When I first started playing fantasy baseball back in the mid 90's, it was a points league with a standard snake draft. Keep 3 hitters and 3 pitchers indefinitely. But starting in about 2004 I joined a roto auction league which is where I owned Pierre. Players we signed in the auction we could keep up to three years. That's my favorite format which I still play to this day.
I was in rotisserie baseball from 1987 - mid season 1995, and I was hired as auctioneer three times.
In 1990, (hired as auctioneer for a start-up National League only pool, and told in advance that I 'might' have to take a franchise), I used $229 of my $260 budget to buy hitters. Throughout the season, I traded hitting for pitching. My $31 pitching staff did include 20 game winner Ramon Martinez at $4.
At the midseason trade deadline, the one team ahead of me had several players having a 'career first half', and they stood pat. I made a deal with the third place team, (two closers bought in the auction; near the bottom of the pack in HRs and RBIs at midseason). I traded Eddie Murray and Paul Assenmacher for John Franco and Rex Hudler.
Murray had a monster second half in 1990,
Eddie Murray 1990 game logs
and moved the third place team up five spots in RBIs. Hudler actually helped me more than Murray would have; I won the quadruple crown in the offensive categories, (team average, HRs and RBIs by a large margin), but I only won Stolen Bases by 2.
1990 was also the year when the last games of the season were on a Wednesday instead of a Sunday. In my American League rotisserie, first place changed hands three times on the last night of the season. Five teams had almost exactly the same number of pitching wins, and six decimal places were needed for tie breakers in team average.
The guy who won had Ted Higuera, who was pitching for Milwaukee in the last game, at Texas. He needed a win to regain first place from third. Higuera was removed after six innings with the score tied, but Milwaukee scored twice in the top of the seventh while he was still the pitcher of record, and that cost me more than $1,000.
I went 'all in' for the 1994 strike-shortened season, and probably would have won if the season had been completed. I had pretty much no talent under contract for 1995, and I made no moves after May, 1995.
I was 'chairman of the rules committee' in the AL league, which meant that I wrote the rule amendments to prevent teams from exploiting loopholes, and to expand the talent pool a bit.
Key amendments:
The Mike Young rule: On auction day, teams cannot buy a player who was on the injury list before the season started, AND reserve him to buy a free agent replacement.
The George Brett rule: If a player is on the injury list as of Sunday midnight, but is expected to return that week, he can be activated early 'in anticipation of his return', and his replacement player can be waived, but if he does not return that week, the waiver transaction is voided, except for the fee.
The Bryan Harvey rule: Top prospects who start the season in the Minor Leagues are eligible for the auction, but they can't be reserved unless they are promoted to the Major League roster after auction day.
The Aces and Eights rule: A team's pitching staff must log at least 729 innings in the 162 game season, (4.5 * 162), to qualify for more than one point in ERA and WHIP. This prevents a team from getting huge pitching numbers from one stud starter and closer, plus seven $1 guys selected to not hurt the pitching averages categories; the team essentially tanks Wins to boost offense, Saves, ERA and WHIP.
The Ken Griffey rule: Players on a National League roster can be purchased in the auction, but they cannot be reserved unless they first play for an American League team.
When there were trade rumours about a star player in the other league, or if a player was in a contract year, you could take a flyer on him, instead of taking a $1 player who might hurt your team more than he would help. One hoped that he would be in the AL on or before opening day of the next season. A Ken Griffey rule player could not be reserved, unless he first played in an American League game, so he filled a roster spot, while accruing no statistics.
