Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

Now that I'm no longer a part of any keeper leagues, I find myself curious how the leagues are doing and how many other ongoing leagues are out there.

So, I propose someone from each league tell us a little about your league in this thread. Which season are you on? What are your basic rules? Who is your current champion? Feel free to update your post (or just make a new one) at the end of each season if you like.

Your post might inspire someone else to start a special league!

UPDATE 7/25: Fascinating to read about the franchise league. We still haven't heard from the 60s, 70s, or 90s Keeper leagues that I know are out there!

Hey Coyote, I'll take a run at this.

We have a great bunch of mystery card vets who are part of a 1960's - 90's franchise league. We started with 1962 and are about to wrap up 1968. We'll use the 60's set through 1969, then switch to the 70's, and so on through 1999. Owners keep the same franchises, though we will allow some switching as expansion teams become established.

The rules are simple. We started by compiling team rosters using baseballreference. com, then held a franchise draft. Each team must use twenty of the players from real-life roster for each season. We have a five-round draft of players from teams not involved in our franchise format. Henry Aaron and Harmon Killebrew have played on a lot of different teams, but that's part of the fun.

There are a lot of quirks that keep things competitive. In 1969, for example, my Cardinals have Curt Flood and Vada Pinson. Both play CF exclusively, and I'll be forced by numbers to keep both. That's a $14M platoon on an $80M team.

We have a website that I try to keep updated regularly with standings and pop cultural references from the year being played. You can skip to the "League Details" tab to see complete rules.

http://www.paulsfranchiseleague.com

Our turnover has been minimal, with just one replacement through seven seasons.

The managers make the difference. I had the advantage of playing against these guys for several years, and we enjoy a lot of back-and-forth discussion.

I'm in Pwootten's franchise league, and I love the concept!!! The mystery cards add a special added dimension to the normal franchise league concept. The real life rosters keep it real, but if you're lucky enough to have a few extra players more than the 20 requires real life core players, then you can choose to have a couple of lower yielding cards sit out a particular year, leaving more available for the 5 free agent roster spots. Then you have the normal mystery league hunt for quality free agent cards, but with the added challenge of being limited to players that (a) weren't roster players for the other franchises in your league and (b) actually played in the "year" that you're currently in! Love it!

Btw, Pwootten Has already done all of the heavy lifting, if you want to start a new league. The rosters are all on an excell spreadsheet, by team and by year.

That really does sound like a fun concept!

If anyone else is interested maybe post here, and if others are interested we'll start a new sign up thread

Happy to share the spreadsheet, though it is complete only through 1979. Yountfan and Rob Latorre are doing some good work with our individual player and franchise stats. LMBombers updates our available player lists each season. Our drafts have become a pretty quick process since many managers allow me to text them when their turns come up. Great group!

I played in a 1990's keeper league that used a cap value for the players you could hold. The last season was very tight top to bottom. The mystery tournament caused 3-4 players to drop out (myself included). I know several players were disappointed when it folded. I am keeping an eye out for another like it.