Fringe Fantasy Sports

When I wanted to get into learning more about hockey, I started a small hockey league with my family. Gamifying the sport really allowed me to take an interest to it and also get a feel for all the teams as a whole!

I wanted to recreate that with NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball) also know as the Japanese baseball league. However, I was surprised that there was no dedicated app or website for Japanese fantasy baseball. I decided to start my very own little experiment with inspiration from what I could find online.

What you will need is a working browser, a messaging app, and a work sheet app such as Excel or its free equivalent Google Sheets.

The browser will allow you to get all your stats, while the messaging app, be it Discord or Facebook, will allow you to communicate with members of the league. The work sheet app will allow you to draft, build teams, accumulate stats, and see who wins!

Now that you have the tools, here is my rules for our first ever NPB fantasy league.

Initial draft rules / 初期のルール草案

Initial draft order is randomized.

Draft will use a snake format. First team that starts round 1 will be last in round 2 and vice versa.

Every team needs to draft a hitter at every position, including designated hitter. There should be 9 hitters total. Teams should also draft 4 starting pitchers and 2 relief pitchers. Teams should have a total of 15 players.

Scoring rules / 採点ルール

Here’s how the league format works:

• Each week, teams compete against different opponents.
• Teams earn points by comparing stats in various categories.
• The team with the better stat in a category gets a point (e.g., most home runs).
• For negative categories (e.g., most strikeouts), the team with the worse stat loses a point.

Here are the categories for scoring each week:

Positive Points

**Hitters:**

1. Home Runs (HR)

2. Runs Batted In (RBI)

3. Runs Scored (R)

4. Stolen Bases (SB)

5. Batting Average (BA)

6. On-Base Percentage (OBP)

**Pitchers:**

1. Wins

2. Strikeouts (K)

3. Earned Run Average (ERA) – lower is better

4. Walks Plus Hits Per Inning Pitched (WHIP) – lower is better

5. Saves (SV) – for relief pitchers

6. Quality Starts (QS) – for starting pitchers

### Negative Points

**Hitters:**

1. Strikeouts (SO)

2. Grounded Into Double Plays (GIDP)

3. Errors (E)

**Pitchers:**

1. Losses (L)

2. Blown Saves (BS) – for relief pitchers

3. Earned Runs (ER)

4. Walks (BB)

How to win / 勝ち方

Points are added at the end of the week and the team with the most points gets a win and the other team gets a loss. At the end of the regular baseball season, the team with the most wins is crowned champion.

With this, I hope to see more people pick up the mantle of trying out Japanese fantasy baseball!