The most common issue people have with fantasy baseball is that once you login and look at the team roster page, you have zero clue as what to do from there. In this two part series, GuysGirl aims to show you how you can get a grasp on managing your fantasy baseball team in the first part of this series.
First things first: Learn the rules! Learn the basics!
If you are gona play, then you have to know how to win. Assuming you are playing the most common form of fantasy baseball (10 team, 5×5 scoring) let’s go over the difference between ROTO leagues vs. Head 2 Head leagues to hopefully give you some basics that will make playing fantasy baseball fun, and maybe even help you win.
Scoring in Fantasy Baseball
5×5 represents 5 scoring categories for batters (Runs (R), Home Runs (HR), Runs Batted In (RBI), Stolen Bases (SB) and Batting Average (BA or AVG).
The other 5 scoring categories are for pitchers (Wins (W), Saves (S), Earned Run Average (ERA), Walks + Hits / Innings Pitched (WHIP), Strikeouts (K).
For most categories, the higher the number you accumulate, the better: R, HR, RBI, SB, AVG, W, S, and K.
But for 2 of them: ERA & WHIP, the lower the number, the better.
If all of this goes right over your head, then know that last sentence, 8 out of 10 categories you want the higher number, and the last 2 you want the lower number. Fantasy baseball doesn’t have to be rocket science…so simplify it.
Rotisserie (Roto) League
In a Roto league it is your team vs. everyone else in the league at the same time.
You have you 5×5 scoring settings, so that is a total of 10 scoring categories. So for example, lets say your team has the most HRs, then you will win that category.
But if you don’t get a win, you get a numeric value for how you ranked in each category. Let’s say you were 1st in HR and there are 10 teams in your league, you are then given 10 points for the HR category.
There are 10 stat categories, if you are to win them all over the course of the fantasy season, you would accumulate 100 points.
But that rarely happens, so lets break down the Roto scoring so you fully understand it…
I’m going take each Category and randomly pick where you are for the sake of understanding how to know your score. So for Runs your team was 2nd so you get 9 points. You were 1st in HR, so that’s 10 points; you were 2nd in RBI so that’s another 9 points. For SB you only got 9th place, so you get 2 points for that. And for AVG you finished 5th, so 6 points there.
- Let’s add up our Batting Stat Points: 9+10+9+2+6 = 36 out of a possible 50.
- Now for Pitching stats: 2nd in Wins: 9 points. 1st in Saves: 10 points. 7th in ERA: 4 points. 5th in WHIP: 6 points. 1st in K’s: 10 points.
- Let’s add em up: 9+10+4+6+10 = 39 out of a possible 50.
- Now you combine batter and pitcher points: 36 + 39 = 75 out of a possible 100 points.
So what does all of that mean?
Basically it means that you want to monitor how well you are doing in each stat category as the season progresses. If you start to take a huge lead in SB, then trade a SB player away to get a Power player to help you improve your HR, RBI.
You have to check periodically to make sure that you aren’t falling out of contention in any 1 particular stat, but you want to try and win as many as you can.
Head 2 Head League
This format is similar to most fantasy football formats. You get matched up weekly to play 1 other team in your league.
There are 2 types of Head 2 Head (H2H) leagues, so let me try to explain them quickly. First there is H2H W-L-D…This style allows you to play your opponent for 1 week and you either Win-Lose-Draw in each of the 10 stat categories.
Keeping track of scoring throughout the season is adding weeks of W-L-D on top of each other and creating standings much like that in real baseball. I prefer this format myself because it matches you up against your league mates and provides a detailed assessment of wins and losses and draws.
The 2nd H2H format is a simple W-L format. You play vs. your opponent for 1 week using the 10 stat categories. You count up the number of categories you won, and if you won 6 or more, then you get a 1-0 win for the week. If you lost 6 or more, then you get a 0-1 loss for the week. And if you both won 5 stats, then you both get a 0-0-1 tie for the week.
This system can work, but often you have to have a tiebreaker for playoffs and there isn’t really a way to break the ties sometimes so I prefer the first H2H option.
