How to Understand Fantasy Baseball Leagues
I am a huge fantasy sports fan. I eat, breathe and sleep sports which is why I love fantasy sports even more. Fantasy sports leagues allow you to be the General Manager of a team from your own computer at home. You personally get to draft your team and match wits with other sports fans like you across the nation.
In fantasy leagues you can play for free or be in a money league in which each person pays $10-$50 to have a team. The top three places usually get paid in percentages in accordance with the amount of money in the league. Money leagues are different on each fantasy sports sight and you have to be careful to read the directions of the payout structure and how much money it will cost for you to play before you give them your credit card information and get billed for it.
The first step is to register a team. This for a free league involves creating your own unique team name. On most websites such as yahoo you also will need to create your own User ID and password information for security purposes. Once you have a team name the next step is to pick an open time slot to draft your fantasy team.
While in some leagues you do have the option of auto drafting your team, I do not advise doing so. Auto drafting a team means that the computer will draft your team for you if you are unable to attend the draft. If this happens, you will be stuck with bad players who are often injured or having bad seasons. In addition, attending your fantasy draft is so much fun. You get to pick your favorite players or players you think will have breakout seasons. You also get to talk on a message board with the other owners in your league who will also be online at the draft sight.
A good option which some fantasy leagues offer is to pre-rank the fantasy players. For example, in yahoo baseball leagues, there are 21 rounds of players chosen with 12 teams in each league. That is 252 players chosen. Most people cannot name 252 players so if you want to have the best possible team, research the players before the draft. Look up their stats and injuries. Are they in a slump or in a hot streak? By pre-ranking players, you know who to choose when it is your turn to draft a player in each round.
The usual draft format is that one team will draft first and then the picks go down the line with each of the 12 teams each picking one player in the first round. When the 12th team has picked the 12th player in the draft, that same team also has the 13th pick of the draft. This evens the draft out and makes it as fair as possible since the team with the overall #1 pick also has pick #24 and #25.
Reading the rules of your fantasy league is one of the most important things to do, especially for anyone who is a novice to fantasy leagues. For anyone who has never played in a fantasy league but would like to do so, I suggest playing in a free fantasy league before you spend money on a money league.
You will also have the option of playing in a highly competitive league in which managers of teams check their team several times a week or daily and are very active in the league with trades and transactions. Or you can choose a league that is not as competitive and not that active in your league. In my experience, the more active the managers are in any league, the more fun it will be having a fantasy team.
Other important concepts to understand in any fantasy league are the maximum games played statistic. In some leagues, you are only allowed to play players in each spot for 182 games. What am I talking about you ask? Well some people like switching their bench players with their starters on days that the team’s starting player has a day off. This is done to gain more runs, homers or RBIs. However, you are only allowed to accumulate statistics for 182 games which is a full regular season. Once a manger exceeds 182 games stats for that position in the league will not count. For example, if you have 1 catcher spot on your roster than accumulates stats, you cannot play Derek Jeter for 182 games and then Jose Reyes for another 20 games.
Finally, look to see when your season starts. Some leagues are mid season leagues in which you do not accumulate statistics for your team until after the All Star break. Mid Season leagues allow you to draft an injured player who might not come back until after the All Star break. However, most leagues start with opening day of the regular season of that sport.
