If you’re reading this article, you are probably at least intrigued at the idea of fantasy baseball. Maybe you’ve tinkered in fantasy football before, you might’ve even won your league. Maybe you love America’s pastime yet have been intimidated by the geeks with their calculators and sabermetrics. Whichever the reason, this guide is here to give you every tool you need to decide if this fake sport is right for you, and enough information to give you a shot at winning the damn thing.
The Format:
For our purposes, I’m going to stick with the most common of fantasy baseball league formats: The five-by-five head-to-head 12-team league. This might sound complex but it truly couldn’t be simpler. The “five-by-five” means that there are five hitting categories and five pitching categories that will be tallied up each week. The most common hitting categories are runs, home runs, RBIs, stolen bases, and batting average. In pitching, ERA, WHIP (walks+hits per inning pitched), strikeouts, wins, and saves are most prevalent.
The head-to-head portion of this type of league refers to the fact that you pit your lineup against a different player’s each week. The opposite of this is a rotisserie league, which pits your squad against every team in the league by way of their end-of-season totals. Head-to-head creates more rivalries and gives more of a “this week really matters” mentality. The 12-team portion of the title just refers to how many managers you will be competing against, and this also affects how close your draft picks will be to each other.
Expert’s note: If you want to incorporate some newer baseball theory, substitute on-base percentage in place of batting average and quality starts (6+ innings pitched, less than three earned runs allowed) in place of wins in your league. This better represents a player’s value as opposed to rewarding players who aren’t patient or pitch for powerful offenses.
The First Pick
So what do you do with your first round pick? The beginning of your fantasy baseball season. This will determine the fate of your team for the rest of the year, right? This player needs to lead your squad to the promised land. Your pick will change the direction of the first round for other managers, and will truly determine how your team finishes, come October, right?
Wrong.
In one of my leagues last season, the player who nabbed Albert Pujols (infamous for his slow start, at one point going 5-for-54 in April/May) ended up winning the championship handedly.
Don’t over think your picks boys and girls. The two biggest things you look for in a first-round pick are consistency and multi-category production. While many players are drooling to throw their first overall pick at Mike Trout, I think I might play it safe. Ryan Braun and Andrew McCutchen provide similar skill-sets (power/ stolen base potential) but also have played more full seasons than Trout, providing a safer bet for a return of first-round value. It’s hard to sell me on a leadoff hitter in the first round regardless, even one who made history last season.
Expert’s note: Don’t place too much stock in positions. Though I love Robinson Cano because he’s the only second baseman worth nabbing in the first two rounds, I don’t mind picking up a pair of first basemen or outfielders with consecutive picks. In the long run, you’ve got utility spots for a reason. Pick the talent.
The Go-To Sleepers
A typical post-draft conversation:
“Wow, Bobby… Your team really sucks.”
“Whatever dude. You haven’t done the research. I nabbed a bunch of sleepers.”
Don’t be the second guy. “Sleeper” is a fun word the fantasy community throws around for any player with high upside who’s gotten little attention from the mainstream media. The eighth round is the time for Sleepers, not the third.
I’ll admit, I got burned last season on this one. I was stubborn. I had a chance to grab Derek Jeter early, and I held out. I knew the Angels had a stacked new lineup, so I went into my drafts with one shortstop on my mind: Erick Aybar. Needless to say, Jeter finished with 15 homers and 99 runs, while Aybar was dropped to the lower third of the Angels order and was out of my fake lineup by week six.
Pick a few guys who you’d like to nab toward the second half of your draft but don’t build a team around them. Players with big names and big contracts got both for a reason.
The Pitchers
Most of this column has been about hitting, which stands to reason that picking hitters is the most important part of your draft and season. Plain and simple: good hitters don’t sprout up on the waiver wire very often. Injuries to hitters are much rarer (making their odds of success greater) and performance doesn’t vary year to year nearly as often as it does for pitchers. That being said, in a five-by-five league, half the categories stand to be won by the guys on the mound even if it’s more of a crapshoot.
Drafting pitchers is stressful. One reason I advocate counting quality starts over wins is because this category rewards good starters while taking the stress out of picking pitchers on very bad hitting teams. There is no reason why Felix Hernandez should’ve been picked below just about anyone other than Justin Verlander over the past three seasons. But in a world where you can pitch to a 2.27 ERA and go just 13-12, crazy things happen.
The Starters
3 Tips for Picks
1. Look at the WHIP, not the ERA. Counting walks and hits is a much better indicator of sustainability than counting runs allowed. Much more difficult to have an outlier in the ERA conversation, just ask Clay Buchholz (2.33 ERA in 2010, 3.93 ERA for career).
2. Look for complete games. Lots of innings will lower your team’s ERA, even if the complete games are eight-inning losses or games a few runs were allowed. Remember that nine innings of two-run ball is just as useful as five-innings of one-run ball. Cliff Lee is one of the most underrated pitchers in baseball heading into this year’s draft because of his ability to eat innings.
3. Don’t be afraid to look at career numbers, not just last season. As I mentioned before, the tendency for pitchers to fluctuate season to season is too great to bet on a “breakout” year. I’ll be hard pressed to pick Yu Darvish over Madison Bumgarner (3.20 career ERA in four seasons), even if Darvish’s strikeout numbers and record last season were a bit flashier.
Lastly, and possibly most importantly, we come to the title of this article: Don’t reach for a closer. You want saves? You want to get a star closer early so you don’t have to worry about it? You want to gamble on unsustainable success? Please go invest in Enron. Fantasy baseball isn’t the place for you.
Mariano Rivera, Heath Bell, Drew Storen, Andrew Bailey. All names in the Closer’s Carousel. Jordan Walden, Ryan Madson, Carlos Marmol. If you draft a closer early, you’re asking for heartache. Wait it out. Draft mid-level players with job security and good fastballs. Grant Balfour, Jason Motte, and Chris Perez. Gravitate toward guys who will still provide you with saves, but without the drama.