in all seriousness, rationally explain why baseball boxscores are buried near the rear of the third section of newspapers you probably don't need to research Boxscore Sports Fantasy Baseball any further. On the other hand, if your front lawn is strewn with the first two sections and you are still 60 or 70 million dollars away from purchasing a big league club take heart - Boxscore Baseball is just what the trainer ordered!

Boxscore Baseball is the sophisticated baseball game that lets you manage a team of major league baseball players of your own choosing. You become the owner, the general manager, and the field manager of your very own baseball team. Team performances are based on the players' performances week in and week out throughout the actual major league season. You will still be competing with other avid baseball fans from all over the country. Because actual major league statistics are the determining factor in computing game results, keeping tabs on your players is as simple as checking the daily boxscores.

As your team's general manager, you engineer trades with other GM's, negotiate for that power hitting catcher to replace your just injured backstop, or deal for that fifth starting pitcher to fill out your rotation. You'll hawk the waiver wire to pick up that rookie everyone else overlooked, or claim that aging veteran dropped by another team who you know could fill that pinch-hitter slot for you. Boxscore Baseball allows you to make just about all the decisions a major league general manager makes (except for deciding which great seats to give to your ex-backup catcher from twenty years ago-BINGO!)

As your team's field manager, you set the weekly batting orders and pitching rotations, making the strategy decisions that you think best promote your team's strengths and take advantage of your opponents' weaknesses. You insert the hot hitters and yank that starting pitcher who seems to have lost his stuff, AND you don't every have to worry about being fired by George Steinbrenner because you're him!

Boxscore Baseball is a game dedicated to the avid and knowledgeable baseball fan who would like to enjoy the ultimate baseball challenge; managing in the major leagues.

provides for drafts by mail, fax and the internet. The internet draft enables all 8 owners to draft round robin style for 27 rounds via Boxscore’s chat room. The traditional draft method is our unique way of ranking and bidding for players, letting the owner assemble a team with the characteristics he thinks are required to win. This draft method uses a draft form which can be filled out on the website, or printed out, filled in and faxed or mailed to Boxscore. Click here to see a sample of the latest draft form.

The Traditional Draft

The drafting method is designed to allow each team's front office to assemble a team of players to its own specifications. On the draft list, players have been placed into groups of nine (according to position) and at the top of each group is a place marked BID. You have 100 bid points which you should distribute over all the sets of players. That is, the total of all your bids should equal 100. The set left blank is for you to fill out with players not listed elsewhere (all players from your league are eligible for your team, not just the ones listed). You bid on each set of players according to how important you feel that position is. For example, if you feel that a shortstop is the most important player on a team and you want to ensure yourself of a good one, you would use a higher proportion of your bid points (maybe 15 or 17) on this group of players. Of course, remember, the more you bid on one group, the fewer bid points you will have available for other positions. Every group must have a bid of at least 1 associated with it (whole number bids only), and the total of your bids should equal 100.

Secondly, you will find a space next to each player's name. This is for you to rank each player in that group, first through ninth, according to how much you would like to have him playing for you in the upcoming season(s). Each player in the group should be ranked differently; one first, one second, one third, etc. So, a completed draft list should have every player on the list with a number next to his name (1-9) and a bid at the top of each group, the sum total of which should equal 100. This drafting method provides a fair and equitable draft in which all teams have equal opportunities for any and all of the big league players.

Once we have received 8 draft lists from compatible owners in the same division (American or National) we will hold your draft. The owner who has placed the highest bid on a group of players will receive first pick from that group, the owner who has placed the second highest bid for that group will get the second pick and so on for each of the eight picks. Ties between owners who make the same bid for the same player in a group will be broken on a rotating basis to ensure the fairest drafting process. If you have the first pick in a group, you will be awarded the player you ranked first, the owner who picks second will be awarded the player he ranked first unless that player is already taken, he would then receive the player he ranked second. This continues with each owner receiving his highest ranked available player from each group. One player from each group will go undrafted (8 owners, 9 players) and become eligible to be claimed off waivers beginning with week one line-ups.

At the conclusion of the draft you will have a team roster of 27 players. We will post on the website the roster of your players, as well as the rosters of the other teams in your league, with the names, addresses and phone numbers and e-mail addresses of all owners. This initial roster also includes a summary of the draft, including all the bids that the other owners used in assembling their squads, so you can study and compare each team's drafting strategy!

baseball league consists of two 8 team divisions, made up of players from either the National or American leagues. Players from the two leagues are not mixed, because they are statistically independent (with the minor effect of inter-league play) and use different rules - the DH. Combining the leagues would also result in an unrealistic "all star" roster. Where is the challenge in deciding whether to play or replace an injured Todd Helton with Mark Teixeira? Our game demands a knowledge of the journeymen and rookies as well as the superstars.

Boxscore offers two kinds of leagues. Annual leagues start over each season with a new draft. Continuing leagues start out with a draft as 3 year leagues, and often are then changed to a perpetual league based on a vote of the owners.

Owners who like to plan long term, often drafting prospects still in AA ball, or even from the college draft, enjoy the continuing leagues. These leagues are also favored by a group of owners from the same city or company who want to compete over the years with the same group.

Continuing league teams keep 17 players from year to year (plus up to four players with limited major league playing time). Off season drafts are held for re-entry of non-reserved players and free agents coming over from the other league, providing for "hot stove league" trading and a year long baseball experience.

The Boxscore season is divided into two halves, each 12 weeks long. The Boxscore week typically runs from Thursday through Wednesday, although there are some “long weeks” with 8 or 9 days to account for fitting 26 weeks of play into 24 Boxscore weeks. Owners are required to submit their weekly lineup and transactions by noon on the first day of the week (usually Thursday). The results for the prior weeks play are computed and posted to the website by Thursday afternoon. On Friday, the weekly transactions are processed and the resulting new rosters are posted to the website.

Weekly transactions include moving players on or off the four man reserve roster, trades, and up to two claims per week. Any player in organized baseball can who is not on a Boxscore roster in your league is available for claim. Trades can be made anytime during the first eight weeks of each half, and are proposed, negotiated and completed using the trade module on the Boxscore website. There are no additional fees or charges of any kind for trades or claims.

baseball is designed to be as much like real baseball as possible, given the limitations of any statistical simulation. It requires you to think to win! The key features include:

• Head to head competition: Each week, your team will play 7 games, one against every other team in your league.
• Weekly stats: each week, player stats for the prior week only are used. Your team stats are compiled from your individual player stats.
• The batting order: Each week you submit two batting orders. Each must be used for a minimum of two games. They must have at least a different catcher, infielder and outfielder/DH. This mirrors the way players are really used, and forces you to have roster depth. You control which batting order is used against each opposing team. Most owners would use their weaker batting order against the weakest opponents.
• Batting order position: Individual player stats are adjusted depending on their batting order position. For an example, a stolen base is worth more for a leadoff man than a cleanup hitter, while an RBI is the reverse. So to maximize Chone Figgins value, you would hit him first and Vlad Guerrero 3rd or 4th.
• Pitching rotation: Each team lists 5 starters, 2 of whom pitch twice. You control which pitcher starts against which opposing team. You might use Roy Oswalt against your key competitor, while saving Aaron Harang for the last place team.
• Bullpen: Three RP's are required. The closer gets more credit for saves, while the long man gets more for strikeouts.
• Substitutions: If one of your starters does not qualify for the week (0AB's or IP's) a player is substituted from your bench, depending on how you listed your bench players.
• Offensive stats used are; at bats, hits, runs, total bases, homeruns, RBIs, stolen bases and errors.
• Pitching stats used are; innings pitched, earned runs, win losses, shutouts, complete games, strikeouts, walks, and saves.
• Click here to see the weekly lineup form
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Baseball is a copyrighted game, and we chose not to publish all the scoring algorithms on the Internet. However, we will give you a summary here, and provide full scoring details upon request.

Boxscore scoring is divided into 9 separate categories (called innings – where did that terminology come from?). In addition to the normal stats found in your newspaper, there are also some stats developed for the Boxscore game and given unique names:

Speed Index: Stolen bases minus caught stealing
Power Index: Total bases + Homeruns
Decision Point Index: For starting pitchers, uses games won, lost, complete games and shutouts.
K Index: For SP’s K index is K – BB. For relievers K Index is IP + K - H – BB.
Fireman Index: For RP’s uses wins, losses, saves, and appearances.

Each set of stats is developed for your entire lineup by applying the adjustment factors based on lineup position to each individual player in your lineup and then summing them to determine the team totals. Then the team stats are compared and the resulting runs are computed. Offensive stats generally score runs for your team while pitching and defensive stats subtract runs from your opponent. Here are the stats used for each inning:

Inning 1: Speed Index
Inning 2: Batting Average
Inning 3: Power Index
Inning 4: RBI’s
Inning 5: Combination of runs scored and your opponents SP K Index
Inning 6: Combination of your errors and your opponents RP K Index
Inning 7: SP Decision Point Index
Inning 8: SP IP and ERA
Inning 9: RP Fireman Index
Inning 10: (Only if tied after 9) RP ERA
Inning 11: (Only if tied after 10) RP IP
Inning 12: (Only if tied after 11) Batting Average

Click here to see a typical weekly results package with the detailed lineups and game scoring for all games in a typical week for a typical league.

Each week we also publish a newsletter with General Information about the various Baseball Leagues. Click here for a sample Newsletter

after the conclusion of the second half season, its Boxscore Playoff time! The winner of the first half American Division squares off with the winner of the second half American Division in the American League Divisional Playoffs while the National Division winners do the same. If two or more teams should finish with identical records at the end of the regular half season, then the team with the best record in head to head games wins the division (the secondary tie breaker being scoring in head to head games).

The Boxscore Divisional Playoffs are a best of seven game matchup that is based on each team's designated weekly team statistical indexes. It goes like this. Each owner designates which seven different batting orders he wishes to use (from the half season his team won) for each of the seven games; such as week 5Ðbatting order #2 for game 1, week 9 batting order #1 for game 2, etc. Teams must use batting orders from different weeks for each of the seven games. In the example above week 5 batting order #1 and week 9 batting order #2 may not be used for any of the remaining playoff games. Owners also designate which week's (only one) starting rotation and bullpen stats he wants to use. Starting pitcher #1 will start games 1 and 6, starting pitcher #2 will start games 2 and 7, starting pitchers #3, 4 and 5 will start games 3, 4 and 5 respectively. The bullpen will be used for all 7 games. Again, the starting rotation and bullpen used in the Divisional Playoffs (and Boxscore World Series) will all be from the same designated week, while individual batting orders are designated from throughout the half season. Game results are computed from the scoring tables in the same manner as regular season games.

The winners of the AL Divisional Playoffs and the NL Divisional Playoffs meet in the Boxscore World Series. The Boxscore World Series works in the same manner as the Divisional Playoffs with teams then choosing stats from any weeks from the entire season (both first half and second half).

(Click on AVAILABLE TEAMS for current team availability, rosters and fees) Fees are usually discounted somewhat, depending on the time of the year and the quality of the team.

Owners may pay for their team(s) before the draft or before the first week of the season (for continuing leagues). There are NO team set-up charges or fees for waiver claims, trades, line-up changes, off-season drafts, etc. Boxscore Bucks may be used to pay any fees.

started in Boxscore depends on the time of the year. To draft a new team, get started in March with the draft sheet. Click here to register your team and fill out the draft sheet.

To take over a team at any time of the year, click on AVAILABLE TEAMS to see the availability, rosters and fees for teams needing new owners.

If you have any questions please contact the Commissioner directly by e-mail (Boxscore@bellsouth.net) or by toll free phone (888-833-9451).