Managing Your Fantasy Baseball Team
What tools should I use to research and analyze players in my fantasy baseball league?
What are some tips on how to find excellent free agents for my fantasy baseball team?
You want to look on your waiver wire and sort the stats by the last couple weeks. You'll be able to do that. See who's playing well lately, who's getting strike outs lately. Maybe someone who struggled at the beginning of the year is now playing very well. That's a good way to do find free agents for your fantasy baseball team. You also want to follow who is getting called up for the major leagues from the minors because there'll be some interesting rookies every year that you want to keep an eye on. Fantasy baseball sites will usually have a column each week with some good ideas for pick ups depending on what fantasy baseball league you're in. That's always a good idea to help you along.
What are tips on selecting my starting lineup throughout the course of the season?
In most fantasy baseball leagues, you don't really have a big bench. You maybe only have a few players on your bench, so the most important thing is you want players who are playing. If you have a guy that's in a platoon, that means he sits versus lefties, or he sits versus righties, you want to make sure he's out of the line-up if you have daily moves when he's sitting. You only want players who are playing. You always want to look for guys that are playing baseball every single day. Other than that, you just want to look at who's hot and who's not on your team. Baseball is a very streaky game. When a guy gets on a big hitting streak, make sure he's in your line-up. Even if he's a good player or an average player, sometimes hell get in a slump. Maybe put him on your fantasy baseball bench.
What are tips on selecting pitchers throughout the course of the season?
For starters, you have to make sure the pitchers are actually starting before you choose them for your fantasy baseball team. There are only so many available starting pitchers on the waiver wire, so make sure they're starting and then check out how they're doing with strike-outs lately: who's hot recently. When I look to relievers, I think one thing you want to do is look for shaky closer situations. See what closer, who's almost definitely on a team, has blown saves recently and pick up his second man. Middle relievers are very rarely owned in fantasy baseball leagues so it's easy to pick up a set-up guy and those set-up guys end up becoming closers when the closer loses his job.
What are tips on how to make an excellent trade in my fantasy baseball league?
Fantasy baseball is all about trades. More than other fantasy sports, it's a long season. You want to sell high and buy low. If you have a guy who has a track record of success over five or seven years, if he's performing well above that track record, he's probably going to go back to what they call reverting to the mean. So if a player is hot, you want to trade him. Let's say you need help in your middle infield, and he's a really hot first baseman, maybe trade him for a really good shortstop. What you also want to look at is positions and categories in your fantasy baseball league where you need help. Sometimes trades really do help both teams. If you need a lot of help in saves, if just getting one closer will bump you way up in the save category, then it really would be worth it to trade a starter for a closer, even if you have to give up a great starter.
When should I consider trading one of the players on my fantasy baseball team?
I think you should consider trading a player for a number of reasons. One is: is he an injury risk? Is there an injury on the horizon? This is sort of questionable morals; it's up to you basically. But if you think that you've dodged the bullet for a while on an injury prone guy, maybe it's time to get rid of him. Another one is basically just selling high or buying low. I love buying low. You know, superstars who haven't started off well. It's a long season in fantasy baseball. If they've had a really bad first month or two, go ahead and go after them. Try to sell one of your players that's playing well for a superstar with an established level of performance but not playing quite as well. The other thing you want to do is look if you have a ton of home runs; if you are winning home runs by so much and you are way ahead of everyone, maybe trade one of your home run hitters to help you in another category.
What are 'September call-ups' and how do they affect fantasy baseball?
September call-ups are starting September 1st in the major baseball leagues. Teams can expand their rosters of 40 players and they can call up 14 more players to their roster. This is usually going to be rookies or some questionable veterans. It doesn't have a huge effect on fantasy baseball leagues; you just want to see if it affects the playing time of some of your players. Some of the rookies will start playing in September, if they are on a bad team. Those are the guys you want to look for: hot prospects that are future stars coming up on bad teams and then all of a sudden they are going to be in the starting line-up. There will be a handful of players like that every September that you want to go after when managing a fantasy baseball team.
What are some basic administrative tasks that I need to stay on top of for my fantasy baseball team to succeed?
The key job of any fantasy baseball manager is just making sure their line-up is full of healthy players. It sounds simple, but believe me, it is not. There are so many injuries throughout the year, your player will miss a week, two weeks, two months - you just have to make sure that your roster and your line-up are totally full of guys that are actually in the line-up, playing every day; you don't want any guys that are hurt or spent. That's rule number one. On top of that, if you really want to do a great job at managing a fantasy baseball team, you want to check your waivers every week or every day, if you have time to, and just make sure to pick up any available free agents that would help your team. The last thing is trades: staying active in the trade market, seeing if you can improve your team in any way.
What are some tips that I can utilize to win my fantasy baseball league?
Information is king, so knowing more than the other fantasy baseball owners is important, but I think strategy really comes into play. You have to look at the areas you're strong at. You have to maximize your points, because you score points by coming in first, second or third in home runs, runs, and RBI. You have to look at the categories you're struggling with and maximize your points within each category. That means trading a lot of the time, that means selling high and buying low when you're trading players. That means, at the end of the season especially, if you've got enough home runs, you can back off home runs and look for some other categories.
What does it mean to 'punt' a category in fantasy baseball?
You don't want to punt a category unless you really have to, but basically it means that you give up on a category, like saves, for example. There are two categories that it's not too bad to punt, and they are saves and stolen bases. That's because those categories are set apart from the rest of the fantasy baseball categories. They're really on their own. If you're doing poorly in saves at the end of the year, if trading one closer isn't going to hurt your point total in saves, then go ahead, punt saves, get rid of it. It's the same thing if you have a speedster, but you're really struggling in stolen bases. You might as well trade that stolen base guy and beef up your other categories.
