ESPN WIll Blow It All Up and Start Over

I've heard the rumors about what was going to happen with ESPN Fantasy Baseball for the past couple days and had hoped they wouldn't be true. This morning my worst fears were confirmed when "Mr. Apologetic" John Kosner of ESPN.com sent all fantasy baseball players the following letter:

We have explored and tested every possible solution and it is clear that the nature of the issues leave us with a single, necessary action to get the game back on track and ensure the integrity of the season.

Late on Wednesday night the ESPN Fantasy team will:

1)	Revert all teams to their opening day rosters (Sunday, April 1).
2)	Set the starting lineup of each team's opening day roster as the active roster for all games played to date (April 1 - April 11).
3)	Retroactively apply scoring for the entire season to date based on that roster.
4)	Void all transactions to date (trades, waiver pickups, roster moves, etc.).

Following these changes, all players not on a roster will be placed on waivers for 24 hours, and the waiver order for each league will be restored to where it was on Opening Day.

Through extensive testing, this solution - while extreme - has repeatedly shown to restore the game to full and normal operation.

So basically instead of being able to truly fix the issues, they're going to wipe out all the stats from the first 10 days of the season, set your roster back to where it was on April 1st, and then retroactively apply the stats. Any adds, drops, or trades you might have done since then are basically lost forever, which utterly sucks.

Did you pick up a hot, undrafted player like Ian Snell on April 2nd and get him in your lineup for 2 solid starts? Well too bad for you, those never happened, and now you probably wont get him back as he'll go into general waivers and if you dont have the waiver priority to get him, you can pretty much kiss him goodbye.

The kicker to the email was this following paragraph:

We are sorry to have to make such an aggressive change, and fully recognize the impact this will have. This action was our only option because of the nature of the issues and their potential to compound if not addressed on a fundamental level. Ensuring the integrity of the season ahead for ALL players is tremendously important to us and this solution ensures that all players will be treated equally.

Isn't it already too late to maintain the "integrity of the season?" Hasn't that basically already gone out the window? I mean if on April 2nd you benched a guy who wasn't playing and inserted a guy who hit a home run or stole a base that day. Those stats are gone now, and you KNOW someone's league is going to come down to 1 HR or 1 SB. Imagine losing your league like that? It's a good thing no one plays Fantasy Baseball for money or anything serious like that, but hey, they're giving us free fantasy football teams in the fall! in prize leagues no less, where you can like, win a t-shirt or a banner! Yay!!!

C'mon ESPN, Less apologizing and more fixing!

Well I figured it was about time I addressed the whole debacle that is the 2007 ESPN Fantasy Baseball game. I'm not sure what exactly went on over there. I've played in their pay leagues for a few years and never had any issues. Sure there were a few bugs here and there, but nothing of this magnitude. It seems odd now that they've made their leagues free after all these years that everything has gone to shit. There are issues with rosters, pickups, scoring, etc. It's just a huge mess. I'm playing in a few leagues over there and it's just bad.
How things can be that screwed up and no one knows about it before hand I dont know? ESPN has seemingly gone to great lengths to get out apologies to everyone, sending out apologies ad mauseum all weekend. I received 3 emails over the weekend from John Kosner, Senior VP and GM of something or other at ESPN assuring me that eveyone was hard at work on the problem. My favorite email had to be the one from Sunday afternoon where we got the littany of excuses as to why they were having so many problems. The letter reads as follows:

To all of our ESPN Fantasy Baseball players,

We wanted to be sure you had the latest update on what is happening with ESPN Fantasy Baseball, and what we're in the midst of doing to get things back on track for you.

We have every resource, including our full technical team as well as additional specialized technical and quality assurance personnel, working to resolve these issues.

Based on extensive ongoing work and testing, we expect to have the problems affecting Fantasy Baseball resolved by Wednesday. It is possible that between now and then testing could reveal complications that would push the resolution to later in the week. However, we are confident in targeting Wednesday and are taking every step during that time to ensure that the solutions we provide for you will be complete and long-lasting.

While it may sound simple, the core problem lies in issues with transaction information being processed incorrectly and at incorrect times - which presents complexities as data progressively compounds.

Here's the latest on what is being done:

We have made significant progress finding and working towards a fix for the core problems responsible for roster irregularities and incorrect waiver, free agent and other transactions. Due to the nature of software, thorough testing must be performed to ensure that the solutions we implement will fully resolve the issues and preserve the long-term integrity of the game. To do that, we have created parallels of ESPN Fantasy Baseball leagues in a development and quality assurance environment -- simulating the live game activity. In this environment we have been, and continue to run extensive testing of potential fixes for the core problems. There are approximately 70 different variations of our game currently in use, and we are simulating all of these. In parallel, we have programmers and technicians troubleshooting problems that have created scoring and standings irregularities - isolating and testing potential solutions.

Please know -- it is not just rhetoric when we say we continue to work non-stop to resolve this. We owe you the fastest, most effective and stable solution - and that is our sole focus.

We will continue to communicate with you as there are further developments, and you will hear from us again no later than Wednesday at 3 p.m. ET.

We apologize again for the frustration you've experienced and appreciate your continued patience.

You are our number one priority.

John Kosner, senior vice president and general manager, ESPN.com and the entire ESPN.com Fantasy team

You know what John? Everything you've listed there shouldve been done back in November and December. I have a hard time believing these issues wouldnt have cropped up in simulations. I work with data systems for a living, and any time we do any changes we do extensive testing on test databases so all issues are ironed out before going live.

I cant in good conscious advise anyone to use their product from here on out. Had I had my free leagues to do all over again I would've undoubtedly gone with Yahoo!. Sure the interface is crude by comparison, but you know what? It works, and in the end that's all that fantasy players care about. The integrity of people's leagues have been irreparably damaged due to the roster and scoring issues, and even when (if) ESPN fixes their software bugs, you'll never be able to recreate most of that.

From now, If I recommend a free site, it's going to be Yahoo!, and if you want a quality, reliable pay site I'd tell you to go to CBS Sportsline.