Register for FBUK 2022

Registration is now open for the 2022 season of Fantasy Baseball UK!

Last season’s two free draft league formats return – the main FBUK League and the limited trade league – plus this year there is a third option offering a recreation of the original FBUK format in which you build a roster within a set budget limit for player salaries. Check out the guide to how it all works below and then fill in the online registration form if you would like to enter a team.

Closing date for registrations is ~~Friday 4 March~~ extended to Friday 11 March.

Choice of three league formats

Managers can enter a fantasy team into each of the following leagues:

FBUK League

Run through Yahoo Sports, the official fantasy platform of Major League Baseball
Uses an initial draft for managers to build their rosters and after that you can add/drop players from/to the free agent pool or trade with another fantasy team
Manage your roster and game day line-ups through the season
Uses the simple points format where points are awarded to your rostered players based on their daily performance in different ategories and fantasy teams accumulate points through the season
FREE to play

FBUK LTD (Limited Trade)

Run through Yahoo Sports
Uses an initial draft for managers to build their rosters
There is no bench in this game, meaning you have no substitutes besides your main line-up
There is a limit to how many trades or free agent acquisitions you can make during the season
With limited flexibility, your roster decisions are even more important, but it is also great for those fantasy players who don’t want to make constant changes to their line-up
Scoring uses the points format
FREE to play

Salary Cap

New for ’22 but based on the classic FBUK format
Run through Fantrax
Each MLB player is assigned a salary value based on previous and projected performance
Rather than a draft, managers build their roster within a team salary budget cap (the same for each team – $12m)
Within the league, the same MLB player could be held by multiple different fantasy teams/managers
As the season progresses, player salary values are regularly recalculated up or down based on performance
Revaluation won’t affect a player’s salary if they are already on your roster but if you add a player to your roster it will be based on their current salary value at the time
As you drop and add players through the season you will need to be mindful of your overall team budget cap
Scoring uses the points format
A personalised printed FBUK champion baseball will be awarded to the eventual winner
£10 to enter a team (all revenue goes towards covering the costs of running the FBUK game)

More info about the Yahoo leagues

To manage your team you will need to create a Yahoo account if you don’t already have one (but you don’t need it to complete the FBUK registration form)

As there is a 20-team limit per league, depending on how many people play, we would likely run several leagues which would effectively act as divisions. There would be a separate draft from the entire MLB player pool within each division. The standings can be combined to mark as the overall champion the team with the most points across all divisions at the end of the season.

The Help section includes more details about the Yahoo leagues work, including the draft process.

More info about the Salary Cap League

To manage your team you will need to create a Fantrax account if you don’t already have one (but you don’t need it to complete the FBUK registration form)

Read the news article about the Salary Cap League

Key dates

Some of these might be subject to change but here’s how it should work:

Closing date for registrations: Friday ~~4 March~~ 11 March (midnight)

Registered managers will be arranged into divisions and invitations emailed out to create their team on the Yahoo or Fantrax platform.

Deadline for managers to accept their invitation: TBC

When invitations go out they will request for invitations to be accepted by a certain date. This is to allow for organisation ahead of the draft. If not all managers accept their invitation, some slight re-jigging of division groupings might be done to try to keep divisions roughly the same number of teams. This is a bit of a faff, though, as it requires new invitations, so it’s much better if all managers accept their initial invitations!

Planned draft dates: evenings of ~~Friday 25 and Saturday 26 March~~ Friday 1 and Saturday 2 April*

Separate online drafts are needed for the FBUK League and Limited Trade league as managers might have teams in both formats. You can set up auto-draft if you can’t or don’t want to make either of the drafts in real time. No draft is required in the Salary Cap League.

Scheduled season start: Thursday ~~31 March~~ 7 April*

* As of 2 March, negotiations between MLB and the MLB Players Association are still ongoing and this will now delay the start of the season (MLB confirmed the season will start no earlier than 7 April). The FBUK draft dates are subject to change depending on the eventual confirmed date of MLB Opening Day. More info will be emailed out to registered FBUK managers as the situation becomes clearer.

Forums

If you are taking part in the game, why not join in the discussion in the website forums? This is where you can contribute to the conversation on how the game is run.

As we rebuilt the forums and website account system from scratch prior to the 2021 season, it means that the old website’s forum accounts no longer exist (the old forums were used until 2019). If you haven’t already, you will need to create a new account to access the forums. However, there is the option to connect with your Yahoo account, which might be convenient for fantasy managers who have a Yahoo account to play in the fantasy league itself. Not only will you be able to use the same login details for both the FBUK and Yahoo fantasy baseball websites, it should make hopping between your Yahoo fantasy baseball account and your FBUK Forums account fairly seamless.