Some people love rotisserie baseball, the daily grind of 162 games over 180 or so days just cannot be matched for those folks (count me in that group). Others think that's an impossibly long period of time and they just cannot hang with all the twists and turns it takes to manage a club over that length of time so they go the daily route, pick a team for one day, and then move on. What about a hybrid approach where you draft your team as if it was a daily league but the game lasted all season long. Interested? Thought you might be. RotoDerby has developed just such a game for the 2014 season. Here's what the deal is.

The game is called Fantasy Longball Derby.

The goal is simple and I'll lay it out in what follows. I'll also push you to make sure you read to the end of the piece where you can get special info about how to sign up with a discount and be able to take me on directly (Jeff Mans is also in the league so you can actually have a chance to take both of us loudmouths down).

ROSTER

Put together a roster of 10 players (six infielders at any infield position and four outfielders). This roster locks when registration ends and that's your group for the entire season. One and done. No messy waiver-wire to worry about or anything like that in-season. Simple. It takes like 10 minutes to set up a team and you're off and running.

Which players can you roster? Besides the breakdown of six infielders and four outfielders... here is the answer directly from
RotoDerby.

In Longball Derby, if the upper limit is 53 HRs and the lower limit is 13 homers, only players who fall in that range based on prior year’s stats will be available for the Derby contests. This injects more skill into the game as you must build your team using players within these limits while staying under the Home Run Stat Cap.

There's a further twist. You're team can only have 220 total homers hit based on 2013 numbers (the 10 players on your squad cannot have hit more than 220 homers last season). That means you will have to think long and hard about whether you want major league home run leader Chris Davis on your club because his total of 53 homers would amount to 24 percent of your club's allowable total even though he will only take up a tenth of your roster (one of ten spots). It will be wise to find those batters who maybe underperformed last season and could see a big increase in 2014 (remember, only players that hit 13 or more homers are eligible so that means no Ryan Braun, who hit nine homers, or George Springer who didn't play in the big leagues last year).

SCORING

What type of scoring are we talking about? We're not doing 5x5, 6x6, 7x7 or anything exotic. As you probably gleaned from the title of the piece, the RotoDerby game focuses on home runs. However, it's not just a home run  game as there are two additional categories to consider – runs batted in and strikeouts. Here's the simply scoring format.

5 points for a Home Run
1 point for an RBI
(-1) point for a strikeout

How simple is that?

LINEUP

Remember earlier how I said you only do one “draft”? That is true. You might be thinking – but what happens if I take Chris Davis injures his his elbow in early April, then my team is hosed. Well you are for April, but RotoDerby resets the standings each month meaning your April might be shot, but you still have five months left to make your mark. That also means that there are six chances to win – one for every month of the season.

WINNINGS

Depending on which league you enter, you could win upwards of $5,000 a month. There are three derby options: $60K Longball Derby, $15K Longball Derby and the $1K Longball Derby – Free (there is more info on the free one below where you can take on me).

How do you like the sound of that?

MY TEAM

I can't tell you my whole team, if I did then you would of course be able to match me and win like I will be doing. Instead I'll just give a few quick hitting facts about my squad.

My team does not include Chris Davis. Too costly and too many strikeouts.
My team does not includes Pedro Alvarez. Same concerns as with Davis.
Paul Goldschmidt, everyone's darling this year? Not on my squad.

I do have two men on my club that hit 30 homers last season. One has a first and last name that start with the same initial while the other is the best hitter in baseball.

I've got an MVP catcher. I've also got his teammate who is nicknamed after a zoo animal.

Am I saying too much? Probably, but at least I'm being moderately interesting while doing it.

All told I have two 35 homer hitters from 2013 on my club. I also have five of my ten players set as fellas that didn't even record 20 homers last season. Bargains baby.


MY CONTEST - Longball Derby Challenge - Beat the Experts

You can find my team, yes I'm in the contest, under the simple team name of RayFlowers. Wanted to make sure you could all find me so I didn't name my team HackWilsonRocks or anything crazy like that.

That name is also important, because it's also the special promo code: RayFlowers

If you enter that code in at the RotoDerby link I just posted you will get a 10 percent discount oif you join one of the pay leagues (here is the link to sign up fo take me on). How about that? Don't ever say that we at FantasyAlarm don't hook you up.

So have at it folks. Choose that team. Set that lineup. Let 'er rip.

I look forward to many a long ball in 2014.