Earlier this year I wrote an article titled A Beginner’s Guide to Fantasy Football in which I outlined a few simple steps for anyone looking to get into a fantasy league. I included information on where to sign up for a free league and a few draft tips to help managers deliver a solid draft. For the upcoming fantasy baseball season, I thought it would be useful to offer a similar guide for those individuals looking to play fantasy baseball for the first time.
Where to Sign Up
There are literally hundreds if not thousands of fantasy baseball service providers on the internet, ranging from easy to play games to complex applications that utilize stats in a way that borderlines on obsessive. I recommend Yahoo or ESPN for beginners, as both providers have easy to use user interfaces that are intuitive. Each service is free; however users are required to sign up for a user profile that includes some basic personal information, including email address and age/gender.
After creating a user profile, the next step in the process is to join a public or private league. If you are creating a league for your friends, the private league is what you want to select. The system will ask you to provide email addresses of you friends during the set up process, allowing you to send out notifications after you have created a league. For those who do not have a group of friends interested in making a private league, the public league option will automatically find an open spot in an existing league.
Roto vs. Head to Head
There are two main types of fantasy baseball leagues: Roto and Head to Head. Roto or “rotisserie” baseball leagues are set up with point totals for each stat category, with team owners striving to get the overall point lead at the end of the season. This type of league is nice for players looking for less of a weekly competition, as only the final point total matters when crowning a champion at the end of the season. Head to Head leagues differ in that they pit one owner against another for a one week period, battling against each other for pitching and offensive stat categories. Another name for head to head leagues are 5×5 leagues, as there are typically five offensive and five pitching stat categories for each weekly competition. The winner of the league is determined with an end of season playoff, with the playoff seeds determined by the end of season head to head standing.
Proponents of Roto leagues like the absence of head to head matchups because they feel that it removes the risk of missing the playoffs because of poor luck with individual matchups. Also, Roto leagues tend to not have a playoff making the regular season more important. Fans of 5×5 leagues like the thrill of weekly competition and the fun of having a playoff system, opening the door for the last place playoff team to walk away with the title.
Draft Styles
The two main forms of fantasy baseball drafting are snake drafts in which managers take turns picking players in order, or the auction draft where each manager has a spending budget to buy players for their roster. Each player is up for bid in an auction draft, and any manager can own any given player as long as they are willing to spend the most of their budget for the rights to own the player. I recommend for beginners to start with a snake draft as it is more straightforward than auction drafts, while auction drafts tend to be more of a challenge and for seasoned fantasy players. Snake drafts allow owners to focus on drafting a balanced team of players without the worry of budget constraints.
Either way, it is important for all fantasy baseball players to research player rankings and review possible sleepers prior to taking part in a draft. The service provider (Yahoo or ESPN ect) will have a pre-draft ranking for each player, and many managers will simply follow the default ranking when drafting. This is ok at first, but I recommend looking at my website www.kramericasports.com and other leading fantasy baseball websites for player ranking cheat sheets. They will give you a good idea of where each player should be drafted, including a few “sleeper” or value picks to target late in the draft.
Draft Tips
It is important to study your league rules prior to drafting a fantasy baseball team, as Roto and 5×5 leagues warrant different drafting styles. In 5×5 leagues, the stolen base stat category carries just as much weight as home runs or RBI’s, therefore it is prudent to draft a well balanced team that gives the owner a solid chance to win all of the 10 stat categories. Not only is it important to make sure that pay attention to the positions you are drafting each round, it is important to keep in mind all of the stat categories when you build your team. For example, make sure that you have some speed and power, but not too much of one over the other as winning one stat category by a large margin doesn’t equal more points. It is common for beginners to load up on homerun hitters, only to find out late in the season that they lacked a solid team batting average or speed and missed the playoffs.
In addition to drafting with balance, I also recommend drafting players that excel in more than just a few categories. For baseball fans, the term “five tool player” is well known for a player who can provide production in all facets of the game, including average, power, speed, defense, and runs. This theory is important in fantasy baseball, as a player who can help you win in multiple categories is very valuable. Take Carlos Gonzales for example, he may not lead all outfielders in homeruns, however he is going to be a top draft pick in 2011 because he does many things well, including hitting for power with a high average, while contributing on the base paths with stolen bases.
Lastly, I recommend not using early draft picks on closers. There are only a handful of closing pitchers who provide consistent saves, while the majority of teams will change closers throughout the season. You will be able to find closers on the waiver wire as the season progresses, so I recommend using the middle round picks on starting pitchers and offensive players to bolster your team.
It Is Easier Than It Looks
The length of the baseball season intimidates many potential fantasy baseball players who think it is too hard to keep track of a 162 game fantasy season. For those managers who are passive fans of baseball, the commitment seems too daunting so they don’t give fantasy baseball a shot. My advice to people worried about the length of the season is to sign up for a league that allows roster changes only once a week, similar to a fantasy football league. This will reduce the amount of roster moves significantly and requires only a few minutes per week to set a line-up. The rest of the time is spent enjoying the wonderful game of baseball, cheering for your favorite team and your fantasy players.
For more free fantasy baseball news and advice visit www.kramericasports.com
