Fantasy Baseball 101: Best Formats and Platforms for 2024
Fantasy baseball can initially be overwhelming to newer players, even those with previous experience in fantasy football. MLB’s 162-game season spanning six months of everyday play is much more to keep track of than the NFL’s 18-week, one-game-per-week schedule. Even before the struggles of drafting and maintaining your team in-season, the first big decision of fantasy baseball is what type of format you want to play and where you want to play it. It’s a long season, so it’s important to know what you are getting into before you commit. In this article, I will break down the most popular fantasy baseball formats along with the best platform to play each of them on.
Rotisserie
The Rotisserie format (“Roto” for short) is all about the mass accumulation of stats throughout a season. There are no weekly matchups, just a running tally of the stats your team produces. The stats that matter can vary from league to league, but most use the standard 5×5 categories. These are runs, home runs, runs batted in, stolen bases, and batting average for hitters, and wins, strikeouts, ERA, WHIP, and saves for pitchers. At the end of the season in a 12-team league, the team with the most runs will get 12 points for the category and the team with the least runs will get 1 point for the category. This process is repeated for the 1-12 rank of each of the ten categories, and then each team’s points are added up into a total score which determines the final standings. There are no playoffs, and the season ends on the last day of the season. The benefit of this type of league is that it’s regarded to be the most skill-based since there are no playoffs or luck-based weekly matchups. A downside to roto leagues is that there will come a point in the season where many teams lose hope of winning. In a league centered on weekly matchups a team could always go on a winning streak to sneak into the playoffs, but in roto there won’t be much you can do to win if you’re buried at the bottom of the standings in the second half of the season.
That leaves the other important decision of where to play your leagues. For basic roto leagues for more casual players, you can’t go wrong with Yahoo. It is completely free to create a league there, and the UI is very simple to navigate. ESPN is also an option, but Yahoo is simpler to use in my opinion. For more advanced roto leagues with custom rules, categories, or keepers, Fantrax is the best option. It is trickier to navigate than the other platforms and can be confusing to figure out where everything is at first, but it is also free and offers as much customization as you could ever want.
Head-to-Head Points
Fantasy football players would be most familiar with this format. The exact point system will be different from site to site, but it’s the same concept. A typical scoring format for hitters would look like 1 point for a run, RBI, single, and walk, 2 points for a double, 3 points for a triple, 4 points for a home run, and -0.5 points for a strikeout. This changes the values and rankings of a lot of players, since usually things like doubles, triples, walks, and strikeouts don’t matter at all in Roto leagues. Each week you face off against another member of the league, and whoever scores more points will get a win added to their record. At the end of the season, the top records in the league will make the playoffs, where they will face off until only one champion remains. Like football, you set your lineups once at the start of every week, so you don’t have to worry about constant daily lineup changes. This format is much more heavily influenced by luck since your win/loss record is largely determined by how good of a week your opponent has. Although this type of league isn’t the best representation of fantasy baseball skills, it is still my preferred format with friends. The weekly matchups are more engaging, providing constant opportunities for smack talk against your opponents throughout the year. Collecting stats for 6 months in Roto can get boring, but in H2H leagues you will be on the edge of your seat every Sunday sweating the results of your weekly matchup.
Fantrax is once again a solid free option for this type of league, for the same reasons I already mentioned. However, if you don’t mind paying to create a league, CBS is a great choice. Unlike the other platforms, H2H points is the most popular format on the website, so there are a lot of features and content tailored specifically toward it. There are rankings and advice articles specifically for points leagues, and there are tons of fun league features. If you plan to run the league for many years, there is a league history section of the site with a lot of cool statistics and records to document the past years of the league. There are even automatically generated “news reports” on the league homepage that document a preview and recap of every single weekly matchup in the league. It has many of the customization options that Fantrax has in terms of scoring systems, keepers, schedules, waiver wire, drafts, and league structure.
Head-to-Head Categories
This combines the best of both worlds of the previous two formats. It features weekly matchups and playoffs, but tallies categories instead of points. It typically uses the same categories as Roto leagues, so you are battling to tally more R, HR, RBI, SB, AVG, W, SV, K, ERA, and WHIP than your opponent each week. For example, if you did better in 7 of the 10 categories for the week, you would beat your opponent 7-3. There are two variations of the format that affect how the total standings are calculated, known as Each Category and Most Categories. To give an example, imagine you win week 1 by a score of 7-3, and lose week 2 by a score of 1-9. In Each Category, each category counts towards your W/L record, so your total record after the 2 weeks would be 8-12. In Most Categories, the player with the most won categories is given the overall record for the week, so your record would be 1-1 after the two weeks. So if you like the idea of weekly matchups but still want to focus on earning specific categories, then H2H Categories is for you.
This format rose to popularity on Yahoo, and that is still the best place to play. The same advice for Roto leagues can be applied here, with Fantrax as the next best alternative. Yahoo is best for ease of use, and Fantrax is best for custom features.
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Other Formats
Every league at its base uses one of those three main formats, but there are still other ways to play if you are looking to mix it up and keep things fun.
- Dynasty – You keep all of your players at the end of the season, and also have an entire separate roster of minor league players.
- Best Ball – You draft a team and then don’t touch it for the rest of the season. Your best-performing players each week will automatically count toward your starting lineup, and whoever scores the most points in the season wins. This is popular on DraftKings, Underdog Fantasy, and NFBC.
- Draft and Hold – You draft a very large team (40-50 rounds), and there are no transactions or trading throughout the whole season. The only thing you are responsible for is setting your lineup each week. This is most popular on NFBC.
- AL/NL Only – If you want to get deeper into the player pool, you can make your league consist entirely of only players from one of the two leagues.
- Auction – This isn’t a new league format, but a new draft format. Instead of the typical snake draft, each player gets allotted a certain amount of auction dollars which they use to bid on players. Each player will be nominated and whoever places the highest bid will get that player on their team.
