Help me understand Fantasy Baseball

The Game Room
1

I’ve been a baseball fan for a long time, but it’s only recently that I’ve really followed individual teams and players. Before, I’d just like to watch a game and never really cared who was playing it. THIS year, however, I think I’d like to get a fantasy team together.

I’ve avoided playing in the past because, well, I’ve never played before. I don’t really know anything about it. Where should I start? When? Does the SDMB have a league? How big are leagues? I understand that scoring is different everywhere, but what’s the gist, basically?

Any draft tips? Any basic strategies for going through the season? I take it I should bench players that aren’t starting that day, right? Do you even bench players daily?

I know quite a bit about baseball (i.e. you don’t need to spell out what the stats are) but I know almost nothing about playing in a fantasy league. So anything you want to teach me is welcomed information.

2

My major piece of advice is to join a league that uses standard rules and categories. You want to be able to seek out advice and information that applies to you - and if the commish thought “it’ll be fun to completely change everything!”, you’re not going to be able to do that. So that means finding a 5x5 Roto league.

“What’s a 5x5 Roto league?!?”

5x5 refers to the number of categories. Five categories for hitters, five for pitchers. Traditionally, those categories are:

Hitters: Runs, Home Runs, Runs Batted In, Batting Average* and Stolen Bases
Pitchers: Wins, Strikeouts, Saves, ERA** and WHIP***

“Okay, makes sense. What’s ‘Roto’ mean?”

It’s short for Rotisserie, like the chicken. (Fantasy baseball was concocted by a bunch of guys who hung out at a restaurant called La Rotisserie Française.) What it actually means is that you are assigned a point value for however well you did in a given category relative to the rest of the league. Example: You’re in a 10 person league. You finish the season with the most Stolen Bases. You get 10 points. The guy below you gets 9, on down to the guy who had the worst year in Stolen Bases who gets 1 point. This is repeated for all 10 categories.

“So how do I get Stolen Bases, or any other stat for that matter?”

When the league is created, the commish will determine what roster spots will be used. Usually, its a Catcher, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, 3-4 Outfielders, 4 Starting Pitchers and 3 Relievers. Some variation is allowed - but again, don’t get too crazy, or things get wonky (an extreme example would be a league that doesn’t use catchers, or has 3 Second Basemen per team - like I said, wonky). Whoever’s in your starting lineup each day has their stats added to your yearly total. Most leagues allow you to change your roster every day. Some are weekly. Each have their own individual strategies involved. I like daily - but there’s nothing wrong with weekly.

It should be noted that you’re (usually) given a limit of 162 games per position, and 1350 total innings pitched. Some roster flexibility is needed to hit those maxes (nor is it necessary to hit them), but you shouldn’t get that flexibility at the expense of your starters. If your starter doesn’t have a game that day (or is being benched for some reason), you don’t lose a game unless he plays in that game (even as a pinch hitter).

I’m going to hold off on drafting advice. That’s a WHOLE other kettle of fish, and is very league dependent. Since you’ve never done one before, I STRONGLY encourage you to sign up over at MockDraftCentral.com and do a mock draft or two. It’s a free site, there are drafts going on constantly, and you can jump into a league that looks like something you’d sign up for (it’s a mock draft, so you’re not obligated to anything beyond the draft).
*Batting Average as a category - I think a beginner could easily make the switch to a league with On Base Percentage, as long as they keep that in mind both during the draft and during the season. It changes a few dozen players’ value dramatically, but is a much more prevalent category these days.

**ERA - Earned Run Average

***WHIP - Walks + Hits / Innings Pitched

3

That was really good advice from Munch above.

You should decide which type of league you are going to do. Roto or head-to-head. Roto works as described above. It is a competition in each category to get the most of the relevant stat–most stolen bases, most HR, etc.

Head-to-head (h2h) works by matching up your team vs. another and you win a category for the week by having more stolen bases, lower ERA, etc than your opponent for that week only.

Your strategies will differ strongly based on which you are in. For instance, in roto, it is typically a bad idea to “punt” a category from the start. In head-to-head however, if in your draft all of the elite closers are taken, you might “punt” saves every week and focus on drafting premium starting pitching to win W/K/ERA/WHIP. Alternatively you can OVERDRAFT relievers only (take Mariano, Joe Nathan, et al before others would) and thereby win ERA/WHIP/Saves every week.

Also pay attention to the stats your league uses. OBP vs. AVG is a big one. In an OBP league guys like Adam Dunn are hugely valuable (5-category contributors) but in an AVG league, his batting average will hurt you a lot so his value is much less.

If you are unsure of whether you’d prefer roto or h2h, just join both. I vastly prefer ESPN’s setup and there are tons of free leagues with all sorts of settings. Once you pick some settings that sound appealing, we’ll talk draft strategy.

4

One thing I’d suggest is trying to find a private league. You don’t need to know anyone to join one, just check the message boards on Yahoo or ESPN. In public leagues, you’ll often have most of the players quit the league in the middle of the season. Private leagues will usually have a higher level of committment from the owners and hopefully the commissioner will boot out players who are completely inactive. You can find all sorts of private leagues from leagues comprised of all Yankee fans, leagues where you take the name of a major league team, or just about any special interest.

5

So the Roto style: Is it just a horse race to the end of the season? Are the standings just based on who’s winning so far, or are they compiled, say, every week and you “win” that week? Really, I guess I’m asking what the goal is - to have the most/least points at the end of the year or at the end of each week?

6

Generally, yeah, you’re trying for the best cumulative stats at season-end.

7

I don’t know, but I strongly suspect there will be, or at least could be, one or more SDMB leagues, like we had in football. For that matter, it’s not that hard to set up a league at one of the free hosting places like ESPN or YAHOO. I won’t be playing, because I’m just not that in to baseball, but lots of people here are.

8

It’s updated daily, so you know where you’re standing.

I know that UTejas recommended joining both a Roto and a Head-to-Head league. I really don’t recommend H2H. It was basically created by the fantasy football crowd trying to bridge over to baseball. It’s a fundamentally flawed system, and a new player is going to get schooled in it (you can legitimately completely ignore 2-3 stats on draft day and still have a very good chance to do well). The biggest downside is what I addressed at the beginning - go with what is accessible every time you click onto a fantasy baseball site or open a magazine. That’s 5x5 Roto. But different strokes and all, and we shouldn’t devolve this into a “my format is better than your format”. As a beginner, you should stick with the basics.

9

There will be at least one SDMB league. It’s not quite traditional - it uses two more stats than usual, and has more owners than usual, so we end up drafting more players than a usual league does. There’s no reason a beginner couldn’t join that league if there is space, but it’s not really geared for beginners.
There’s a thread open discussing it here.

10

There are also smaller 10 or 12 team leagues opening up around here as well that the OP might feel comfortable in. Maybe one of the more casual players could start it up and commish.

11

There are also two different kinds of drafts to get your players: snake and auction. In snake, each team gets one pick per round, but then the draft order reverses in the next round. The person drafting last in the first round gets two picks in a row, as they also get the first pick in the second round, the person who drafts first gets two picks in a row at the end of the second and beginning of the third. Snake drafts are most common.

In an auction, each team nominates a player and they bid on him. Each player has a budget. The top players usually top out at about a $40-45 auction value. You can get scrubs to fill out your roster at $1.

12

That’d be cool…I’ve never played fantasy baseball, but it interests me quite a bit.

13

I do want to point out there’s no need to limit yourself to a smaller league. I cut my fantasy baseball teeth on the SDMB big league (it was 19 teams then), because I wanted to get back into baseball after a long hiatus after the strike. It definitely did the trick - and I won the league that year (thank you Mark Prior, Pujols Year 2 and Javy Lopez…).

The ONLY restriction you need to be aware of is the requirement that you be dedicated to your team the entire time. That’s why we recommend starting up in a smaller league to see if it’s something you’ll still be interested in once August rolls around. Having managers drop out mid-season is incredibly frustrating in a competetive league.

14

I just don’t want to necessarily be in a super-competitive league first time out. I don’t foresee having an issue with sticking with it through the season, but I also don’t want to be in one where it’s expected I’ll spend hours on it on a daily basis.

15

That’s unlikely. I’ll spend maybe 5 minutes a day on each league I’m in - maybe more on the weekend to make sure I’m aware of what’s going on. You can set your lineup way ahead of time, allowing some to just check once a week.

16

Cool. :slight_smile:

17

OK, I’m in. Where can I find these casual leagues? And when do most of them start up?