How to Win Your Fantasy Baseball League
With the season might around the corner and most leagues drafting these next couple of days. Here are some tips for winning your fantasy baseball league this year:
- Research and be prepared
Before your draft you should be reading, watching and listening to as many Fantasy Baseball things as possible. Also look at your league settings to see what type of league you are in and the categories or point totals. There are Facebook groups, podcasts, magazines, articles, rankings and videos that you can use. See what the industrial writers think of certain players and how their rankings look. Look at as many Fantasy Baseball rankings as you can. Find one that you like or make your own rankings. Yahoo and ESPN rankings are the most popular, but both have their flaws.
The best rankings to use are at Fantasy Pros. They combine all the top writers’ rankings to form theirs. Once you have a good set of rankings and have stuffed yourself with as much information and opinions as possible compare your ranks with the site your league is on rank’s. You will be able to find players that you are higher or lower on and players you may be able to wait on or pass on. Now it is now time to start mock drafts. I would recommend that you do as many mock drafts as possible. For each mock, try a different strategy. Try going all pitchers with first five picks, or all hitters first six picks. Keep trying a different strategy till you find a team that you like the most.
2. Draft
When it comes down to draft down, you will be full of information and have a strategy for your team. For point leagues, starting pitchers tend to more than hitters and in rotisserie/category leagues you want your teams to be as balanced as possible, so you want to be good at every stat. DO NOT PUNT ANY CATEGORY. Every team will have a weakness, but do not completely give your team a one and give up any category. During your draft stick to your rankings and strategy. Never panic, stay calm even during a run on a certain position. You have done enough mock drafts to know how to handle every situation. If there is a pitcher run, then take hitters and NEVER REACH ON A POSITION BECAUSE OF A RUN. The draft is all about value. Do not reach on players unless you expect them to reach/exceed the other players value that are also available. At the same time though, take chances in your draft. There is only one winner so take chances/risks later in the draft and your team need to have a mix of young players with tons of upside like Corey Seager for example and sure fire players like Mike Trout. Last year we saw that rookies can be called up and make a huge difference like Kris Bryant. Also the same can be said for international players. Guys like Yu Darvish, Jose Abreu and Yoenis Cespedes have come over and made an impact.
3. Trading
Trading can be tricky in fantasy baseball. Only trade if you need to fill a hole or if you want to sell high on a player you think will regress or you are trying to buy low on a player that you expect to play better. Trading can be addicting, but stick with team you drafted and only make adjusts when you need to. I would never recommend trading before the season or even till about the third week on the MLB. Be patience with your team and do not panic, because of cold starts. The middle of the season is the best time to trade, so you can make that late playoff push or continue a rebuild. Do not overthink any trade. I have many times talked myself into some terrible trades, use your rankings when trades are proposed to you as a reference.
So to sum everything up:
- Be prepared
- Take risks
- Rookies/International players matter
- Always take a couple top prospects at the end of your draft that might be called up soon
- No punting
- Do not reach on players, value is important
- No overthinking
- For Roto leagues go with a speed/power combo
- For H2H leagues focus on pitching first
- Have fun and winning is very fun!
