Personally, I like keeping categories over points too, not super comfortable with scoring systems that depend on the entire league's performance beyond the 1 on 1 matchup taking place.   However, I do agree that it wouldn't be a bad idea to consider a couple of stat swaps, here's what I have in mind...

Replace AVG with OBP (On Base %):  Completely agree with Quice on this, walks (and hit by pitches) should definitely be rewarded, as walks are just as effective as base hit singles are at getting someone on base to get runs scored, (that'd also eliminate weird stat lines like what IDM dealt with the Las Vegas Atoms last night, going 2 for 32 for a .063 AVG, yet still scoring 6 runs- clearly some walks and hit by pitches that his team should get rewarded for that don't count in the current system).  

Replace Runs with some variant of Runs Created OR Total Bases: I also agree that Runs is too depending on your teammates rather than your own contributions.    Runs Created, (and there are a few variations of this formula, ranging from very basic to some versions even accounting for stolen bases and double plays, etc) is designed to estimate the number of runs a batter contributes to the team.  I think this would be a natural upgrade over Runs, just like OBP is an upgrade over AVG.  Meanwhile, Total Bases is quite literally the amount of bases a hitter gets from hits (so if you hit a home run and a double, your total bases is 6 for the day).  It doesn't account for walks and hit by pitches or stolen bases (which is another category anyway), but Total Bases times OBP gives you Runs Created (the basic formula anyway).    Slugging % is basically a Total Bases divided by At Bats, so either would work here, Total Bases being a whole number and easier to track without the additional math involved.

***Another idea could be to use OPS (On base Plus Slugging) somewhere here as it's OBP and Slugging % added together and usually correlates well with run created.  That'd only be one stat, though.   If we replace AVG and Runs with OPS, We'd have to come up with another stat to make up for the lost category, (that or eliminate one pitching stat to even things out).***

Replace Strikeouts for K-BB % (Strike Out % minus Walk %) or K/BB ratio: Strikeouts are totally fine as it is, but K-BB% could debatably be a better stat for measuring a pitcher's true skill, plus I think it'd make relief pitchers more valuable too, as currently, they don't get near the same opportunities as starters do at getting strikeouts.  We could also just use the Strikeouts to Walks ratio as well here.

Replace Wins with literally anything: Wins, like Runs, are WAY too dependent on the rest of the team's contributions as opposed to just the pitcher's own skill.    In the current format, a pitcher could pitch a no hitter through 8 innings, but not get a win if his offense didn't score either and the closer blows the game in the 9th inning.   Meanwhile, a pitcher could allow 9 runs in 5 innings, but so long as his offense (through no contribution of his own by the way) scores 10 runs in that timeframe, he could still get a win.  Basically, if you want wins, you almost have to pick starting pitchers based exclusively on how good their team is, (this is definitely something I personally did when I drafted my starting pitchers).

Another thing we could do, if we can't find stats to replace these with, you could just eliminate Runs and Wins altogether (making any changes to the other stats as you'd want), as those are the two stats that are most reliant on your teammates rather than you're own work.  Problem is, you'd only have 8 categories as opposed to 10, which is abnormal I think for Fantasy Baseball.  Ironically, we'd get even more realistic looking baseball scores with only 8 categories, which I think was one of the cool things about scoring by categories in the first place.

Finally, I wanted to suggest a new tiebreaker.   Obviously, I already benefitted once from our current playoff tiebreaker (sorry, Scratch) and could easily benefit again this week (sorry, IDM).   I like that my whole year's work gets rewarded, but I think I have an idea for another tiebreaker stat we could consider.   I know it's a very controversial stat and there are multiple versions of it, but WAR (Wins Above Replacement) is the closest thing we've come up with so far that is both one stat and able to be fairly applied to both batters and pitchers.  Something like the team's combined WAR for that week could be an effective tiebreaker that could be applied during the playoffs and actually eliminate ties altogether even in the regular season.   Again, I'm certainly grateful for the current higher seed tiebreaker, but I also know that it could be controversial too for some.

Definitely want to be clear, I think things are fine as they are, and I don't mean to take a shot at Gritty or anything by any means (he's doing a Grit job as always!!!) but since we're talking about possible upgrades to the process, I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring too.

Forgive me for the double post but I thought this made more sense as its own post rather than being lumped in with all that category stuff.

So I did the thing and rescored the season with points instead of categories. Here's the spreadsheet; huge thanks to QCS for already having all this data. I figure if nothing else, it'll be a cool thing like that time Jon Bois rescored the NBA without a three-point line, but it might give a better look at what to expect if we do decide to make the switch.

Feel free to explore the spreadsheet as much as you want (or as little as you want), but I do want to cover some things I found interesting. I realized after I typed it all up that it's a lot more than I want to put in a forum post, so here it is as a Google doc instead. If you don't want to read it all, what it comes down to is this: On a macro scale, not much would have changed - the league would basically look just about the same as it does now. For a couple of teams, though, and especially for a decent amount of games, I think the points system would have given results that, at least to me, more accurately reflect the skill levels of each team and more importantly, give a more accurate result. Again, this is all just my opinion (well, except for the numbers. those are facts), so feel free to get in the comments and let me know why I'm full of bologna.

I am a proponent of categories, personally. At the end of the day, my goal is to beat the person I'm up against. If I have a bad week pitching, and my opponent has a worse week pitching, I still win. Similar to when a real baseball team wins 18-11 (which happened recently). Those pitchers were bad, but the offenses were good. So we're not taking away from the team that won with bad pitching because their pitching was worse than the rest of the league's pitching.

However, maybe the compromise is with getting away from category points and into player points. Fantrax has the option where everyone gets x amount of points for each hit, home run, strikeout, etc. So then you earn a point total based on your team against your opponent's point total. So it should eliminate that weird thing where you win a couple close categories and lose the larger difference categories while still pitting it one team vs one team.

Obviously I can't show how things would've been different with that like IDM did, but it seems to be a "best of both worlds" thing.

Upsides:
- you get rewarded for every stat you get. If you have 12 HR and your opponent has 3 HR, you're not wasting the extra 4 your team got!
- fewer ties. Ties in baseball are weird.

Downsides:
- more difficult to see what EXACTLY your team can do to "flip" the game. It's easy to see "I can take that category with 1 HR, which will give me 1 point", it won't be as easy to quickly identify.
- Potentially fewer close games. In one of IDM's examples, the Gemini and Thunderbirds had a couple close categories and a couple that were very different. This game may have been out of reach of the Thunderbirds because of that, so could lead to less interest in the matchups on the weekend.

Gritty wrote:

I agree with everyone to a certain extent. My fantasy baseball league that I have had since college has started to rethink some of the categories. I definitely prefer categories for baseball. I like the idea of making some updates to our scoring system (updating categories, tiebreakers, etc) but completely swapping out the scoring system or positions (in the case of the AltFL) runs the risk of messing teams up that have been planning and building under a certain system.

With all of that said we can address these types of questions in time for next season. 

Yeah, that's totally fair. I mostly just wanted to get the thought out there while things were still fresh in people's minds. At the end of the day, though, like with the AltBA merger, the last thing I want to do is end up driving people away, and it seems like people generally prefer categories, so that's fine with me.