PennantChase.com Free Baseball Sim League News

Monthly freerolls with Draft Street courtesy of Pennant Chase!

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 09:33:51 -0700

I'm excited to announce a partnership with Draft Street which will bring a freeroll fantasy draft to Pennant Chase users every month! This was a popular feature when we did it last year, and due to the feedback we've agreed to bring you a free game every month. The game this month is on Friday, May 17, and the link to the game is here: http://www.draftstreet.com/l/MLB_new.aspx?AID=891&subid=May+Freeroll+post&pid=307 There are cash prices for 1st-3rd place every game. Encourage your friends to play because both Draft Street and Pennant Chase benefit when new people sign up. Please note, Pennant Chase is not affiliated with Draft Street in any way. Here's is some more info on Draft Street and the freeroll: One Day FREE Fantasy Contest – $300 in cash prizes If you haven’t heard yet, there’s a new way to play fantasy baseball that turns the season long grind into quick one night leagues. And the best part is that you can win cash every single day. You draft a team for one night and get paid out as soon as the games end that night. DraftStreet.com is at the forefront of this new trend in the fantasy world and is giving us a great promotion to kick off the MLB season: a FREE one-day fantasy league with $300 in prizes. http://www.draftstreet.com/l/MLB_new.aspx?AID=891&subid=May+Freeroll+post&pid=307 This free contest will be Pick 'em style drafting. The way Pick 'Em leagues work is you have 8 tiers of players and each tier will have players to choose from. All you have to do is select 1 player from each tier. There’s absolutely nothing to lose and it takes 5 minutes to build a team. You can adjust your roster up until the contest starts on Friday April 19th at 7:05 ET at which time your rosters will lock and the Live Scoreboard will be available. Sign up for free and join the $300 Freeroll on DraftStreet.com. http://www.draftstreet.com/l/MLB_new.aspx?AID=891&subid=May+Freeroll+post&pid=307

Introducing the newest Pennant Chase feature: sandbox leagues

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 21:58:59 -0700

I’ve always wanted to leverage the Pennant Chase sim engine to offer more of a solo-player experience with the option to manage your own games, much like the classic sim games of the past, such as MicroLeague or Earl Weaver Baseball. Well, the goal has finally been reached. I’m excited to announce a cool new feature: Sandbox Leagues. These leagues give you a "sandbox" to play with however you choose, with the super-cool ability to manage any game on your schedule. Sandbox leagues give you the full suite of commissioner tools to construct and run your league however you choose, but they cannot be made public, and wins and losses don’t count toward your "Custom League" user records. Sandbox leagues are truly meant for a solo experience, or maybe a league with a few of your roommates. (If you want to play a head-to-head game, you have to be on the same computer – it’s not a network-enabled game.) I have always vowed to keep everything as free as possible on Pennant Chase, but I have to make an exception with Sandbox Leagues. They require a $20 donation per year. I have to know people are serious about actually using their sandbox league. I can’t simply grant a league to anyone. I suspect these leagues are only going to appeal to a small subset of the Pennant Chase community, but I think anyone who has been looking for something like this will have a blast with it. I have managed a few games myself already, and it’s a lot of fun. I’m excited to play through a full schedule with my beloved Chicago White Sox and see what kind of record I can manage them to. If you’d like to see a demo of a sandbox league, watch the video below.

Site hits record number of visitors and pageviews!

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:14:31 -0700

Just wanted to share some awesome news - Pennant Chase hit a new record number of visitors and page views yesterday, January 28th, 2013! We had over 3200 visits logged, with over 95,000 page views, surpassing July 11 of 2012, which saw about 3100 visitors and 85,000 page views. We dropped off in traffic during the latter months of 2012, so it's simply amazing that we set new records just 28 days into the new year! Thanks again to everyone who makes this such a great site, all our awesome donors who help keep the site running, and those of you who continue to offer great suggestions and enhancements.

State of Pennant Chase, end of 2012

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 11:51:40 -0700

Hello and happy holidays. First off, congrats to joemcg who will finish with the most Auto League wins in 2012, edging out long-timer rfb60609. We shall see who takes the coveted crown in 2013! As I mentioned in my update last April, this year was the busiest of my career. Because of that, I feel like I haven't been able spend as much time on Pennant Chase as I would have liked. But it was still a great year. Last April we set site records for traffic. The 2012 MLB stats were imported faster than any year before. And thanks to your feedback, there were a lot of great improvements to the website this year, continuing to make this one of the best sim baseball experiences available - and it's still FREE! Unfortunately, after we had such great traffic in April, it dropped off considerably for the rest of the year. I am not sure why, but we lost a lot of great regular visitors, and some of our best commissioners. In addition, the revenue from ads dropped off a lot in the second half of the year. As many of you have noticed, leagues just aren't filling up as fast as they used to. Despite this bad news, we still have an amazing site with almost 700 leagues! I am confident the site still has enough steady traffic to remain profitable, and your continued support through donations helps to keep this site alive. I have put the money into a server upgrade this December which I hope will help keep the site zipping along for years to come. I continue to upgrade the hardware every year thanks to your support. Also, I will have an exciting announcement at the end of January - we'll be rolling out some split stats so you can see batting average and WHIP against righties and lefties. I know many of you have wanted splits for a long time. Splits can take up a lot of database space, so I am not tracking every stat, but I hope this will still be a welcome addition to the site. Last April I mentioned possibly spinning off a football site. Unfortunately I just haven't had the time to get much work done on it. I am still hopeful that 2013 might bring football to Pennant Chase, but the baseball side of things keeps me pretty busy as it is, so I don't know for sure. I will continue to work on it though, in addition to the many, many enhancements that have been suggested for baseball. Thanks again for another great year, it's crazy to think Pennant Chase is already five years old! Wow, time flies. Here's to a great 2013.