I’ve been meaning to get back into fantasy baseball this year and rather than play with strangers, I thought I’d see if anyone else was interested in a fantasy league.
I’ve played through Yahoo before, and I found it pretty easy, but I guess I’d be open to using any good (FREE) fantasy site.
Anybody else up for it?
Maybe, but I prefer Fantasy Football, and I don’t really follow Baseball, but if you need an extra body to make it work- I’d volunteer.
Count me in.
What is actually involved? How much time per week is needed to compete? I’ve heard horror stories of leagues where people put in over 10 hours a week*.
Can you guide a newbie through the process?
I’m most familiar with Yahoo, so I’ll go with that.
There are two types of drafts: Automatic and Live. In a Live draft, obviously everyone would have to log into Yahoo at the same time to pick all of their players. But in an Automatic draft, everyone sets their “draft preference” and Yahoo drafts the teams automatically.
After that you sent your starting lineup and then can tweak it as often or as little as you’d like to get the most points out of your players.
Really, after the draft (which in an Auto draft can require as little as 5 minutes), you only need to put in as much time a week as you want to.
Which draft would you be using?
Can you explain the “draft preference” a bit more?
Do you list your top 300 players with positions to be filled first?
What are the stats that the Fantasy league uses?
I would be interested, this looks like a good way to try Fantasy Baseball.
Live draft means that everyone logs on at the same time to draft players, traditionally in a snake like fashion. For example, the guy who picked first in the first round would pick last in the second round, and first in the third round. You can still participate if you don’t show up the draft though. You can make a list of players and Yahoo or whomever (I recommend ESPN for its free live scoring and better player selection), and Yahoo will pick the players for you. The fantasy site will pre-rank the players for you. So if you don’t make any changes to it, they will pick in that order. You could adjust any part of the list, so for example you want to set the first hundred in a certain way, but leave the rest as is, you can do that. I recommend a live draft if at possible. It is much more fun. Auction drafts are even more fun, but those aren’t for beginners.
Tradionally the stats are HR, RBI, SB, AVG, Runs, WHIP, ERA, Saves, Wins, K’s. Of course, you can use whatever you like.
As for time committment, it is very dependent on the league. There are ways to limit the advantage of more active players, such as using weekly lineups sets instead of daily, or having inning limits.
Okay, now I can dismiss your real-life baseball opinions as from a fantasy geek 
There is a current thread about a SDMB fantasy baseball league that’s been in existence for 6+ years already = see here.
That’s not a league for beginners - we use several non-standard settings and stats, and go VERY deep.
But I’d be interested in another league, for example one with standard settings. I’m partial to Yahoo but open to alternatives.
I think I would use an Automatic draft just because it would be impossible to coordinate a time where everyone could participate in a Live draft. Plus, the one time I did a Live draft it took several hours and by the time I was drafting my backup outfielders I was bored out of my skull.
In an Auto draft, each player is given a Fantasy Score and Yahoo will automatically draft players with a higher Fantasy Score to your team first. But the draft preference will allow you to customize the Auto draft and pick certain players earlier regardless of their Fantasy Score. You can list as many or as few players as you want. Yahoo will fill the rest in based on their Fantasy Score.
It depends on what type of league we play (Rotisserie, Head-To-Head or Fantasy Points), but all of the scoring rules are explained on the Yahoo help pages:
Glad to hear it.
Sorry, I scanned the first page and didn’t see anything. But yeah, a league for beginners might be good because I haven’t played fantasy baseball in years and I’m even a little out of it on player stats for everyone not on my beloved Mets.
I would probably be interested. I’m in the other league as well.
Thanks for the answers. I’ll read the yahoo help over the weekend or later today.
How many players do we need?
10 makes a pretty decent league, but Yahoo allows up to 20.
I would highly recommend a live draft. Anyone who can’t make it gets their team drafted by yahoo and, more importantly, auto drafts tend to encourage apathetic managers. Managing a team you actually drafted makes for a much more meaningful season and really is about 60% of your success.
I’d like to play.
I have had a good experience with the SDMB Fantasy Hockey League. It also is on Yahoo and IMO, the draft worked well for both those who could go live and those who missed the specified time and drafted in"auto" mode. I agree with Munch in that participating in live draft would discourage apathatic managers, but reguardless of the time and date, not everybody can make the “live” draft.
It seems that the hockey league works for people who check every day, as well as those who check one a month.
OK, right now we have 7 people saying they’re interested. And since Yahoo allows absentee players to use an Auto draft during a Live draft, it’ll probably be Live.
But does anyone have any preferences on what type of league we play? I like Rotisserie, but Fantasy Points can be fun too. I’m not a fan of Head-To-Head.
What say everyone else?
I’d be interested as well. I prefer Rotisserie as well as a live draft, hopefully on a weekend.
I don’t want to sound like the guy that comes in and hands out advice, but if this is a league for new players, then Roto is probably the best way to go. 98% of the fantasy advice out there on the major sites and magazines are geared towards regular 5x5 Roto, and making any changes to that makes most of that advice worthless.
Points may be easier for a newbie to grasp, but it also really reduces the value of any trades, and potentially “breaks” the league depending on scoring (pitching can get extremely screwed up in a points league if not handled extremely carefully). There are often ways to game the system in a points league, and very few ways in roto.
I don’t have any opinion as I don’t know fantasy baseball.
When would the live draft be done? On an evening late? On a weekend? During the day?
It looks like Roto and Fantasy each have pluses and minuses.
what is the usual time frame for a draft?
Does the official season begin on april 1st? a couple of days before?