in my lonely room

So, we never really got anywhere with figuring anything out here.

some general predictions:
we will have pretty much the same league, except i will suck less because i will pay attention and prepare and not have two drafts on one day.

can we just not do the classic 5x5? some kind of modified 5x5. we should at least use this system for voting or something.

things i am in favor of:
1. keepers/contracts, with caveats. i think contracts makes more sense than keepers, unless we do a ceiling on how many years you can "keep" the same guy. like, for instance, i don't want whoever drafts Felix Hernandez this year to just have him for his entire career. that sort of defeats fantasy baseball, or at least makes it more like real, reserve-clause era baseball.

some possibilities: every team gets n number of contracts, say 3 or 4. maybe give them a two-year contract and two one-year contracts, or whatever combination. there's no point having three year contracts, because well, see my note on 1. you can trade guys, and the attached contracts, for people without contracts, in a given year. although this is an incitement to tank in certain situations (trade all your good players for three or four good young guys that people contracted). the way to deal with this is that maybe last place loses a contract. also, if we have keepers, we should probably stop having a random draft order and just have it go in reverse order of finish. we can't do that this year, since there are not keepers yet, but you see what i mean.

or, conversely, you can just keep three guys but you can only keep a certain guy two years (for a total of three years consecutive on your team). i also think you should only be able to "keep" guys you drafted, since otherwise people get rewarded in excess for just being waiver wire hawks, although hard work is a talent too.

what i am going to say about everything is that i am in favor of finding the exact point at which fantasy baseball becomes so complicated that it starts to resemble work, and have the league exist in and around that point.

this all ties into another hobby horse of mine, which is an auction. an auction will take at least four hours from start to finish, though, which might disqualify it automatically.

predictions for 2006, not specifically related to fantasy sports:
1. kanye west will run for congress
2. pittsburgh pirates make surprising run for pennant in tribute to the '97 pirates, joe randa may not live to see it
3. blue jays win the world series with 18 third baseman on their roster