Hosting Sites

I really like ESPN, personally.. The only thing that would be a pain is having to re-add all of the players again; however, this would free up $160 that could be paid out.. We could use that as a "best of the rest" like we originally had.. Mat, you've mentioned before that it'd be good to have a prize for the teams outside of the playoffs and this may be a good way to do it.

ESPNs player pool does not compare to what CBS has, but with that being said we do a good job of keeping minor league rosters on pro-boards..

I'm currently in a dynasty league on ESPN and it basically stays open all year and never resets..

ESPN is better with daily change category leagues like we have. Yahoo is equal in both. CBS is formatted for weekly points leagues and struggle daily change leagues and each category. But CBS has the best player pool but it is not complete causing the use of the site. So basically, I would prefer ESPN with the league style we have.

I vote we move to ESPN or Yahoo. As some of y'all mentioned before, player pool isn't really an issue since we keep track of all of our minor league prospects on ProBoards. If everyone likes ESPN (Again, I haven't used it in a while so I can't really contribute much there), then I vote we do ESPN.

The main reason I mention Fantrax as well is that they are BY FAR the fastest at updating minors players and have the deepest player pool altogether. There's a decent chance that they would get close to having the entire rosters listed. As quoted in Reddit:

"ESPN for almost anything (good enough app, simple UI, enough free stat customization, good player pool, no ads). Fantrax if you want a site dedicated to dynasties--incredibly deep minor league and foreign player pool. Hell, they already have Kenta Maeda in there, and allegedly they'll add anyone if you ask and provide proof of existence and baseball affiliation."

and

"I'm about to start my third season as commissioner: First season with Yahoo, second season with Fantrax. We are staying with Fantrax for the third season.

The thing I really like about Fantrax is that it is never shut down for offseason. If you have a keeper/dynasty league, its nice to be able to work trades and keep things fluid in the winter. Also, it isn't a sports or entertainment website that also has fantasy. Its a fantasy website, nothing else. It resembles a document/excel/spreadsheet look. The depth of options and players is unmatched (every minor league player down to rookie ball is there). It won't win any beauty pageants, but it works very well and even blends in on my computer at work."

Food for thought

My main proponent of moving to ESPN, is it allows for $160 to be paid back out and we get just as good (better in my opinion) platform. I like how ESPN allows you to check individual stat categories against other teams (like Ryan mentioned earlier in the year).

Its a very easy system to navigate Rays, you'd have no issue with it.

With an extra $160 in the pool would allow us to pay out a little bit of money to teams that don't make the playoffs and would keep teams interested in continuing. Open for ideas here, but I'm not sure it'd be fair to have a best of the rest competition and pay out teams that finish below, say the first 4 teams that lose in the playoffs. Unless they dropped down to a losers bracket of some sort.

As Mat has previously mentioned even if a team gets $25-30 it's motivation to keep going..

I've heard some good things about Fantrax, but I've also heard that it's not very user friendly/intuitive. When you consider it still costs some money, I'd prefer we use a free service like ESPN. ESPN is a solid service that we know will be around for a long, long time. Having said that, I'm open to the idea of Fantrax, but I'd want to see what it would look like first.

Since Fantrax is undergoing a major revamp let's wait to see what that looks like. I'll set up an account on both and give everyone access so they can peruse the features. Then we can make an educated decision. I would personally love to have complete rosters on the site. It would definitely lessen the work load and the research features I hear Fantrax will be way ahead of ESPN and definitely include single stay categories. For $2 each in order to have complete rosters....it's very tempting.