Now it’s time to finish league setup instructions (save salary settings), with a dive into the misc settings, the powerful commissioner drop-down and all options. Be sure to check out parts one and two on this if you haven’t!
As with all commissioner settings and league setup/running you start with the commissioner dropdown. Here we’ll still go to league setup – misc.
Setting Up You Fantrax Baseball League
Keeper/Dynasty
The keeper and dynasty tab is first. If you’re a redraft league the re-draft radio button will already be on. If you want you can still set it up if you want to allow draft picks to be traded here. While this is of course less common in redraft leagues, if you want to have trades turned on during the draft, you can set that up here!
If you’re a true dynasty league, that is you keep all of the players every year, then the dynasty radio button will be click, and you’ll again have the option to trade draft picks, but this time you should not only set the number of rounds that are trade-able (which will vary if the league is a new league or ongoing), and the number of years out that you can trade picks for. Fantrax allows you to go up to 10 years (anything above 1 year will trigger premium). It is important to note too, that 1 means the future year. So if you created or turned this on right now, it would allow you to trade picks for your 2022 season and your 2023 season if it was set to 1 year.
However, if you have a keeper league the options on this page expand as seen here:
You will set the number of keepers. Please note this is a maximum – the system will stop a team from going over 55 in this case but not under – and indeed for the league I took this from that is good since not everyone has the same number of keepers.
If your league has rules on separate numbers of keepers for minor/major leaguers you can also set the max minor leaguers here. Then set the deadline. This will cause there to be a keeper admin drop-down under the team tab for teams to select their keepers. We’ll see under all options later the final steps in keeper selection. You then again see the pick trading options that you can set up.
Tiebreakers
Next we have the tiebreakers tab. Please please set this up before the season starts or it will look pretty shady if you do it in season.
The options will look slightly different if your league is roto or H2H.
For roto it will look something like this:
Set your order using the options:
- Ahead in more scoring categories
- 1st place in more scoring categories
- Ahead in a specific scoring category that you set
Personally, I just use the first two. If a team is tied at the end of the season who is ahead in more categories seems a good check, if that is tied than first in more works. I’ve yet to see a tie that that wouldn’t break in my leagues.
Now in a H2H league there are far more opportunities to have a tie so you’ll have more types to set up:
Standings tiebreaker is first – make sure you have it set up – these are the options:
- Head-to-head record vs. all teams tied with – this means the wins, losses, and ties are added up only for the tied teams played each other to create a sort of mini standings for those tied teams to find the rank for those teams.
- Next, you have the best division record for the entire season (if you use divisions)
- Most wins in the entire season
- Most total category points for the entire season
- Or just random.
Since most H2H have playoffs and this can impact seeds and byes – make sure this is set up.
I don’t use matchup tiebreakers since ties are fine and I use all category scoring not most categories for my H2H leagues (ie you win-lose-tie each category not just a single win and loss). Even if you do the one win or loss approach if you’re ok with ties you don’t need to use this – if you don’t want any ties then your only option is in case of a tie the home team wins. This is the same for category tiebrekaers
Finally – playoff tiebreakers are very important. For this your options are:
- Highest seed
- Head to head record vs. all teams tied with
- Home team gets win
I always go with the highest seed since I think a regular-season record should matter come a tie in the playoffs. The second option works like head to head record vs. above. Finally, home team (which generally is the highest seed) is the final option.
Constitution/bylaws
A good league should have a written-out set of rules beyond simply the system rules – to clarify intent and other minutiae that may not be in the system. You can either have the rules here or, as I do, post the link to the google doc with the constitution in it in the text box.
Chat
You can limit how far back the chat goes and some other settings – I tend to ignore this since the default settings work for me.
Misc
The misc of the misc. But don’t ignore this page! I always turn on allow public to view league. What this means is you can easily share a draft board. It also means that if you’re using a google sheet or something of that sort to pull in data then it can access it. I use this for a variety of things in my work and research
Ok
Now for the other options under the Commissioner dropdown.
Commissioner Messages
Just like it says – you can send a message/post a message to the league.
Team Administration
On this page, there are a few things you can do.
If your league has max claims, either by season or week, you can adjust the number there by team if that should become necessary. If your league uses FAAB you can also adjust remaining claim budget. Generally, neither of these need to be touched unless something odd happened or if you need to adjust the rule for only a few teams for something like the playoffs.
Team Permissions
As you can see here – you can enable/disable certain abilities for teams:
Team permission pics
This should only be used sparingly, but some places you might need to do it:
- If you want to disable a manager who is sabotaging the league from doing certain actions as you figure something out.
- If someone is being abusive on league chats you can lock that ability.
If league rules predicate that some teams can’t trade, claim or drop players while others still can you can do that here. (Please note that under transactions – claim drop you can turn on/off the ability for non-playoff teams to make claims as covered in the previous part of this series).
Finally:
All Options
Execute keeper rollover – this is for once your keeper deadline has past – IT WILL NOT HAPPEN AUTOMATICALLY. You should double-check your teams have correctly selected all of their keepers and then you can process this. Once you execute this you cannot undo it – our support team most likely can fix the error, but please just double check before hitting execute.
Request new players – this will let you contact support for the addition of new players (in baseball and hockey), and if you send them the right source mentioned on that page then they will get them added promptly.
Process free agent claims/waivers – this will cause all pending claims to process. This should only be used in cases where the system doesn’t function correctly or if you need to process them earlier than planned for some reason. Don’t do this without communicating to your league unless you want a potential mutiny.
Recalculate fees – this is referring to actual fees for joining the league and if your league has monetary charges for trades etc – you can use this if you think the numbers are wrong.
Recalculate free agent budgets or claims left does the same double check on teams remaining FAAB or on the number of claims a team has left for the season.
Undo draft (which will not always appear) lets you do just that – tread carefully here and please contact support if you need help with something like this. It’s easier for our great team to fix something than to have to undo a mess if you accidentally click the wrong thing and make a mess of your league.
Reset leagues and rosters – this pretty much gives you a clean slate of a league – but with the same settings. Don’t hit this button unless you really really want to hit this button.
Position eligibility override – you shouldn’t need this in a baseball league since you can customize your eligibility settings, but if there is a certain player you think is wrong but they aren’t per the settings you have because you want those to be that way for all other players, then you can go in and edit their position here. Please note that once a player has a their positions overridden any changes that should happen per your league settings or that Fantrax changes will not take effect in your league.
Player Status Override lets you flip a player from waivers to free agent or vice a versa.
Override Player Stats lets you change the stats from a game. Do not use this unless you have some sort of odd rules where this sort of adjustment is necessary.
Enable/Disable Commissioner lets you add co-commissioners (or remove them) if others in the league should have commissioner power. Please note this lets them do everything you can do EXCEPT change primary commissioner.
Illegal roster override – if you have a roster that is illegal per your settings, but for some reason should be counted as legal, you can go in here and click on the period you want to get it to be legal – or in the reverse – make it illegal if it should have been and wasn’t marked as such.
Scoring/standings adjustment lets you manually change the scores or standings if whatever is done per your league settings is for some reason “wrong.”
Treasurer Admin – This one is important. Here, if you use Fantrax treasurer, at the end of the season go here to issue payouts and, if your league roles funds into the following season, you can do that here as well once you’ve created the next season’s league (and at the same time as you issue payouts – it must all be done together).
Override default champion – if the playoffs don’t automatically declare the right champion on the home page banner you can change that here.
And finally – delete this league – if the league is folding, or was created in error – you can delete it here.
Thanks for reading! While I readily acknowledge this is not the most scintillating of articles, it is hopefully a helpful resource for you as you set up your Fantrax baseball (or other sport) league!
Fantrax was one of the fastest-growing fantasy sites of 2020, and we’re not stopping now. With multi-team trades, designated commissioner/league managers, and drag/drop easy click methods, Fantrax is sure to excite the serious fantasy sports fan – sign up now for a free year at Fantrax.com.