When most people think of fantasy sports, they think football. But by no means is that all there is. Considering the time of year, why not give fantasy baseball a try? In fact, go one step further and join a league with an auction draft. It involves much more strategy than your standard league with its random draft order. I put this first because of how much it irks me. Why sign up for a league and then let the computer randomly pick your team?
Think about it. Most online fantasy leagues show the previous season stats for every player and show the projections for this year. So provided you know what these stats mean and whether you want it to be high or low, you should be ok.
As far as more in-depth strategy goes, take notice of what commodities go faster than others. His team is never any good and he tends to ruin the experience. Most of the conflict in fantasy leagues comes from this part of the game, and it is the reason that all leagues should have a written set of rules, or constitution, in place.
At the very least, the league manager should make sure that all owners are up to speed on the particular rules that your league is using to avoid any potential confusion that may arise as the season moves along. Fantasy baseball is supposed to be fun, and that should always be the overriding reason to play. That said, if you are in a league with a bunch of friends and you all agree that you want to sweeten the thrill of victory a bit, there's nothing wrong with that, either.
Just be reasonable about it. A bunch of college students shouldn't be playing for the same stakes as a gaggle of big-shot attorneys. By keeping it within your means, you can help keep things fun and prevent people from taking the whole thing WAY TOO seriously.
So there you have it. When you know the notes to sing, you can sing most anything. And when you know the basics of fantasy baseball, you can pick and choose the things you like and the things you don't. You can play the game in whatever way suits your personal taste, following every rainbow until you find your dream league.
Just be sure you get in there and play! You can e-mail him here. Skip to main content Skip to navigation. Mass: Introduction to fantasy baseball. Superman returns: Cam rejoins QB-thin Panthers. Carolina Panthers. Ruggs' lawyers: Witness says firefighting slow. Las Vegas Raiders. Sources: OBJ may not pick team until after Sun. Green Bay Packers. Chicago Bulls. UConn Huskies. Cowboys DE Gregory calf out multiple weeks. Dallas Cowboys. Ducks' Murray out, to seek help for alcohol abuse.
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Charlie Blackmon. Jonathan Villar. Okay, but it was a short season, so of course, the results were unpredictable. And the fourth round was much better in , with six of 11 players returning at least top 75 value.
Of course, only five of 10 players drafted in the third round were even inside the top , so the point still stands -- once you get outside of the first couple of rounds, your chances of getting a good return on your investment are never more than about a coin flip.
Which is to say, drafting the "right" players is a lot harder than you think, and you're going to miss on plenty of guys. We've all got our guys -- here are mine -- but one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a Fantasy player is to fall in love with a name. You're not drafting biographical data, you're drafting expected production, and the name attached doesn't matter all that much. Make your list of players you want to make sure you get, because that's one of the fun parts of playing Fantasy sports, but don't be beholden to it.
It's better to have a general strategy about what kind of players you want to draft, when you want to take them, and how you're going to build out your team as you move through the draft.
The exact players you want may not be there when you are picking, but you can still have a general sense of what kind of team you want to end up with by the end of your draft. So, as we head into the final weekend of Fantasy Baseball draft season, I thought I would try to synthesize my thoughts about this year's player pool and how my drafts have typically proceeded into something like a grand unified theory of drafting for Your plan may be different -- I know Scott White's is a lot different than mine!
For more information about our data practices consult our Privacy Policy. But first, one piece of strategy I think is worth applying to every draft you ever do in every sport: If you identify one trend everyone seems to be following, you should at least consider going in the opposite direction. That's not to say you should be a knee-jerk contrarian, but you should think about bucking the trends because they can often be value found there.
There are obvious ways that can be applied to Fantasy Baseball in , and I'll get to that shortly, but here's the best way I can explain the thought process behind it: If nine people in your team league are trying to build their teams following one particular plan, you need to be better than nine different people just to have a chance; if you follow the path that only a few people are going with, you just have to be better than that small group.
That doesn't guarantee you'll win, but you're going to have less competition for the type of players you are targeting, and your roster should stand out from the rest of the league in a way that could prove very valuable when you are looking to draft. When I talk about zigging when everyone else is zagging, in , that means I'm not pushing starting pitchers up my draft board as much as everyone might be. Starting pitchers are being drafted earlier than ever in , but there's no evidence to suggest that the Fantasy Baseball community is actually getting any better at drafting starting pitchers , and the early rounds are littered with pitchers who could prove to be potential landmines in your drafts.
That's not to say I'm going with some kind of zero-SP approach, of course. I'm happy to take Jacob deGrom , Gerrit Cole , and Shane Bieber in the first round, and there have been multiple leagues where I've had two starters in the first two rounds.
But, I'm still leaning more heavily on the hitting side inside of the top picks in most drafts. And the reason for that is simple: A draft is a zero-sum game, you always have to make sacrifices when building your team, and I'm not willing to make the sacrifices you need to make to invest in starting pitching early. The sacrifice I am willing to make is at relief pitcher. I'm perfectly happy going through an entire draft without a single closer, knowing that about half of the closers on Opening Day will lose their job sooner rather than later.
You have to be active on the wire, but there are always saves to be found if you are.
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