One of the features planned for 2009 here at BaseballGB is our own fantasy competition.  With Mark now on board providing his fantasy expertise to the site, we felt it was the perfect time to start a league combining us writers and any readers that would like to take part.  Sounds like fun to you?  Read on to see how you can get involved. 

Mark has written an excellent outline of the different types of fantasy competitions that you can play and he’s suggested that the Head to Head league would be the best place for us to start.  The Head to Head league suits enthusiastic beginners and dedicated fantasy nuts alike and Mark’s outline gives a good overview of exactly what’s involved.

Both Joe and myself are fantasy novices, so don’t worry if you haven’t got much fantasy experience as you’ll be in the same boat as us! (for full disclosure: I’ve been a regular at Fantasy BaseballUK for a few years, but haven’t taken part in a league involving a draft/auction and trades with other players etc)

We’re at the early stages of planning this and thought it was worth making people aware of it as soon as possible.  Here are the key points for potential players about the proposed competition:

• we plan to create a league in the easy-to-use Yahoo fantasy set-up,
• there’s no entry fee,
• we don’t have any actual prizes lined up, but the satisfaction of potentially beating us will probably be reward enough!  Of course, your team will be part of the regular coverage of the league here at BaseballGB and, more than anything, there’s the sheer enjoyment of taking part,
• as mentioned, we are currently proposing to run a Head to Head league.  This means that we really need at least ten teams and there has to be an even number of participants.  If we can’t meet these requirements then we might switch to a Rotisserie league.
• a Head to Head league begins with an online draft of players.  All participants will need to be able to take part in the draft and we will try to arrange a time and date together that gives everyone good notice (the draft will probably be in mid-March).  Mark says that it should take a couple of hours at most.

Those are the basic details.  We’re all excited about the league and hopefully you are to.  If you’re keen to take part, either pass on a message via the comments box below or send me an e-mail directly by putting matt in front of @baseballgb.co.uk in your address bar. 

The competition isn’t limited to players from Britain, so our overseas readers are more than welcome to take part.  Obviously we will all need to factor in the time difference for the draft if that’s the case.

We’ll be reminding you about the competition over the next couple of months and hope that, even if you are not participating, you enjoy reading about our exploits over the course of the MLB season.