HEADS UP: Positional Error at Sportsline

This problem with CBS Sportsline was noted in a posting on a fantasy baseball forum, and it will be an issue for our league.

It appears Sportsline is not determining eligibility correctly for the "combo" infield positions: Middle Infielder (MI) and Corner Infielder (CI). According to our rules (and those of most other leagues), players qualify for MI if they had played 20 games or more at 2B or SS the previous season, and qualify for CI if they had played 20 game or more at 1B or 3B last year.

Sportsline is correctly determining eligibility under those rules, however they are ALSO qualifying players for the "combo" positions if they played a total of 20 games at the two individual positions combined, which should not be the case.

For example, Rich Aurilia had the following Games Played counts last year:

1B - 55
2B - 9
SS - 12
3B - 22

Under our rules, Aurilia should qualify at 1B, 3B, and CI on Draft Day.

At Sportsline, however, he is also listed under MI because he played a combined 21 games at 2B and SS. He does not qualify at either 2B or SS, but Sportsline would allow him to be placed at the MI position. Our rules do not currently allow this - Aurilia would need to qualify at either 2B or SS to be placed at MI.

This won't be a huge deal for Draft Day, as we'll use the position eligibilty information in the Draft Pool listing (see the 2008 Position Eligibilty or 2008 NL Spring Training Rosters files in the Download Center if you have elgibility questions). It might be a problem if you're using the free agent listings at Sportsline to do draft prep -- keep in mind that the listings for MI and CI may include players who do not actually qualify there.

Where it WILL become an issue is during the season when owners will be making their own roster moves at Sportsline. You'll need to be extra careful when assigning players to the CI or MI positions to make sure they actually qualify for one of the individual positions under that combo umbrella.

It sounds like a number of leagues have already contacted Sportsline about this error, so hopefully it will be straightened out before it causes problems.