Baseball is much more time consuming than football, and there is more strategy involved both with roster construction and start/sit decisions. A single week of H2H baseball can require nearly as many decisions and player games as an entire season of fantasy football, so the luck factor is cut down quite a bit and day to day team management plays a much larger role in the outcome of your season than in football. Baseball is like chess whereas football is more like checkers.

In Head to Head leagues (which are the most popular and most fun in my opinion) you play a different opponent every week like in football. The difference is that the league will count anywhere from 10-12 or more different stats, and whoever gets the most of a particular stat that week gets a "win" for that category. So in a league with 5 pitching categories and 5 hitting categories a typical score is 7-3, 5-5, etc. You can typically swap players in and out of your starting lineup every day.
Playoff teams are determined by the highest season won total rather than winning individual weeks.

In roto leagues you play against the entire league for the entire season, and you try to maximize your standing in each stat category. In a 12 team league you get 12 points for having the best total in a specific category and 1 point for the worst score. highest point total at the end of the season wins the league.
These leagues are populated by old men and nits. If you want to have fun playing for the first time, play H2H.


Point leagues are set up very similar to football, where varying amounts of points are assigned to each hitting and pitching outcome and you play head to head. Bleh, not my style, as the winning strategy can typically involve using a very unbalanced team, and real world player values are generally not reflected as closely as the other formats due to the difficulty in setting up a fair point system.

Thats kind of where I'm leaning. I doubt Cano goes in the first round regardless of how many 1st rounders are kept, as almost all 1st rd the players who may be cut are better than Cano imo.

Nobody likes keeping Seager at 5?
I love my late round SP, but man keeping that many feels kind of dirty. I have never kept more than 2 pitchers in this league and most years I kept only 1. But I guess if my bats are lacking I dont have much choice...

tyvm for the through response.
if you have any suggestions for further reading on how to approach a draft/roster construction i would appreciate it.

cheers!

im considering joining a small stakes league just for fun/to learn but i know i'll just end up drafting all dodger players.

A very good fantasy baseball resource (in addition to this thread):

https://www.reddit.com/r/fantasybaseball/

Re: draft consutrction I'm sure there are plenty of articles, but it's actually extremely dependent upon roster composition and scoring. For instance, my home league has deep rosters for hitting but not pitching (17 offensive slots and 10 pitching slots, including relievers), which makes elite pitching highly valued. The 5 pitching categories count equally to the 5 hitting categories.

If you post your league's roster format and scoring then that would help us give advice.

A few tips I would give that would apply to all leagues:
- Don't stray too much from the rankings. If your OF is nearly full and there's good value of OF on the board but you'd have to reach to get your first SS, still draft the good value OF and worry about SS later. If people get scared and overdraft a position, that just means that you're gobbling up value in the positions they're ignoring.
- Don't focus too much on positional scarcity. Draft players that put up big numbers first and foremost.
- Draft a well-rounded team with good power hitters, some speed, high K-rate pitchers (critical), and 2-3 relievers. In fantasy football, your draft can win you the league. In fantasy baseball, your draft can't win you the league, but it can easily lose you the league. Look for undervalued guys in positions you need, and be flexible that in round x it might end up being a starter, reliever, shortstop, whatever.
- Starting pitchers tend to be highly volatile boom/bust commodities. The damage of a bust pitcher is far worse than a bust hitter. What impact this has on how you draft, however, is the subject of much debate.
- Catcher is a worthless dumpster fire position lately and I would avoid drafting one until pretty late in the game. A lot of beginners just fill out their rosters and start feeling nervous if they don't have a catcher, so they reach for one in the ~10th round. A lot of the time you can draft a catcher in the very last slot and not suffer too badly from it--the 10th round catcher probably sucks too.

Fantasy baseball draft strategy is extremely subjective. Almost everything beyond the basics will be straight up opinion, and I'm sure some people will disagree with stuff I've said above. Like I said a ton depends on league format.

+100 to the above

also, waivers and paying attention to call ups/closer wars become huge. keep closermonkey.com as a bookmark and check it a few times a week to see whos moving up/down

waivers in general are a lot more fluid than FF. if you have the #1 spot, theres no real value in saving it if your league is active (depending on settings and add/drop limits).

you're not playing a 14 week season, its 23-25 weeks. youll always notice a drop off for owners over the summer for about 2 months or so. the more active you are, the better youll be.

A couple specific things that I notice inexperienced owners tend you mess up (these apply to H2H, not so much roto)

--While its fine to draft a couple of late round (or $1-2 in auction) high upside bench bats, once the season gets a few weeks underway you'll almost always want to use your bench for pitching. Almost invariably the tops teams carry 0 or 1 bench bats most of the year and have loads of starting pitching in order to optimize matchups.

--dont worry about steals too much in your draft. Dont pass up higher projected production just to try to get some steals. In H2H there is so much variance from week to week that you shouldn't make speed a priority - also you can't "bank" excess stats like in roto, so winning every week by 10 steals is pretty useless. Also the more categories your league uses, the less valuable steals are.

--focus on hitters who hit toward the top of their team's lineup, specifically #2 - 4 hitters

-- be patient. guys coming from football tend to panic way too early after a slow start and end up making bad drops and/or trades.

thanks so much for all the responses
not 100% sure I'm gonna play this year as dunno if I'll have the time to devote to it and I hate ppl that aren't active owners so I wouldn't want to have to hate myself anymore than I already do.

however if I do decide to play I'll def post my league settings for more advice.

really appreciate all the in depth replies.

cheers.

If you don't feel like you have time and want a league with friends, try a weekly league. Not as good as daily roster changes, but a good way of "dipping your toes in"

also baseball season needs to start asap

Def +1 on starting with a weekly league.

If you're relatively new to fantasy baseball - focus on learning the player pool and looking at the wire each week instead of trying to squeeze every last hitting/pitching matchup over a 150+ day season. Even with weekly leagues, its a 26 week season and it can be a grind (especially if you're in it down the stretch).

Heck I take it fairly seriously and 3/4 of my leagues were weekly lineups and waivers. No shame in it. Yeah Tuesday or Wednesday injuries suck but they tend to even out.

Baseball is definitely the highest maintenance required of all fantasy sports. Infinite more work than football. The waiver system in football makes it a joke, you really just need to pay attention before waivers clear on Tuesday or Wednesday mornings and that's about it.

I've moved from 3 leagues to 1 last year, and it's a lot improved. I would maybe do a second again but no more than that.

Nova back with the Pirates woop woop

Alright gents, got a keeper trade question for you.

12 team, 6x6 with OBP and holds.

My current keepers (can keep 8) with prices and years left are below, keepers can be 4 years total and go from $1, $2, $9, $10 and 10% inflation each year for every keeper over $10.

Donaldson $1, 1 year
Altuve $12, 2 years
Machado $9, 3 years
Arenado $9, 2 years
Pollock $12, 3 years
Springer $9, 2 years
JD mart $1, 2 years
Carrasco $1, 2 years

I give: Donaldson and Machado
I get: Betts at $1 for 2 years

My other players I can keep for $1 for 4 years on the roster to replace Donaldson are:

Wilson contreras
Jose Pereza
Aaron judge
Sean manaea

On second thought probably going to decline because I initially though the keeper years remaining for Machado and betts were flipped. But still interested to hear peoples thoughts as I think betts is going off again and Donaldson will fall off pretty hard this year with no EE and Bautista

don't see why, you're in it to win it now, would rather have the 2 than 1

also surprised you're keeping pollock at 12 a bit, but that's just me

Just looked at some rankings, and saw Healy as the #39 3B. Really liked him last year, stunned he's so low

That's what I figured.

And what's wrong with pollock at $12? Super low risk and he's got a ton of upside and much better than any of my other options

Yeah, depends on your $, what you expect to go back out there, and what you start, but I just worry about injuries, and he's really only been real good 1 year. Age getting up there, it worries me. Think Peraza has a lot of SB upside thenn Pollock, would rather have him, but maybe others disagree

I would definitely not trade trade Donaldson and Machado for Betts. Those guys are both legit first rounders, and each one is very close in value to Betts. Saving $8 is nice, but realistically what is that 8 bucks going to buy you? Certainly not another 1st rounder, or anything remotely close.

Pollock at $12 is fine given his upside, esp since all your keepers are such bargains - but if you can trade him for a better player I would do it, even if that player is more expensive. Maybe shop Pollock + Contreras and see if you can land an ace?

I'd just hold and honestly not even close for me. You've got 8 consensus top 50 (likely even better) guys for under $60. It'd be a significant downgrade in terms of your 8th keeper if you did that deal.

I've got him potentially in my top 30-35 or so among all corner infielders, so yes I would 100% agree with you. Or are you talking about where he finished 2016? Cause yeah he was around #40 only having played half a season.

The (fairly conservative) Steamer projections on FG are saying almost .275 with 20 homers. Even in a 2016 offensive environment and at a relatively deep 3B, that is surely a top 18-20 guy at 3B for sure.

was looking at 2017 rankings from someone, but yeah, when I see people loving Franco and not caring about Healy, just surprises me

im in a 10 man league, where you have 6 keepers. no restrictions on the keepers. I was just offered Giancarlo Stanton and Anthony Rizzo for Mookie Betts.

My other keeper possibilities are Corey Seager, Tre Turner, JD Martinez, Jackie Bradley Jr., Rougned Odor, Noah Syndergaard and Julio Urias.

I'm really torn on this, please help

I'd say it's a pretty good offer and I would decline it. Your keepers are pretty good. It'd be Seager, Turner, Synd, Odor, and either Betts/Odor or Stanton/Rizzo. I think I prefer the Betts pair.

Agreed. Have to learn the Stanton lesson by year 5

Sorry, meant JDM and not Odor twice. I think I prefer him over JBJ.

I'd stick with Betts as well. There is just too much of a premium on the top 5-10 guys when there's only six keepers per team. It'd have to be like two guys going in the first two rounds like Machado and Rizzo to make me deal him, unless your keepers were just total trash (which yours aren't).