INTRODUCTION:
The New England/Chicago Curveball Organization (“NECCO”) is a Rotisserie fantasy baseball money league. The rules governing NECCO are included in this document.
ENTRANCE FEE:
Each owner will pay $63 for the season. This fee not only covers the use of CBS Sports’ Fantasy Baseball system ($129.95, or, $13 per team), but also provides a total prize purse of $500 ($50 per team contribution).
Please make arrangements with the Commissioner for payment of your league fee.
PRIZES:
Cash prizes will be awarded at the end of the season as follows:
1st Place -- $300
2nd Place – $150
3rd Place -- $50
DRAFT:
The NECCO draft will occur prior to the start of the 2008 MLB Season (March 30, 2008) on a mutually-agreed-upon day at a mutually-agreed-upon time. The draft will take place online at our CBS Sports league page.
The draft order will be determined randomly by lottery one week prior to the draft. The draft order will "snake" at the end of each round, meaning that the team with the last pick in the current round will have the first pick in the next round.
It is recommended that, prior to the draft, you organize the Rank List according to your own player preferences. During the live draft CBSSports.com will use your Rank List as a backup in case you become incapacitated or bored and are unable to make your next selection.
On draft day there will be a "Draft Room" link at the top of our League Home page, also available in the Draft Prep column located to the left side of the screen. This link will allow entry into the draft room.
In the draft room, you will be able to place MLB players into a Draft Queue -- which is simply a list, in order of priority, of players you are interested in taking with your next draft pick. When it is your turn to pick, you will have five minutes to draft a player. If the five minutes pass and you have not manually selected a player, the player ranked highest in your Draft Queue will be automatically drafted. If the Draft Queue is empty, a pick will then be made from your Rank List.
The draft will last 24 rounds.
TEAMS:
NECCO is comprised of ten teams of 24 players.
There are no divisions.
PLAYER POOL:
NECCO is a mixed league. Any National or American league player that CBS Sports makes available for the league is eligible to be acquired. This includes many minor league players for which CBS Sports has a profile.
ROSTERS:
All rosters shall consist of a maximum of 24 players, broken down as follows:
• 17 Active Players
• 7 Reserve Players
During the draft, each team will draft 24 players.
ACTIVE PLAYERS:
On a daily basis, owners will set a maximum of 17 players on their roster as ‘active’ for scoring purposes, broken down as follows:
1 First Baseman
1 Second Baseman
1 Shortstop
1 Third Baseman
1 Catcher
3 Outfielders
1 Designated Hitter
8 Pitchers
There are no daily minimum roster requirements. If you choose to sit your Second Baseman on July 17, 2008 because you don’t like the matchup, you may. You do not need to substitute another Second Baseman.
BENCH PLAYERS:
Owners may keep up to 7 ‘bench’ players on their roster, which allows for substitution flexibility. The ‘bench’ players will not accrue statistics or count toward your overall ranking.
POSITION ELIGIBILITY:
A player may be assigned to any position at which he appeared in 20 or more games in the preceding season (2007). Once the 2008 season begins, a player becomes eligible at a position where he appears in at least 5 games. During the season, all players will remain eligible at their initial (pre-season) designated positions. In certain circumstances, CBS Sports may not recognize a position for which a player is eligible; the Commissioner may rule that player eligible upon verification on a case-by-case basis.
SEASON:
NECCO’s season runs the same as the MLB season: 26 weeks from 3/30/2008 through 9/28/2008.
ROTISSERIE SCORING:
In Rotisserie baseball each team is awarded points according to its order of finish in each statistical category. Your team's point totals for each category are then added together for your team's overall score, and standings are based on these overall scores. The first-place team in a statistical category (e.g., Home Runs) gets 10 points, second-place 9 points, and so on with the last-place team in the category getting 1 point. If two teams are tied within a category, each team receives an average of the total points available; so if two teams tie for first place in a category, each team gets 9.5 points rather than 10 to the first-place team and 9 to the second-place team.
NECCO is a 6 x 6 Rotisserie League, which uses the following scoring categories:
| Batting Category | Pitching Category |
| Team On-Base Percentage | Team Earned Run Average |
| Team Slugging Percentage | Quality Starts |
| Home Runs | Saves |
| Runs Batted In | Team WHIP |
| Stolen Bases | Strikeouts |
| Runs | Team Batting Avg. Against |
Rotisserie Notes: - Each team's pitching staff must accumulate at least 900 innings pitched over the course of the season or it will be placed in last place in the team ERA and WHIP categories. Each team's batters must accumulate a total of at least 4,000 at-bats or it will be placed in last place in Batting Average.
- There will be no tie-breaker to determine Rotisserie league champions. In the event of a tie for first place, the tied teams will evenly split any prizes for which they are eligible.
- In the event that there are any regular season tie-breaker MLB playoff games, the statistics accumulated in such games will NOT be counted towards your overall Rotisserie score.
- Note: Categories that are based on percentages (e.g., Batting Average, Earned Run Average, etc.) are determined by adding the individual numbers of every active player on your team, and then computing the average. CBS does NOT compute a percentage for each individual player and then compute a team average. For example, if you have two batters -- one goes 1-for-1 (1.000 BA) and the other 0-for-4 (.000 BA), then the team BA is .200 (1-for-5), NOT .500 (the average of 1.000 and .000.)
STATISTICS CORRECTIONS:
NECCO’s web site will be updated to reflect official statistics corrections that occur up to five days after the game has been completed. For example, for a Saturday game, the official scoring change would have to be made by the following Thursday to be included in our statistics. If the change is made any later, it will not be included in our statistics and your official Fantasy scoring will be based on the original statistic.
LINEUP CHANGES
DAILY LINEUPS:
NECCO allows for daily lineup changes. A day runs from beginning of the first game of the day through the completion of the last game of the day and, once a day begins, lineups can't be changed for that day. Each day, owners can set a new lineup. If an owner does not set a lineup for a particular day, the owner's lineup from the previous day will be used. You may set your lineup in advance up to a week.
Your team will not accumulate stats for any time in which your lineup is illegal.
LINEUP SETTING DEADLINE:
The deadline for setting your daily lineup is thirty (30) minutes before the first game of the day. After the deadline, any lineup changes you enter will become effective for the next scoring day.
ADDING/DROPPING PLAYERS:
Throughout the season, you may want to improve your roster by adding free agent players and releasing players that aren't performing to your expectations. FREE AGENTS:
Any player not on any other team's Fantasy roster and not on Waivers (discussed below) is considered a Free Agent. The deadline for submitting a Free Agent request is thirty (30) minutes before the first game of the day in order to have the transaction effective for that day.
Waivers
In order to provide an equal opportunity for all owners to add players that are new to the free agent pool, a Waivers process is used. A player is placed on waivers when he is dropped by a NECCO team. Owners' requests to add players on waivers are not executed immediately, but are put in a pending status for at least 24 hours. This allows multiple teams to request the same players. Every night between midnight and 6:00AM ET a Waivers process will be run, executing the pending requests in Waiver Rank order (explained below).
Waiver Rank
As stated, during the waiver process, pending transactions are processed in Waiver Rank order. The team with a waiver rank of 1, considered the highest, will get its first requested player. After the transaction is executed, the team's waiver rank is then set to 10 (last), and all other teams move up one. The initial waiver rank of the season is based on the reverse order of the draft. The team that selected last in the first round of the draft will have a waiver rank of 1.
If a team's highest pending transaction becomes invalid because another team received the requested player, the transaction gets deleted and the team's next transaction, if one exists, becomes that team's highest. If a team doesn't have any pending transactions because all players requested were taken by other teams, or the owner simply didn't request any players, there isn't any penalty and the team's waiver rank will not be changed.
Waiver priority immediately after the draft will be the reverse order of the first round of the draft. So Team #10 will have the highest waiver priority and Team #1 the lowest waiver priority.
TRADES:
Trade Approvals
In an effort to prevent collusion among owners, and to ensure fair competition, a trade approval process is used. After a trade is made, it will be in pending status for at least 24 hours. If 4 owners in the league object to the trade within the pending time period, the trade will not be executed, but will go to The Commissioner for final approval. If 4 owners do not object before the pending period is up, then your trade will be processed. As an example, a trade made at 5 PM ET Tuesday will not execute at 5 PM ET Wednesday, but will be processed between midnight and 5 AM Thursday morning.
Multi-player Trades
Owners can enter unbalanced multi-player trades such as trading 3 players for 1 player. However, the maximum roster size (and the position restrictions) will ultimately be enforced. If a trade is executed and your resulting roster has greater than the maximum number of players allowed, or it violates the other position requirements, you will be required to enter the necessary transactions to correct your roster. If your roster is not legal by thirty (30) minutes before the first game of the week, your players will not accumulate statistics for that day.
Trade Deadline
A deadline for trades will be imposed at 11:59 PM ET 8/21/2008. No trades will be allowed after that time.
KEEPERS:
NECCO reserves the right to convert to a ‘Keeper’ league at any point, based upon owner interest and league vote.
THE COMMISSIONER:
The Commissioner (Chris Johnston) will act as the ruling body for the league. He will resolve all disputes between teams, answer questions regarding the rules, and oversee all transactions.
A ruling by the Commissioner is final. In the event that a team owner is unhappy with a ruling, he will be allowed to appeal the decision to the entire league. The appeal vote must take place before 10:00 pm of the day of the Commissioners’ decision, otherwise the decision is final.
MISCELLANEOUS INFO:
League E-mail Address: necco@baseball.sportsline.com (a copy will be sent to each owner)
League Website: http://necco.baseball.sportsline.com/
League Blog: http://necco-baseball.blogspot.com/
Commissioner Johnston’s E-mail Address: cjohnston at gmail dot com
