What to Expect When Expecting (a New Fantasy Baseball Season): 2025 Edition
A look at what's new in the Coastal Elite Fantasy Baseball Universe in 2025
IN PURSUIT OF (IM)PERFECTION
As the saying goes, nothing in this world is certain except death, taxes, and fantasy baseball updates. This year is no different, and I’ll get into the bulk of what’s new below, but what I want to stress up front is this: I’ve been listening.
It’s been made clear pretty clear—both by you, the over burdened league member, and myself, the overburdened league administrator—that I’ve been trying to do too much. In an effort to create a more ‘perfect’ league, one where as many of the opportunities for fantasy luck and manager malfeasance have been sanded away, what I’ve really been doing is creating an administrative nightmare. One where manager and commissioner alike have been saddled with extraneous rules which have made simply playing and enjoying the game a challenge. I’m happy to report: That’s gone.
This season I have finally embraced and internalized the fact that I’m never going to be able to create something that is perfectly ‘fair’. This is sport, after all. Injuries will happen, calls will be missed, and the better team will not always win. But the sense that anything can happen is also what makes things fun. That the game is imperfect is a feature, not a bug. I’m not going to continue to fight battles that can’t be won, instead I’m going to refocus my efforts on what really makes this league great. It’s not the goofy rules, it’s the people and the community. I had lost a bit of that perspective, but I’m back on the right path.
What follows is a non-exhaustive list of what’s new for Coastal Elite Fantasy Baseball in 2025. As always, I encourage you all to review the actual league rules and scoring document in full (areas with changes have been highlighted), but below I’ll do my best to highlight the big picture stuff, and provide rationale, so you’re all in the loop about what’s changing and why.
Additionally, Kenneth and I have done a podcast covering a lot of this, too, so if if you prefer to listen to the soothing tones of Kenny and I bantering, you should go ahead and check that out as well.
DISMANTLING THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE
For year’s I’ve incorporated rules that have required some sort of (usually arduous) administrative activity from me. This includes, but is not limited to:
Using a google form to manually processing free agent claims and updating lineups to swap out injured players in the ‘weekly lineup’ days.
Researching box scores and to determine which starts didn’t count when making scoring adjustments to teams that exceeded our ‘starts limit’.
Contacting managers to determine playoff matchups and explaining ‘home field advantage’ rules.
Effective this year, none of us have to deal with anything like that anymore: if it’s not something I can set using ESPN’s league settings, it’s not going to be a rule.
The following are the changes that have come out of this new embrace of ESPN and it’s default settings.
Ten Start ‘Soft’ Cap
For the past two year’s we’ve had a ‘hard’ cap on pitching starts. This was ‘well meaning’ in it’s attempt to prevent bad actors from taking advantage of the way pitching opportunities are doled out, but it wasn’t ‘well doing’ in that it created a headaches for managers and commissioners alike.
This year I’ve decided to simply use the in-built ESPN Start Limit functionality to achieve a similar result without the headaches. It’s important to note that while it’s still a ‘limit’, it doesn’t act in the same way as I’ve treated it in years past.
The first notable difference is that new cap is higher. Last year it was set to 8 and this year it’s set to 10. But that’s less important than the second difference, which is that this cap is ‘soft’. This limit can be exceeded by any other pitchers starting the same day the limit is met.
This will effectively do away with having to worry about managing your starts like you had to do the past two season. The only way you could possibly exceed this limit in a way that prevents you from starting a pitcher on a Sunday is if you are actively trying to game the system and maximize starts.
Weekly Transaction Limit of 6 Adds a Week
This rule goes hand in hand with the rule above. To prevent someone with too much time on their hands gaming the free agent pool to create maximum mayhem, we’ll be using the same transaction limit ESPN uses in their public leagues.
Now I know what you may be thinking, ‘But Cheech, that feels too low!’ To reassure you, I’ve trawled through our league history and found only two instances where managers may have conceivably come up against the limit:
Me in 2024.
Me in 2021.
Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.
No More RP Restrictions
Last year I maintained a ‘two RP players per day’ rule. This is gone in its entirety. If ESPN lets you put a player into a roster spot, it’s allowed.
OTHER GAMEPLAY CHANGES
This header sounds more ominous than it actually is. These are simply adjustments that I made to complement the new embrace of ‘less is more’ approach.
The Return of ‘Traditional’ Rosters & Lineups…
I’ve tweaked lineups slightly. Given the returned freedom in roster construction (see above) it made some sense to (mostly) embrace ESPN’s (old) standard roster and lineups. This means a slight addition to the starters and small contraction of the bench:
C - 1
1B - 1
2B - 1
3B - 1
SS - 1
CI - 1
MI - 1
OF - 5
UTIL - 1
P - 7
RP - 2
Bench - 3
I think this setup, along with the limits outlined above, will provide the most freedom for managers to experiment with roster construction while preventing the sort of exploitation that can make a fantasy league miserable.
…With One Exception: The IL (Eight Spots)
One place where I digress philosophically with ‘standard’ fantasy baseball league is in regard to IL spots. I don’t think there’s any sort of inherit ‘advantage’ of having a lot of spots. All keeping the number low does (like three in the case of ESPN’s default) is punish managers with bad luck and reward folks with empty spots and/or who really want to pounce when notice of a player coming off the IR hits the transome. It’s lame.
So I’ve increased the max IL spots to eight. There’s nothing special about this number, it’s just the max that ESPN allows.
Scoring Goes Back to 2023
We’re going to see an increase in pitcher scoring this year on account of the new rules. To adjust for this I have nerfed pitcher scoring by reverting to our 2023 scoring rules. This means:
Wins are 2 points. (Down from 5.)
Losses are -2 points. (Up from -5.)
Holds are 2 points. (Up from 0.)
OTHER ODDS & ENDS
Consider this the gameplay updates ‘lightening round.’
The Waiver Period is Now One (1) Day
Players are usually dropped in the morning which means that, practically, they were on waivers for about 2.75 days because of the way ESPN handles waivers. Moving it to one day is closer to how it’s intended to work.
Embracing the Full MLB Season
Part of my embrace of running things like a normal league means instituting a more normal league schedule. This year we’ll be using the full MLB season: our regular season will last 22 scoring periods and our postseason will be three week-long scoring periods.
No More Postseason Weirdness or ‘Consolation’ Matchups
Our postseason is entirely automated this year. No custom matchups. No ‘home field advantage.’ No extended final. We are embracing custom and fate.
Additionally, even with consolations matchups playing into draft order most people did not seem to really care. Once the regular season was over most managers were mentally moving on to football. This led to weird situations where consolation finals were being ‘played’ by two managers who hadn’t checked their lineups in weeks. These are gone.
Return of Auction Drafting
And finally (for the gameplay stuff, at least) we will be returning to auction drafting. This may require more time up front, but it’s the fairest way to allow managers to pick their teams.
LASTLY, OUR NEW LEAGUE ORGANIZING METHODOLOGY
It’s hard to figure out how to organize a ‘league’ with 24 managers. The approach I’d taken to date was what I’ve called the ‘Sister Leagues’ approach: I choose which manager would play with each other and then they’d play. If I needed to ‘load balance’ by moving folks around between seasons then I’d do so. That, like a lot of things, was putting too much pressure on myself. (Are you sensing the theme?)
While that had worked to date, a better way was presented to me by Robert Edwards (Scrr Buzzards) that I think you’re all going to like a lot: Promotion/Relegation. Now before you scoff, at least hear how it’ll play out.
‘Lower Than’ but not ‘Lesser Than’
The first thought someone has when you say there’s going to be a promotion/relegation setup is that if they’re in the ‘lower league’ then they’re not actually playing for something and that their money is going to be funneled into the bank accounts of the upper league. That is not how it will work with us.
For starters, winning either league gets you the same take home prize. No money being paid by ‘lower league’ teams will be put directly into the pockets of ‘upper league’ teams.
But there’s got to be some sort of distinction between the leagues, so here’s how we will manage it:
The upper league will crown our grand champion. Again, no additional cash, just bragging rights.
Charity payouts will go to the upper league. The Dillon Papier Cup, and the charity payouts associated, will reside solely with the ‘upper’ league. This both simplifies things (no more weird ‘league vs league’ thing like I established last season) while providing stakes to the upper league that doesn’t take money out of the pockets of the lower league. We’re just changing how money that was already 100% earmarked for charity is being distributed.
Load Balancing
Another benefit of this setup is going to be ‘load balancing’. In each season we’ve had one league that has felt ‘tougher’ than the other, which can feel a bit unfair to the participants. Now, we’re explicitly designing it so that one league is the ‘tougher’ one.
The result should be that managers with similar play styles will be matched up together naturally, which will (hopefully) result in a more fun for everyone. And with movement back and forth between leagues of managers (and their personalities), you’re never going to get a league that feels like it’s falling into stagnation.
Ultimately, I think you’re going to find that this provides some unique incentives and keeps things varied from season to season in fun new ways.
One Coastal Elite
Even with these changes, things are going to stay the same from an administrative standpoint. We’re going to be one league, with one newsletter, one (somewhat regular) podcast, and the same great group of managers.
Moving forward, this should also present some interesting new opportunities. All I ask is that everyone give it a chance; as this entire post has proven, if things aren’t working and managers aren’t happy, I’m going to work hard to improve it.
WRAPPING UP
Here’s the note I want to end on: feedback is welcome. This is just the opening salvo, this document is not destiny. If you think there’s anything I’ve proposed here that is going to make our lives worse, please let me know. Your feedback (with the exception of Carlin) is important to me. Don’t be afraid to speak up.
UNTIL NEXT TIME…
Thank you all for your continued time and support. The season is still months away, but I’m excited to share another year with you all. I hope you’re all safe and well, and I’ll talk to you later.