriguez 4    0   1    0    0

Pedroia's single puts him on first, Rios' double puts runners on second and third. Upton puts up an 0-fer and has no impact, but Rodriguez's double drives in both Rios and Pedroia (the last batter he can drive in, because he's three spots ahead in the lineup). We do use BB/K, SBs and boxscores are usually more complex, but I just wanted this to show an example of why our league lineups try to replicate real life lineups: you want your high-average, low-power guys in the leadoff, with your masher as your cleanup.

Defense also plays a role in roster assembly - though your runs allowed is normally determined by ER given up by your pitchers, errors committed by your hitters will allow your pitchers' unearned runs to score. Metrics like UZR or +/- would be impossible to integrate into this kind of game, but defensive liabilities that committ a lot of errors (remember when B.J. Upton used to play the infield?) will hurt your team's performance.

Each team has a cap limit for assembling their roster, and for continuity's sake we use the Sporting News Fantasy baseball magazine (we have for probably a decade) to determine a player's base price during the UFA period. Our season has a RFA period, where each team has the opportunity to tender up to 5 re-signs of their expiring contracts, then moves to the UFA period that takes about 3-5 days to complete a little before the season starts. Contract lengths can vary (depending on the situation) for up to 3 years, and we're thinking of instituting a minor league draft starting this year.

I tried to keep this post as skeletal and yet informative as possible, so there are quite a few details I had to leave out, but we have at least two openings for this league as of now, so if you're interested or have any more questions in our M.O., leave your e-mail in a response to this message.

Our league's website: http://www.flb-northwest.com/index.htm
Thank you for your time
- Grudyfan