Jeff Erickson and I are moving this to the blog - something we should have done years ago. No more waiting for four replies to publish, no more editing in the times of publication so painstakingly - just the ongoing conversation. And it's no longer behind a paywall.

Chris (5:57 pm PT, Monday, February 9):

It's true there's a good deal of hustle in Y!F&F, but they mitigate that with the innings cap and limited number of reserve slots. And the daily nature of the game means there's no scrolling through long lists on Sunday. You pick up players as needed rather than at an appointed time, so the hustle is dispersed over the week. But no, I wouldn't want to be in eight of those leagues at the same time, I hate having to be on it at 3:30 PT every day to make sure everyone in my lineup is active and I inevitably leave valuable stats on the bench on many days.

I think also you're missing (or dodging) the point of my analogy. Of course using RotoWire isn't *the same* as using a pre-sorted FAAB list. But it's similar in the relevant respect in that it makes convenient something that previously required a lot of labor. One site can do the work, and anyone who uses it no longer has to. While that might greatly reduce the edge someone with excess time on his hands who was willing to do much of the work himself, I think most would agree that's a worthwhile tradeoff.

As for the subjective free-agent list, I'm sure it wouldn't be perfect. But it would sweep up 95 percent of the players you'd want, so you could live off it even if you occasionally missed out on someone you'd find interesting if you spent half an hour digging. And there'd be nothing to stop you from doing that, but at least you could do a competent enough job in five minutes to keep yourself competitive.

Jeff (5:00 pm PT, Monday, February 9):

Let's start with your question that I never answered. I don't want to leave you hanging on that, even though I started writing this yesterday and left myself hanging. I think there's a difference between having a default ranking order at the draft and a list of preferred free agents, and your hypothetical is a slippery slope argument. Admittedly, both rankings are subjective (unless the draft default is based on last year's value, which if I'm not mistaken is how the NFBC Online ranks the players). But the draft is a compulsory activity for everyone in the league, and there are full teams being selected, rather than a chance for each team to adjust during the season. Moreover there are a lot fewer players to choose from in free agency than there are at the draft, at least early on in the season.

And sites like ours that help you structure all the news and analysis in one place? That's something you choose to follow, rather than something that's simply spoon-fed to your competition. Pretty easy distinction.

Besides the NFBC method for ranking players in their online contest, I know that there was at least one expert league that did/does list the players alphabetically for the draft - think it was the Tout Wars Online draft. And the XFL just gives us a depth chart by team of available players that we can auction off. It can be done.

But all of this has left me defending a position I don't passionately believe in, if at all. I prefer the default rankings even at the draft, and chances are I'd prefer your subjective free agent lists. I might bitch about the quality - ok, I won't qualify it with a "might," I will complain about it, as will most everyone else when they miss out on somebody because they relied upon the list rather than doing their own digging. But that's the nature of the beast.

One thing that I would love to have available, even if I won't always take advantage of it, is an "opt-out" for players that I have zero interest in acquiring, ever. One of the biggest issues with free agent lists is the dreck on the list, giving us an overload of options. If I could get rid of half the player pool, that would go a long way.

One last thought from me - your "worst of all worlds" scenario is essentially Yahoo Friends & Family - yet you've done very well there, and I know that there a lot of aspects of that league that we both like. But it is an endless hustle league.

Chris (10:14 pm PT, Saturday, February 7):

You say Tout Wars' innovations are not in the other direction, and OBP is hardly esoteric, but it's more esoteric than batting average, a stat not only with which more people are casually familiar but also one which is more common in fantasy baseball and to which most people have calibrated their player values. So in the interest of innovation, you've added more work to the both existing and prospective players if they want to use Tout Wars as a model. And while I think Tout Wars X is a great idea - why not mess around with formats and see if something works? - the idea you've selected for this year is esoteric (wins plus quality starts is a category, and you re-draft every month).

Of course, I'd love to see a low-maintenance league be tried out as a future experiment. I ask myself what the purpose of innovating is in this case. What problem needs to be solved? Is it that standard 5 x 5 roto isn't a good enough game? Not only do I personally think it's the best fantasy game, I've never heard that complaint from anyone else, either. The problem in my experience - and the feedback I get from other people - is that fantasy baseball, great as it might be in its current form, is too much work. So the challenge, for me, would be to grow the hobby by retaining its strategic complexity and enjoyment while making it convenient and appealing to more potential players.

I also don't think the Kreutzer league anecdote sheds much light on this debate. I wouldn't propose not having FAAB, so of course you should be able to benefit from bidding on and picking up the right players in season. That's an integral part of the game. But you should get Castillo or anyone else because you bid more on him earlier, or were willing to open up a spot for him while everyone else overvalued their current players. Not because other people didn't realize he existed.

And I didn't hear an answer as to why the guy who gets an edge scrolling through the FAAB list shouldn't also prefer preseason draft lists in alphabetical (rather than ranking order) or that RotoWire never existed so he can get an edge by surfing individual team web sites for player news.

But I'll answer your question: Fantasy baseball is better now with the latest news at your fingertips, the improved (though far from perfect) functionality of modern commish services and the proliferation of analytical metrics and tools. Any grunt work that can be done automatically - or by one person instead of millions - should be. Our job is to decide how to act on that information - what metrics are important, which are overvalued, which players to back or fade and how to allocate our resources optimally toward those ends.

Personally, I'd like all the information to be publicly available and easily accessed. I don't want to have to beat you with more hustle or an inside scoop. To the extent I have an edge, I want it to because I recognize what matters and what doesn't, what's properly accounted for by the market and what isn't. Or more specifically, because I had the courage (or foolishness) to take Yasiel Puig while you took Adam Jones, Bryce Harper while you took Hunter Pence.

I'll end with one last thought about DFS: one of the greatest things about it is you can play whenever you want. So if you love the match-up angle - using cheap starters against weak lineups, or filling in with a guy who's getting added playing time for a week or two - you can do that on a given Tuesday night. But it doesn't also lock you into doing that the following week when you have a magazine deadline, or want to spend time with your family on vacation without your laptop. If DFS had a tournament that required you to play a lineup every day for the baseball season, that would be the worst of both worlds. Likewise, when season-long requires the match-up-oriented hustle of DFS, but for six whole months - it also veers into that territory.

Jeff (8:30 pm, Saturday, February 7):

I don't think that Tout Wars' innovations are all necessarily in the other direction. At least, that's not the purpose of those innovations. Rather, I think that we're (I say we, because I'm on the Tout Wars executive board) looking to explore many different ways to improve the game, whether it's by the categories we use, or the mechanics on free agents, or even a completely different format. Moreover, Tout Wars is pro-innovation generally.

Also, adding OBP instead of batting average is hardly esoteric. Some of the other proposals that passed in that gigantic e-mail chain, I'll cop to being esoteric, but then again, those aren't the ones being implemented. At least not in the existing leagues. To explain to the public that might not be familiar with what Tout Wars is doing this year (you should check out the Tout Wars site or follow Tout Wars on Twitter), we're adding a new experimental league, Tout Wars X. Tout Wars X will provide a different format each year, with us experimenting with new rules, new formats, etc... This year we're running a format similar to Ron Shandler's new gig, Shandler Park, which features a monthly redraft and a few different categories than your standard 5x5 league.

In other years, however, we might just run a typical 5x5 league, except we'll implement new rules or features such as those you suggested. Certainly the year that I'm in charge of Tout X, we absolutely will be running a Friday-Thursday time frame. That just makes too much sense.

I'd also like to implement a simple mechanical change for weekly lineups. Often there's a day game that starts at the beginning of the scoring period, whereas the remainder of the games start at night. So long as you've made the decision to start a guy that's going earlier, if he qualifies at multiple positions you should be able to move to those positions, to allow for later lineup changes. Often it's a player that qualifies at both 1B/OF - why not be able to toggle between those positions as long as you don't affect the active/reserve rules?

Looking at your proposed changes generally, I think it boils down to how you enjoy fantasy baseball to begin with. Is fantasy baseball about the draft and broad changes such as trades? Or is it about the hustle? Peter Kreutzer's magazine has a "strategy of champions" section in it, and this year one of those is about his American Dreams League, where Peter got aced out by a competitor who cited his multitude of Draft Day flops and won on the back of a few transactions, including a late addition of Rusney Castillo as the final difference-maker. Sure, anyone could have made that move, and all but one of your proposals would still allow for that sort of difference (excepting the season ending on August 31 - but even then, it would just be moving the bar to a late-August pickup instead). But the point was that particular owner felt a greater satisfaction with the in-season hustle leading to a win.

So it's different strokes for different folks. As we've discussed, your perspective may vary on your background. We play in more leagues than the average player, at least in terms of in-season leagues. We've both dabbled in DFS, but neither of us could reasonably be classified as DFS guys. If you just play in one or two leagues, those leagues are your entire roto existence, and you probably don't want the FA's presented in a way to speed up the process, as it takes away from your advantage over the crowd. If you play in more leagues, then the more you want a subjective ranking of free agents to speed up the process. If you have a family, you probably also want to spend less time on the day-to-day grind, too. When I was in my 20's, I had nothing but time, even if I didn't particularly appreciate or realize it.

Then there's the tech aspect of this. How easy is it to implement automatic injury benching, when it's applied with some intelligence? I think that there's a Law of Unintended Consequences aspect to that. Certainly my lineup gripe might be a tech issue.

Your pitcher-streaming proposal is already being done, I think - many leagues cap the number of starts you can have in a scoring period, rather than by innings pitched. It functions similarly to an innings cap, but I think it presents a little less of an emphasis on Ks.

I also wouldn't mind playing in a league where everyone starts - there's no bench, just bigger rosters. Thus it's less punitive if you have a couple of injuries where you can stash players, but there's far less streaming, and far less of a concern about starting the right guy. It's a matter of rostering the right guy.

All that said, I'm less concerned about the hustle aspects than you are, even if it punishes me at times when I get overloaded. I see the merit in what you propose - even the September proposal has some logic to it, though I still like playing every week because I like the hustle, and I like the fresh names in the player pool.

I'll finish with a question - do you find fantasy baseball more or less enjoyable in this information era? Given that news has essentially become a commodity, as well as the knowledge of what makes for a better statistical indicator, is it really about the hustle in finding players and gaming the system? Or are there areas where we can still have superior knowledge of the player pool?

Chris (3:30 pm PT, Friday February 6):

The Super Bowl's over, so no one's going to bitch about our talking baseball - until mid-April at least.

You and I had discussed a few topics on air yesterday, including how to improve fantasy baseball, much of which was covered in our videocast:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBjTiUT_cEo

My overall point was to make playing it less time consuming and more efficient, without sacrificing the strategic challenge and complexity. Peter Schoenke had a great post about moving the FAAB deadline from Sunday to Thursday and running the week from Friday to Thursday. Basically, rather than having to spend two hours every Sunday night digging through FAAB lists (and having to account for this any time you contemplate going away for a long weekend), you'd do this Thursday night during the week. Moreover, instead of having Monday lineup deadlines where many teams are off and you're just guessing on day-to-day players whose teams don't play until Tuesday, you do this Friday when there's a full slate of games. But here are some other ideas to make baseball less of a time-suck without losing any of the key strategic complexity that makes it so enjoyable:

•Ensure commish services have the most desirable players populating the top of the FAAB lists by default. It's ridiculous I have to waste time scrolling down list after list, digging for FAAB targets every week, when one person who works at Yahoo!, ESPN, CBS, Stats, Inc., etc. can do that job for me (and everyone else.) Why have millions of people covering the same ground? Sure, you can sort by "most owned," "ABs", "Ks", "ABs over the last two weeks," "K's over the last two weeks," etc., but even that's a chore, and you've still got to make sure some key injured guy isn't two weeks away from a return, or some prospect isn't rumored to be close to a call-up. Let's just have someone whose job it is do all that grunt work for you, ranking the top-50 FAAB targets, and whichever ones are available in your league (even if it's only five) will show up at the top.

It'll still be on you to decide how much to bid, what order in which to arrange them and who you'd be willing to drop. But it would save time.

And for those who argue that's making the game too easy, maybe you'd prefer the preseason default draft-room cheat sheets not arranged in order either? Hoping to scroll to the bottom and snag Matt Harvey when everyone sorting by last year's Ks forgets about him? Maybe RotoWire should stop aggregating player news in its latest news feed, so you can be the guy who surfs around to every local source yourself and is the only one who has all the information? It's dumb to reward that kind of grunt work, and in 2015 it should be unnecessary.

•Get rid of September where the 40-man rosters, zombie lineups full of scrubs and no 15-day DL to let you know whether day-to-day players have any chance of suiting up wreak havoc on the league standings. I've won leagues by loading up on September starers facing terrible hitters, and I've lost leagues because my dinged-up stars were given extra rest with nothing for which to play. Treat September (or at least the second half of it) the way fantasy football treats Week 17.

•Reduce pitcher streaming. In daily transaction leagues, streaming is such a problem because it elevates hustle above all else that most institute an innings cap. The problem with the cap is it fundamentally changes the nature of the game - making Ks essentially K/9 and wins Wins/9 if everyone gets to the cap. That means quality low-K pitchers or ones that go deeper into games to get their wins actually hurt you in those categories. I'm not sure I'd prefer a 5-IP, 9-K win to be more valuable than a 7-K, complete-game one. But there are other ways to tackle streaming like limiting the number of roster moves, reducing their frequency (say FAAB every three weeks, deeper benches, best-ball lineups in between.)

•Best Ball starting lineups. Instead of having to guess whether your day-to-day star pitcher will make his Wednesday start, just have your best lineup in every week. This would have strategic implications, e.g., you'd probably carry a ton of starting pitchers, but to combat that maybe you'd be limited to no more than three of your six or seven reserve spots being pitchers at any given time. This also eliminates the need to be around every Monday to check the news and remember to set your lineup.

•Automatic injury benching. Like best ball, but if a player plays less than 15 ABs or doesn't make a start, he's retroactively benched for a designated "sub" player of your choosing. Again, less being stuck scrambling for news when weekly lineups lock, less guessing when exactly a guy will be activated off the DL or called up from the minors.

For me, the joy of fantasy baseball is to watch your preseason (and in-season) bets on players play out. Were you right about Bryce Harper or wrong? Did you nail Corey Kluber's breakout, or did you throw your lot in with Danny Salazar? It's not, "well, I threw my lot in with Salazar, but I quickly dropped him and figured out I could start anyone against the Diamondbacks for three months and got Kluber-like numbers out of the 15 starters I used against them." I'm not saying you don't deserve credit for figuring out that angle, but now everyone has to be willing to play like that or there's far less chance to win. And if everyone were playing like that, it would be harder to do, and you're back at square one, only everyone's putting in three times the amount of time and effort. And intelligent people will rightly say (as they often do): "I love baseball, but no way I'm doing it this year because it's too much of a commitment."

Let DFS have that game-to-game matchup grind - that's what those contests are about - and let's let season-long do what it does best: Settle the arguments about who's going to have the better year, who's over the hill, etc. That's what got me into fantasy originally, not maximizing two-start weeks and gaming the rules. Of course, no matter what the parameters there will always be ways to game them, and for every rule change there are unintended consequences, but let's do our best to make it more about roster construction and player evaluation than hustle.

Do you buy this? Or do you think fantasy baseball should innovate in the other direction (like Tout Wars) with more esoteric categories and different variations of play some of which require an even bigger time commitment?