ESPN for roto management

[alleyoops]

I've run my 2 leagues on Onroto the past several years, and we're very happy with it. However, I've used ESPN for 2 football leagues, and for auctions in football and one of the baseball leagues, and have been very happy with that, as well. ESPN is free, which is an advantage. Their support cannot possibly be as strong as Onroto's, but I suspect our support needs would be minimal.

Does anyone have any comments - pro or con - on ESPN for roto? Both leagues are 5x5 mixed keeper, one uses FAAB the other uses waivers.

[Captain Hook]

Nothing but good things to say here for ESPN......as long as it will accomodate what your league needs

[Todd Zola]

However their Insider service is a bunch of hacks

[AllstonRockCity]

I've used ESPN several times for several different league formats over the years. Sometimes it worked great, others, not so much. It all boils down to how 'quirky' your league is. If its a completely standard league than ESPN will be more than sufficient. If you start doing 'weird' stuff, then you might need to look elsewhere. If you do use ESPN my biggest piece of advice would be to reserve your draft/auction ASAP, they fill up fast over there. When half the fantasy players in America use the same servers, they get maxed out quickly. For example my football league drafted at the end of August and I reserved that around Memorial Day. 2 Weeks later or so, that day was no longer available.

[mjlewis]

hi Al! Are you playing with us again this year?

In my experience ESPN is pretty good as long as your league has normal-ish rules and as long as you don't go too deep into the minor leagues. as a data point, from August of last year:

players available:
Jarrod Parker
Mike Trout
Dee Gordon
Trayvon Robinson
Josh Vitters

players not available:
Eric Hosmer
Donavan Tate
Julio Teheran

- Mike

[alleyoops]

I've used ESPN several times for several different league formats over the years. Sometimes it worked great, others, not so much. It all boils down to how 'quirky' your league is. If its a completely standard league than ESPN will be more than sufficient. If you start doing 'weird' stuff, then you might need to look elsewhere. If you do use ESPN my biggest piece of advice would be to reserve your draft/auction ASAP, they fill up fast over there. When half the fantasy players in America use the same servers, they get maxed out quickly. For example my football league drafted at the end of August and I reserved that around Memorial Day. 2 Weeks later or so, that day was no longer available.

I've actually used ESPN for the auction in one of my leagues the last 2 years (then entered the results at Onroto), and for the auction in football this year. The auction software is great and I can't believe it is free. I used ESPN for the season in football, also, and found it more than adequate.

I'd love to enter an auction date, but it currently won't let me. Not sure what's up with that - maybe they haven't opened up dates for 2011 yet. The owners haven't yet agreed on a date at this point, but when we do, I'll try to get it entered.

[alleyoops]

hi Al! Are you playing with us again this year?

In my experience ESPN is pretty good as long as your league has normal-ish rules and as long as you don't go too deep into the minor leagues. as a data point, from August of last year:

players available:
Jarrod Parker
Mike Trout
Dee Gordon
Trayvon Robinson
Josh Vitters

players not available:
Eric Hosmer
Donavan Tate
Julio Teheran

- Mike

Thanks, Mike. It's a 14 team mixed league with a 6-player bench, so NONE of the guys you listed were close to being on a roster last year. Rules are very similar to DDRL, except use FAAB instead of waivers for adds, and bench is smaller. Sounds like we'd be OK.

Not returning to DDRL as I can't make the in-person draft. If it goes to online, or they can accommodate me being on the phone, I'm in, but I doubt that will happen. We have an opening in the other league, if you're interested.

[Milnertime]

I've used ESPN several times for several different league formats over the years. Sometimes it worked great, others, not so much. It all boils down to how 'quirky' your league is. If its a completely standard league than ESPN will be more than sufficient. If you start doing 'weird' stuff, then you might need to look elsewhere. If you do use ESPN my biggest piece of advice would be to reserve your draft/auction ASAP, they fill up fast over there. When half the fantasy players in America use the same servers, they get maxed out quickly. For example my football league drafted at the end of August and I reserved that around Memorial Day. 2 Weeks later or so, that day was no longer available.

I've actually used ESPN for the auction in one of my leagues the last 2 years (then entered the results at Onroto), and for the auction in football this year. The auction software is great and I can't believe it is free. I used ESPN for the season in football, also, and found it more than adequate.

I'd love to enter an auction date, but it currently won't let me. Not sure what's up with that - maybe they haven't opened up dates for 2011 yet. The owners haven't yet agreed on a date at this point, but when we do, I'll try to get it entered.

I think they roll out the new Fantasy Baseball league pages and stuff in the middle of February. They take all of the old ones down for a few days and then when it's back up you can set your draft dates and such.

[deansdaddy]

One drawback to consider when choosing ESPN is possible firewall issues for your owners/players at work.

ESPN is unfortunately on the hit list of a lot of corporations and you will want to make sure that the guys in your league won't have issues with this.

Otherwise I think ESPN is very capable. Draft software is a plus - good and easy to use.

The league page is nice with nice features for the commish to post weekly articles and a good message board function if your league likes to talk trash a bit.

Downside is I have never loved their free agent interface - and they are often notoriously slow at DL ing injured players.

It has already been stated that you can be too exotic over there as well.

[alleyoops]

Thanks for all of the feedback. I think ESPN will be a good fit for us, as we have a fairly simplistic rules set - i.e. DL doesn't matter, minors status doesn't matter, standard 5x5 scoring, FAAB for free agents. We do limit keepers to 3 years kept, and I assume there's a way to track that online, but if not we can do it offline.

We have used the ESPN auction feature now for 2 years, and that has been great. Support/response is the main area of concern, but the auction experience has been very positive and smooth. I am a big fan of Onroto, but the price savings with ESPN and not having to load rosters after the auction are significant pluses.