Should Theme Leagues Be Allowed In The Monthly Contests?

If the Monthly Contests are to continue, personally I believe that Strat should NOT allow theme leagues to participate in them because it skews the numbers dramatically.

What do you think?

Why shouldn't themed leagues count? Owners of those teams are buying a credit (or using a credit) to create the team. Some themes have a skew towards the monthly contests, some have a skew away from the monthly contests. It becomes difficult to determine which leagues are "themed" or not. Is every "private" league themed? What about any public league with a single "special" rule? Is the only truly non-themed league an auto drafted, public league?

I understand the concern, because there are credit rewards available; but unless SOM is going to provide a definition of themed/NOT THEMED that makes sense and is easily understood, readily available, and consistently applied, this would just create more headaches and confusion.

Monthly Contest is a theme.

SOM would need to make a reasonable "Judgement Call."

If the theme is, choose a team name with a Star Wars theme (a pacoboy favorite ), that's not an issue. However, Chicks Dig The Long Ball (where all pitchers cost < 1.00M) generates some really off-the-wall stats.

So if the contest for the month was HR's or Runs or Slugging % it would be okay for a team in a league where pitchers cannot be priced over $1.00 to be allowed to participate???? Sorry, that makes zero sense.

If theme leagues aren't allowed in the record books, they shouldn't be allowed in the monthly contests either. It totally skews the data.

So if the contest for the month was HR's or Runs or Slugging % it would be okay for a team in a league where pitchers cannot be priced over $1.00 to be allowed to participate???? Sorry, that makes zero sense.

If theme leagues aren't allowed in the record books, they shouldn't be allowed in the monthly contests either. It totally skews the data.

I don't even necessarily disagree with you; but who decides? and how? By what mechanism should/would/could this be handled? SOM isn't going to dedicate a staff person to look at every new league and manually flag "Y/N" on whether it counts for monthly contests. So what would you do instead?

SOM isn't going to dedicate a staff person to look at every new league and manually flag "Y/N" on whether it counts for monthly contests.

You're probably right that they won't, but if they did it would take less than 5 minutes per day.

I see the spirit of the contests being creating a team that can be competitive under "normal" conditions and still accumulate the desired stat, so I agree that theme leagues throw it off and should not be included. But I also think there's no way strat is going to filter through the teams to determine which qualify and which do not. Maybe if there were a "theme league" checkbox or something...

And to be clear, I'm not anti-theme league at all. I'm always in lots of them. But they totally screw up the contest.

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What about a Theme League with the theme of winning the monthly contest??????????? Should that count?