Baseball N. Beers

As you can no doubt see, we have switched to our summer whites in connection with our promised site redesign. After all, baseball season is approaching full swing, and the Mets and Nationals will face one another for the first time tonight (7:10 pm ET; check your local listings).

I thought I might take this opportunity to introduce readers to one of my most cherished, albeit embarrassing, pastimes: statistical simulation fantasy baseball. Before you reject offhand that this might be an enjoyable diversion, allow me briefly to make my case.

First of all, conventional fantasy baseball is out of the question for me. Success in such leagues requires slavish attention to the ebb and flow of Major League Baseball. I'm happy to root for my favorite team, but I'd rather not lose sleep over Aubrey Huff's batting average. In addition, fantasy baseball is usually a pay service, and why pay for something that should be free?

By contrast, stat-sim baseball involves entirely fictional players, and can therefore be enjoyed year-round. At SimDynasty, managers set draft preferences prior to the start of the season (or, in the pay-per-play "Dynasty" mode, the start of the career), and within 48 hours the team is set and ready to go. Each manager can then set his lineup, pitching rotation, and strategy settings before the first digital "pitch" is thrown.

Now, this system is not without its disadvantages. For one thing, there is no real-time or visual component to the games, which can either be viewed as box scores or "played" inning by inning as a kind of primitive gamecast. And while there is plenty of variety to the games -- even the best players can fall into slumps, and bench-warmers can come through as heroes -- there remains the fact that everything is determined by numbers being churned out by a computer.

But the game still has plenty to recommend it. Each team plays three games per day (at 4 am, 2 pm, and 7 pm), so a 162-game season breezes by in under two months. It is always 1950 in this simulated world, with two 8-team leagues and no designated hitter. Throughout the season, top-performing players from both leagues are assigned to all-star teams, MVP and Cy Young races, and so on (with "votes" changing day-to-day based on performance). The top two teams from each league advance to a league championship series, which is followed, of course, by a world series.

Best of all, managers are able to change their imaginary players' names for the first week of the season. (I generally prefer to leave my players be; where else but simulated baseball could you have players named "Neifi Squires," "Jose Skaff," or "Armando Farmer"?) Managers can also arrange trades with other managers, but this is difficult in the free single-season leagues, where many managers abandon their teams early in the season. There is also a waiver wire, a full minor league roster, and random injuries.

I'll admit, SimDynasty isn't for everyone. Inattention to a team can cause one to plummet quickly in the standings. Given the playoff format and the formulaic nature of the matchups, a team that falls behind early in the season is unlikely to make up much ground. However, it's a great way to avoid doing work, and provides a moment of happiness (or depression) three times a day.

Right now, my team is hanging onto second place in the A.L. but is 14 games out of first, with just 53 games left in the season. Left fielder Hugh Thornton is batting .338 with 13 homeruns and 73 RBI, but his numbers have fallen off sharply from the beginning of the season, when he looked like a shoo-in for MVP. My closer’s name is Baseball N. Beers. LET'S GO, CLEVELAND!

Word to the wise: with 53 games to go in the current season, the next season won't start for three weeks. If you sign up for a team now, you'll only get to play a 53-game season. The other option is to take over an abandoned team in mid-season, but you won't know whether the league you're joining started at the beginning of the 162 games or was created later. Still, with a free service I think such minor inconveniences are tolerable.