Fantasy Baseball Advice

When you decide to play fantasy baseball, the first thing you must do is to join or create a league. Fortunately, you can find some great websites that will allow you to join or create a league and track your players stats for you throughout the season. There are also many scoring and draft options for fantasy baseball leagues. Of course, there is some fantasy baseball advice you should follow when joining or creating a league.

When you decide to join or create a league, you'll need to find where to play it. Some of the best fantasy baseball advice is to stick with the major reliable sites. These fantasy baseball sites will allow you to choose various types of leagues to play in and many options if you want to create a league. The best sites to play fantasy baseball on are listed below.

There are 2 main types of fantasy baseball leagues that you can join or create - rotisserie and head to head. There are big differences between the two. Choose the one you feel more comfortable with or join or create multiple leagues to try both.

In a rotisserie league your players stats will add up over the entire season for a total. The higher the totals (besides stats like ERA and WHIP) the better. Rotisserie leagues don't have a playoff.

In head to head fantasy leagues your team will play against a different team in your league each week and only the stats for that week will count. Head to head leagues will have a playoff over the last few weeks of the regular baseball season. Some head to head league will go by stat totals while others will go by a certain number of points for each stat.

There are two main ways to draft fantasy baseball teams. You can either do snaking draft or an auction draft. In a snaking draft teams pick in order, then the reverse order in the next round (if the league has 10 teams it goes from 1st to 10th in round one, 10th to 1st in round two, and so on). In an auction draft each team has a set amount of play money that they use to bid on the players they want. Choose the type of draft you would prefer to do when you join or create a fantasy baseball league.

When you join a fantasy baseball league, you need to look over the settings for that league. Make sure you know the number of positions, the stats that count, and any league minimums or maximums.

The number of positions will vary from league to league. If you have no or little fantasy baseball experience, you'll probably want to stick with the basics, which is one slot per position and 3 for outfielders, along with a reasonable number of starting and relief pitchers.

The statistics that count will also vary from league to league. Once again, if you're a newbie stick with leagues that count the major stats such as hits, batting average, runs, home runs, RBIs, wins, saves, strikeouts, ERA, and WHIP.

Some leagues will have limits on how many free agency moves and trades you can do per week or for the season. Rotisserie leagues will likely have an upper limit on how many games you can play per position and an upper limit on innings pitched for the season. Head to head leagues may have a minimum of innings pitched per week.

One of the most important, and to many people the funnest, parts of playing fantasy baseball is drafting your team. You can always choose to have your team automatically drafted for you, but you'll get way more enjoyment out of winning if you join a live draft league. Whether you decide to join or create an auction draft or snaking draft league, there are some things you should keep in mind. Here's the top fantasy baseball advice for drafting your team.

One great piece of fantasy baseball advice is to pay attention to how deep the hitting positions are. There is a drop off of talent after a certain point for every one of them. The outfield and first base positions are almost always deep so if you miss out on one of the top 5 you can still find quality players later on. Third base is usually solid as well. However, shortstop and second base usually have a steep drop off in talent level after the top 5. Catcher is one position you should wait on drafting for the most part since catchers tend to miss more games and they usually break down quicker than players at other positions.

You will surely be tempted to draft a high ranked pitcher or two early in your fantasy baseball draft. Usually half of the stats you need to score are in pitching categories, so you may figure that you're best off having some of the best from the past season. Unfortunately, starting pitchers get injured way more often than batters and are also more likely to get the dreaded season ending injury. Every season, there are also starting pitchers who come out of nowhere to end up ranked among the top 10 or 15 for the season. You can find plenty of bargains on starters late in the draft and in free agency during the season. Because of this, you should take the fantasy baseball advice of waiting a little before you start drafting pitchers.

As far as relievers go, you'll want to wait even longer before you start drafting them. Even the top closers won't go until the middle rounds of most drafts anyway. A decent number of teams will change their closers at some point during the season as well. Middle relievers aren't really needed on most fantasy teams unless your league counts holds as a stat, though you could get one or two to help with the ERA and WHIP stats depending on how deep your league is.

While it's a good idea to avoid players with a bad history of injuries, you could end up with a bargain if a guy who missed a good portion of last season gets back to his previous statistic levels. You can also take a chance on good players who will miss the first few weeks or month of the season late in your draft if you are confident they will come back strong. This is especially a good idea if your league has some injured reserve slots.

There are plenty of baseball players who've had huge fantasy impact in the past, but don't put up near the same stats as they used to. However, somebody always ends up drafting these players because of name recognition. However, it's a good piece of fantasy baseball advice to pass on players whose production has decreased noticeably over the last couple of seasons. Let another team pick them and focus on drafting more potential.

Once you've drafted your fantasy baseball team, you'll need to keep your lineup updated throughout the season. You will also need to make changes as things come up, whether it's injuries or underachieving players. Here is the top fantasy baseball advice for winning during the season.

There's no such thing as a perfect fantasy baseball team. Even if your team is really good there are bound to be a couple of underachievers on your squad. If your team has a bad start, you'll certainly need to look into improving your squad. Some of the top fantasy baseball advice is to keep an eye on the waiver and free agent lists. If you have a need at one position but are strong at another position, you can look at other teams to trade with.

Another great piece of fantasy baseball advice is to take advantage of the injured reserve slots if your league has them. If one of your stars is going to be out for a while, put them on the IR rather than dropping them. In the meantime, you can pick up another player to hold you over until your injured player comes back.

Many leagues will have certain limits you need to keep an eye on during the season. This is especially true of rotisserie leagues since they will usually have a limit on how many games you can play per position and how many innings pitched your team can have. Many leagues will also have a maximum amount of trades and free agency moves you can make during the season or per week.

If you play in a head to head fantasy baseball league, you'll make the playoffs if your team has a record good enough to qualify for them. These playoffs will cover the last few weeks of the regular baseball season. At this point you'll need to win every week to go on in the playoff and have a chance to win your league. Here is the best fantasy baseball advice for winning in the playoffs.

You will certainly want to play your superstars if you make the playoffs, but if they are a bit beat up and play on a team that will make the real playoffs, they could end up getting rested to avoid injury.

Over the last week of the regular baseball season, starting pitchers will be making their last starts. If you need more wins and strikeouts to give your team a better chance at a championship, you should drop pitchers who are done for the season and pick up ones who have another start. Of course, you'll want to make sure that this doesn't negatively impact your ERA and WHIP stats.

There's always a chance of a tie in the playoffs. In this case, there are tiebreakers that can win or lose the week for your team. They are usually a certain stat that you must win to break a tie. It's a good piece of fantasy baseball advice to know what these tiebreakers are so you can focus on winning those stats if there's a possibility of tying your opponent for the week.