How to Draft for Fantasy Baseball: The Ultimate Guide

How to Draft for Fantasy Baseball: The Ultimate Guide. This guide provides tips and strategies on how to draft a competitive fantasy baseball team.

Introduction

As the anxiety of another work week slowly melts away and the sweet bliss of Friday evening sets in, many Americans begin to daydream about one thing: baseball. The sound of a fastball hitting leather, the smell of green grass, and the taste of a cold beer all signal the beginning of summer. Whether you’re a fair-weather fan or a die-hard supporter, there’s one activity that can turn even the most casual baseball lover into a raving madman: fantasy baseball.

For those uninitiated, fantasy baseball is an online or offline game in which participants act as owners to assemble a team of real life Major League Baseball players. These players accrue points based on their actual statistical performances in real games. The game itself is managed via web-based software or offline through pen and paper.

There are many variants of fantasy baseball with different levels of complexity, but the two most popular versions are rotisserie leagues and head-to- head leagues. In a rotisserie league, teams compete against each other based on cumulative statistics over the course of an entire season. In contrast, head-to-head leagues pit teams against each other in individual matchups with the teams with the best records advancing to a playoff system at the end of the season.

Whether you’re playing in a rotisserie league or head-to-head league, understanding how to draft is critical to your success as a fantasy baseball owner. In this guide, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about drafting for fantasy baseball including strategies, tips, and sleepers.

What is Fantasy Baseball?

Fantasy baseball is a game in which baseball fans draft, manage, and follow the progress of teams composed of real life players. In most cases, fantasy baseball is an online game where participants use a web site to submit their teams and track their progress.

Rules

Fantasy baseball is a game in which real life Major League Baseball players are drafted by imaginary team owners, who then compete against each other based on the statistical performance of those players in actual games.

The game first became popular in the 1970s, and today there are many different fantasy baseball leagues across the United States and Canada, with millions of players taking part.

If you’re thinking about joining a fantasy baseball league, or starting up your own, here are some basic rules to get you started:

-Each fantasy team consists of 25 players: 2 catchers, 1 first baseman, 1 second baseman, 1 third baseman, 1 shortstop, 3 outfielders, 5 starting pitchers and 9 other pitchers.
-Players are selected via a draft, which can be either an online draft or a live draft. In an online draft, each team owner takes turns selecting players from a list of eligible players; in a live draft, all the team owners get together in person and take turns selecting players one by one.
-Once the draft is complete, each team’s roster is set for the season. Players can be traded or released during the season, but every team must always have 25 players on its roster.
-Every week during the Major League Baseball season (from April to October), each fantasy team plays against another fantasy team in its league. The two teams accumulate points based on the real-life statistical performance of their players during that week’s games; whichever team finishes with more points that week wins the match-up. At the end of the season (usually in September or October), the fantasy teams with the best records qualify for playoffs and compete against each other for the league championship.

Types of Leagues

The most important decision you make in playing fantasy baseball is what type of league you join. The three basic types of leagues are rotisserie, head-to-head, and points. Pretty much all fantasy baseball leagues use one of these three setups.

Rotisserie League
In a rotisserie league, your goal is to finish in first place in as many statistical categories as possible. For example, if your league uses the standard 5x5 statistics (runs, stolen bases, home runs, RBIs, batting average on one side; wins, strikeouts, ERA, WHIP, saves on the other), the team that finishes first in the most categories wins the league title. In a roto league with 12 teams and 26 active roster spots (that’s 13 outfielders), you’ll want a well-rounded squad because each statistical category is weighted equally. The key to success in a roto league is not to hoard players at one position while neglecting others; rather, it’s to have a balanced team with no real weaknesses.

Head-to-Head League
In contrast to rotisserie leagues where your goal is to stack up as many points as possible across all statistical categories, head-to-head leagues pit teams against each other in weekly matchups. For example, if you have an 11-team head-to-head league with three divisions of four teams each, each team will play every other team in its division 13 times (once per week with two bye weeks) and the remaining four teams in the league twice (also once per week with two bye weeks). At the end of the season, the eight teams with the best records will qualify for the playoffs. In a head-to-head league with weekly matchups and multiple divisions, it’s important to have a strong team because one bad week can doom your playoff chances. However, because every statistical category is not weighted equally (e.g., stolen bases are worth less than home runs), you can get away with being weaker in some areas as long as you excel in others.

Points League
In a points league, each statistical category is assigned a specific point value (e.g., steals = 1 point; home run = 4 points; batting average = .5 points per hit). At the end of each week or month (depending on your particular points league), the team with the most total points wins that matchup or period. Like head-to-head leagues, points leagues typically have multiple divisions and playoffs at season’s end for qualifying teams. Because every statistical category is assigned a specific point value in advance, you’ll want to focus on accumulating players who excel in categories that are worth more points relative to others.

How to Play Fantasy Baseball

Fantasy baseball is a game in which fans draft, manage, and follow their favorite real-life baseball players and teams. In order to play fantasy baseball, you will need to understand how to draft your team, manage your team, and follow your team throughout the season. This guide will provide you with all of the information you need to draft for fantasy baseball.

Drafting

Fantasy baseball is a game in which people manage imaginary teams of real players. In most leagues, each team owner pays an entry fee, which goes into a prize pot. The amount of the fee and the prize pot size depend on the league rules.

Most leagues also have some sort of restriction on how much each owner can spend on their team, called a “salary cap.” This is usually done to prevent one owner from just buying all the best players and leaving everyone else with a bunch of scrubs.

Once the entry fees are collected, the league has a draft, where each team owner takes turns selecting players for their team. The order in which teams draft is usually randomized, although sometimes the previous year’s standings are used to determine the draft order.

There are two main ways to draft players: auction drafts and snake drafts. In an auction draft, each team is given a set amount of “fake” money to spend on players. Owners take turns nominating players, and then bidding starts. The owner who bids the most for a player gets him for their team.

In a snake draft, each team takes turns selecting players in order from a pre-determined list. So if Team A picks first in the first round, they would pick last in the second round, and first again in the third round, and so on. The order is “snake-like” because it zig-zags back and forth like a snake (or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work).

Managing Your Team

In order to have a successful fantasy baseball team, you will need to know how to manage your team throughout the season. This includes setting your lineup each week, making trades, and adding/dropping players from your roster.

Each week, you will need to set your lineup for the upcoming week. You will want to make sure that you have your best hitters in the lineup each week, as this will give you the best chance to score the most points. If you have players on your bench that are HITTER TWOS or three, you may want to consider starting them on days when they have a particularly favorable matchup.

You will also need to make sure that you are always aware of injuries and other news that could affect your fantasy team. If one of your star players gets injured, you will need to find a replacement for them in your lineup. You can do this by either picking up another player from waivers or making a trade with another team.

Throughout the season, you may want to make trades with other teams in order to improve your team. For example, if you have depth at a certain position but are weak at another position, you may want to trade some of your depth in order to get a player who can help improve your team. When making trades, you will want to be sure that you are getting fair value in return for the players that you are trading away.

At times during the season, you may also need to add or drop players from your roster. If one of your players is not performing well or is injured, you may want to drop them from your roster in order to pick up another player who is performing well or is not injured.

By following these tips, you will be able to successfully manage your fantasy baseball team throughout the season and give yourself the best chance to win!

Scoring

To score points in fantasy baseball, your players accumulate statistical production in specific categories during real Major League Baseball games. The accumulation of these stats is what we refer to as “points.” The player who scores the most fantasy points in a given week (or overall) is the winner.

There are two types of fantasy baseball league scoring systems: rotisserie and head-to-head. In a rotisserie league, fantasy team owners compete against each other in multiple statistical categories, and the team that finishes in first place in the most categories wins the league championship. In a head-to-head league, teams compete against each other on a weekly basis, and the team with the most fantasy points that week is declared the winner.

In both scoring systems, there are a number of ways to score fantasy points. Here are some of the most common scoring categories:

Hitting Categories

● Batting Average (AVG): This measures a hitter’s batting average, or percentage of times he gets a hit when he steps up to bat. A .300 hitter gets a hit 30 percent of the time he steps up to bat.

● Runs Batted In (RBIs): This measures how often a hitter drives in runs when he gets a hit. A player gets credit for an RBI every time he hits safely and any runner or runners on base ahead of him score as a result of his hit.

● Home Runs (HRs): This measures how often a hitter hits a home run when he steps up to bat. Home runs are worth more than hits because they almost always result in at least one run being scored (the home run hitter himself), whereas with hits there’s no guarantee that any runs will score as a result.

● stolen bases (SBs): This measures how often a baserunner safely advances one base while his team is at bat by stealing that base without being thrown out by the catcher trying to stop him from doing so. If you’re unfamiliar with baseball rules, stolen bases happen when baserunners try to advance an extra base on their own initiative while the pitcher is throwing toward home plate and before the batter has hit the ball into play (i.,e., before there’s been an opportunity for someone to field it). Caught stealing happens when catchers manage to prevent runners from successfully stealing bases by throwing them out before they can get back to “first base” after taking their lead off first base or getting a good enough jump toward second or third base so that they can beat out the throw from home plate intended to prevent them from stealing that particular base

● Slugging Percentage (SLG): This measures how many total bases hitters accumulate per at-bat. It’s calculated by dividing total bases by at-bats, and then multiplying by 100 so as create slugging percentage points rather than just decimal fractions thereof.(Total bases equals hits plus 2 times doubles plus 3 times triples plus 4 times home runs.)

Pitching Categories

Most fantasy baseball leagues use fewer pitching categories than hitting categories because there are simply too many pitchers and not enough roster slots available on fantasy teams to draft all but the very best ones without sacrificing too much hitting production elsewhere on your roster(s). The most common pitching categories used are wins (W), earned run average (ERA), strikeouts per nine innings pitched(K/9 IP), and saves (SV). Teams also usually have one catchall category for Relief Pitcher Statistics other than saves called Holds (HLD) consisting of everything else except for wins, losses, ERA, strikeouts and saves..

Finally, some leagues award points for innings pitched(IP) instead of -or in addition to- wins as pitching category.. You’ll have to decide which you prefer: more weight given to better starting pitcher performances showing up in lower ERA’s and more strikeouts per 9 innings pitched along with more wins; or less weight given such outcomes but adding importance placed upon opportunities generated by virtue of starting pitchers pitching more innings thereby providing more chances for more strikeouts and lower ERA’s as well as more opportunities for picking up wins..

Conclusion

Now that you know how to draft for fantasy baseball, you’re ready to dominate your league. Just remember to stay calm, do your research, and have fun. And if all else fails, remember: there’s always next season.