Most fantasy baseball players like to imagine themselves in the role of Brian Cashman, others in the seat of Billy Beane, but whoever it is you idolize there is one thing they have in common, they are Major League Baseball General Managers. We all build our rosters, manage our salary caps, and plan out our keepers, yet there is always something missing from the experience that leaves us feeling short of a real general manager. Game Day Ritual is the ambitious project that attempts to blur the line between fantasy and reality even further. For the first time ever, you pursue players in a living free agent market where the quality and timing of your offers is the difference between landing Randy Johnson or Jeff Suppan. You get to build rapport with agents, improve offers to players on the fence and extend multi year contracts and no trade clauses. The only thing missing is phone calls from the agent at 2am to tell you his player wants his own island in the Bahamas as part of the deal. This method of roster building is as real as it gets. The following is the account of the Rotochamps Brothers experience in the mock Free Agent Blitz at rotochamps.com.

Preparation for the Blitz

In regular fantasy baseball we always say that the key to any draft is preparation. Well multiply its importance by about 100 and you are getting into the ballpark of the preparation required to have a smooth Free Agent Blitz. The more work you do up front, the more you can focus on the quick decisions in the live market. This game has a different scoring system than other fantasy games so you need to prepare a custom cheatsheet for this game. You also need to have some plan for how to allocate your money going in.

Wave 1 : Initiation

We really did not know what to expect from our competition so we threw out a lot of bids. We tried to make sure we were competitive with our initial offers so we could grow our GM rank, and be in the conversation on a lot of players.

The interface is set up so you don’t have to be glued to your computer for the entire 10 days. You are only supposed to have to check in a couple times a day. Good Luck with that! I couldn’t stop checking the market, checking on my offers, waiting to see if someone outbid us. About 30 minutes into it I realized I am going to need to find a GDRA (Game Day Ritual Anonymous) group for help with my sickness. Everyone in the draft was the same way. People started planning their excuses to call in sick to work so they could stare at the screen waiting to see what would happen next. We started to get concerned when we had $88 million in contract offers on the table all of which were being seriously considered by the agents. Perhaps we had bid on too many players? Thankfully a number of other owners outbid us and we finished the round with a nice core of players at a manageable price.

Wave 2 : Inside Scoop

After spending 40% of our budget on 20% of our active roster in the first wave of the blitz we knew we would have to start looking for some bargains. Fortunately we really developed a strong GM rating in the first wave and so we had access to a lot more information in the second wave. We started the wave knowing every team that was bidding against us. By the end of the round, thanks to some savy negotiating, we had elevated our GM rating to the point where not only could we see who was bidding against us, we knew where we stood in the negotiations. Having this information is a huge advantage. We bid on 14 players but unfortunately we were only able to land 4 of them, and not at the savings we were hoping for. We found ourselves sucked into an expensive Ben Sheets signing and also could not resist the lure of Miguel Cabrera and Mark Teixiera. Lew Ford turned out to be a steal as we got him for his minimum bid. All in all we like how our team is shaping up, though we certainly have more expensive pitching than we expected to.

Wave 3 : Such Know-It-Alls

We entered Wave 3 with only $33.5 million left to somehow get 16 more players for our active roster. This was going to be a challenge but at least we had the power of full knowledge on our side. At this point our GM rating was so high not only did we know who we were competing with for players, we even knew what contract they offered. We went on a bargain shopping spree to start filling out our roster. There was a lot less competition for players at this point in the draft as everyone was bargain hunting. We got several players at the minimum asking price because no one could afford to bid them up

Wave 4 : Blue Light Special

For those keeping track, we only had $18 million for 10 players left. Ahh but we are forgetting one factor, we need some money for in season moves. Our goal was to have $5-7 million left after the FAB. This means we really only have about $1 million per player left to spend. We are also running short on contract years to offer at this point. It was time for us to load up on minimum salary players to round out our team. After spending so much on the foundation of our pitching staff we needed a bunch of cheap pitchers. We were also looking for cheap multi-position hitters for our bench. Our GM rating again became a deciding factor as the players we were bidding on did not deserve more than what we were offering and if anyone else offered the same deal, the player chose us. We ended up being very successful at this as we picked up 8 bargain players in this wave.

Wave 5: End Game

The final wave was here and most teams were trying to find that last minimum salary player for their bench or that rookie SP for the alternate starter spot. That was what we expected to be doing as well, but a surprising thing happened. Something that would never happen in a regular fantasy draft or auction. We acquired 3 significant starters for our offense at bargain prices. We were able to land Jeff Kent, Melvin Mora and Hideki Matsui in the final wave at their minimum requested contracts!! What a steal! We were shocked to actually land them at this price that that is exactly what happened. These three contracts were probably the steal of the entire draft. That was such a great way to end our Free Agent Blitz.

Final Analysis

I have to say this was the most exciting way to build a roster I have ever experienced. This game keeps you glued to your computer screen, not out of necessity, but out of addiction. The interface was exceptional and allows you to manage a lot of information in as few clicks as possible. While the game sounds overwhelming we were able to set comfortable with the interface within the first day we had access to it prior to the FAB even starting. We came away very happy with our roster, though many teams probably felt the same way with it only being an 8 team league. We cannot wait to get to play with the rest of the features of this game. The following is a break down of our money spent and resulting active roster:

Roster Breakdown

IF YOU WANT TO FEEL LIKE A REAL GM YOU HAVE TO GET IN THIS GAME !!!!