No matter how long you’ve been playing fantasy baseball, there are dozens of deliberate and subconscious silent draft killers that most of us are unable to avoid. In this FREE 22-page Special Report, fantasy baseball guru Ron Shandler discusses the many roadblocks to success – 39 of them! – and how to overcome them.
With your 2018 drafts right around the corner, make sure all the obstacles are cleared away so you have the best shot at winning.
This is a sponsored post from Ron Shandler.
Curious how many people play fantasy baseball compared to the juggernaut that is fantasy football…
I love fantasy baseball. Fantasy football is much less interesting.
Same here, fantasy baseball is great, fantasy football is boring to me at this point. I read this a few weeks ago on another site, very interesting read, i was tempted to buy a subscription, but did not.
While I tend to agree with you fantasy football is just so popular..definitely the gambling angle plays a huge part.
Started playing mlb fantasy in 1992 – coming from strato mlb league… lol
Baseball is the classic and still the best!!
Some of my friends and acquaintances and I are in the 13th year of a dynasty league on Yahoo. In January, I start counting down the days until fantasy baseball season starts.
I play both! Baseball is easily my preference.
Best way to compare
Fantasy football is simple, easier and more fun
Fantasy basketball and football are still fun like fantasy football not everyday
Fantasy baseball not just my opinion but many many others.. they hate it. You got to constantly be on there setting lines ups. Too much time to invest. More so, when majority of America finds baseball the most boring pro sport
I meant fantasy basketball and hockey *
I love hockey the most so I love fantasy hockey the most, but I don’t mind the time investment needed to play fantasy baseball.
What I DO mind is having to be a weatherman, too.
Rain delays, rain outs, etc. mean you have to be able to constantly monitor those to maximize your roster. That doesn’t really add to the fun in any way.
Interesting you seem to speak for everyone or think you do.
One lineup set per day. The horror.
Yeah the fact that fantasy baseball requires you to check lineups daily is one of the many reasons I love it. It is just another way to get “hooked” into the many facets of the great game of baseball.
I found football to be horrible one lineup set a week and really its only for the bye weeks that you change minimal tinkering. Dull boring and pretty much done once you’ve drafted. Pretty much a league full of what I hate from mangers in baseball. Generally I’ll boot teams that aren’t active
I couldnt disagree more. weeks 2,3,4 are when the fantasy football season is won (picking up emerging players). I dont have time to look at a lineup daily so I prefer dynasty league fantasy football, even though baseball is my favorite sport.
Picking up emerging players early on? Like when I picked up Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger last season? Haha- love fantasy baseball so much better than football. MLB is less frustrating for me. Winning at NFLF is like picking the lottery- more chance than strategy. Players and teams are so hard to predict
Fantasy baseball is more for baseball fans. People that don’t find the sport boring and enjoy being engaged in managing their lineup daily. Fantasy football is for anyone. Serious fans and casual fans get involved in that
I find baseball better especially in a league where u don’t have dropouts
I liked it when I was younger and worked less hours. It’s just a lot to keep up with compared to Fantasy Football.
Fantasy football is for people who don’t have the attention span for baseball or are the casual fan. Boring once a week for what 14 or 15 weeks.
Baseball is by far the best fantasy sport. Especially in leagues that don’t have that football stink to them. Once a week managers who quit mid way through the season
Couldn’t agree more.
I play both too. I think more people play fantasy football because fantasy baseball takes more time an effort. Easier for people to manage 16 games then 162 games. Fantasy baseball is my favorite, however.
Agreed, and there is a lot less strategy in fantasy football. Everything is converted to one metric: points. There are no categories to play off of. Just pick the guys you think will score the most points and go!
Baseball is my favorite sport and I do love fantasy baseball. But I like fantasy football more because it’s a lot riskier and 3rd string RBs that you pickup after a big injury to the teams starter can end up being big players.
Jeez, last time I played in White Sox message board i took flyers on Hanley Jansen (we played holds) and Starlin Castro. Carried through to a second place finish, no small task with that daily participating think tank of a league.
Spam garbage.
Your comment is, yea.
Really? What am I trying to sell, in the guise of a normal MLBTR posting?
it’s something we see a lor, spam and has no useful purpose, garbage.
“it’s something we see a lor (sic), spam and has no useful purpose, garbage.”
What is this, free association Monday? You can say what you did about almost every comment here—including your own—although your working definition of “spam” is missing the critical commercial element.
Also, who is this “we” of whom you speak—have you been authorized to speak on behalf of some unnamed group or do you have a ferret in your pocket?
What is the best site to use to play fantasy baseball?
Yahoo is pretty good
I play in a Yahoo league with daily changes and a CBS league that only changes lineups weekly. I like them both. I’ve played ESPN in the past as well, didn’t like it as much.
Try Fantrax. Love it
From what I’ve heard fantrax is great. I stick with yahoo though due to league history. It’s cool to be able to access history and records on main page.
Tim, how much do you collect to run this post?
Who cares? Start your own site or just don’t read it.
No, I’m asking.
Fantasy Baseball is way better than lucky football. Anyone can win fantasy football which is why its so popular but the best typically win fantasy baseball. Of course we got a lot of biases as we are on the MLB traderumors page ha
Fantasy football for year long leagues with friends/ coworkers. For the daily fantasy leagues ( draft kings, fanduel ) baseball is much more fun. No trades, no worrying about if your guy is in the lineup , ability to pick on hunches or do some sorting thru past stats and now they let you create a “league” where you can have a group of your friends all play against each other and will keep track of year long wins and losses for bragging rights. I play just about all the DFS sports with the exception of MMA and LOL. ( tried LOl 5x lost all 5)
I just felt like Ralphie in the Christmas Story when I got to the end of that. “The true meaning of life was a crummy chocolate milk commercial?!”
Interesting take though. I certainly have found that I have better success in fantasy baseball when I do less number predicting and just try to educate myself on the players/teams/situations and draft accordingly. Thank you to the MLBTR community for providing me insight from fans around the league!
Been doing fantasy baseball for a decade. Found a dynasty league about 6 years ago and it changed my world! Takes a person that absolutely loves baseball to do it, it requires daily attention.
I say find a league that has been around for at least five years those dynasty leagues usually have the kinks out. And make sure the commish is someone who is very active.
Don’t mean this post as a snap at you sorry. Just adding that a good dynasty has some legs under it. Everyone likes to start year one but there are growing pains
Lol, projections are projected not collected stats x22, thanks Ron!
Normally wouldn’t ask this but since the subject matter calls for it… anybody have an opening in their league? Or even better, is there a means to create an MLBTR Commenters league? A lot of people on here talk a big game, it’d be fun to see who could back it up!
I have a opening in my 18 team 21 keeper league that drafts using waivers. Basically a blind draft
League has existed for around ten years.
I’m anti-streaming and my leagues also have a number of non conventional rules such as one that offers compensation for stuff like Jose Fernandez passing.
I just feel teams shouldn’t be screwed over
I enjoy fantasy baseball much more than football.
I’ve been playing in one league or another fir over 20 years and to me, it is by far much more fun.
I played fantasy football for about 10 seasons beginning in the late 1990s, but just lost interest over time. NFL football has changed so much that I really just lost interest from a fantasy standpoint.
Following and rooting for the New York Football Giants – whether great, good, bad or awful lol – is enough.
I love playing fantasy baseball… Regrettably, my job is at an outdoor concert venue and our season pretty much coincides with baseball season. When I play in a fantasy league, I give it the proper time and attention (win, lose or draw), but since my average workday during our concert season is 8am til 11pm, the time just isn’t there. Thank the stars for this site so I can at least keep up on most of the news easily!!
Fantasy baseball is the best, particularly live draft roto leagues. It requires a lot of attention day to day, but you learn so much about nuances of the game that average fans don’t get otherwise. Word to the wise though: find a league with an active commissioner who will evaluate trades fairly. I’ve lost out on cash prizes in pay leagues due to some dubious trades late in the season.
Just got done reading this. Overall fairly worthless, it’s just a giant ad to try to sell you a subscription to their site because they have this proprietary ranking system that (essentially) ranks players by tier by using pros/cons, so that you maximize bang for your buck.
A few interesting tidbits in there that made it worth reading, but this free guide is just trying to (ultimately) sell you a service.
Do not recommend downloading or viewing.
Yeah, he’s selling something, but so what? Isn’t everybody? There’s an ad in the right column as I’m typing this, but they’re not giving something for free. I thought the read was pretty interesting.
If he wasn’t trying to sell something, why would he pay for a sponsored post on MLB Trade Rumors?
I don’t get why people have a problem with it.
It clearly says “This is a sponsored post from Ron Shandler”?
I give Shandler credit, he couldn’t have picked a better target audience, for that article.
Keep up the good work!!
PS: article got me thinking… why not have a mlbtr Fantasy baseball league because you and I both know diehards use your website.
Anybody remember Bill James Fantasy Baseball?
In the same trade during 1991, I got Barry Bonds and Greg Maddux for George Bell, Hal Morris, and Mitch Williams. I won the division and sInce it was a keeper league, I won my division the next three years.
I never could win the postseason though, made me feel like the Buffalo Bills. The playoffs are a crapshoot!
I made three deals that got me Harper Stanton and machado for prince fielder Dillion gee iwakuma and two arms that were injured and never recovered.
Like you never won championship due to two of them usually being hurt for playoffs. Went 20-2 one year with a 17 game win streak to start year
I made similar deals too — even more fair– but it was blocked by salty owners, in league. (Random league, was playing to win)
I highly recommend people, choose “Commissioner Votes” on league trades NOT “league votes” From my experience, league votes, is a joke. If you’re a commissioner of a league, you should be smart enough to know what’s a fair trade, and what’s not.
Nothing’s worse going back and forth between negotiations, with another player, finally have a match after weeks of negotiations, only to have the “league vote” to block it. Commissioner votes, has been smooth. Most commissioners want their league to be active anyway, and only block trades that are blatantly obvious cheating.
We have a great American league only league in London Ontario that is looking for a new owner.. If interested call me at 519-641-1644. We have owners from all over SW Ontario and one from Toronto. Draft is Sunday April 8.
People overthink fantasy baseball. Just because there are 162 games doesn’t mean you need to make 162 decisions. If you play in a weekly league, you have 26 decisions to make, which makes it pretty much the same as football.
There’s a lot more to fantasy baseball than setting rosters.
Sure, but you can pick a league that fits your style and time availability. If you have a lot of time in the winter, you can join one of those 50-rounds drafts that NFBC runs – then it IS just setting lineups weekly during the season. If you have more time during the season, you join a league where you have to go through the free agent pool every week, which takes longer. Different strokes. But it definitely does not have to be setting a lineup every day. Frankly, that’s ludicrous. I’d never do that.
It only takes a few minutes to update a daily roster. Or you can set it up in advance for a whole week. Preparing for a Live Draft is the most time consuming aspect. Evaluating waiver wires and draft proposals, reading player updates is where Championships are earned though.
I usually always do 5-10 drafts, get all hyped for the week or two following the draft, then forget about all my drafted teams and leagues after a few weeks and just look forward to my football league.
Oh, you’re “that guy”.
Just read this. It’s a whole lot of words that boil down to “baseball projections are always at least somewhat off and you can’t trust them”, and it’s written in that dialogue format lots of people seem to do nowadays between himself (in teacher mode) and you (his strawman of a skeptical reader/student). The format gets pretty tiresome before the end, mostly because he’s not really saying anything as mind-blowing or world-shaking as he seems to think he is.
He’s not really wrong in his points (projections are generally off by an average of 30%, and that’s really the best anyone can do), but it’s a pretty terrible way to structure what is essentially an ad for his website/service. “Trying to project baseball player stats for a fantasy league never works! Now pay me for my system that tries to project baseball player stats for your fantasy league!”
Call me an idiot but I bought the system. It does not project baseball player stats. It doesn’t use numbers at all, which is weird. But that’s the point of the report, I guess. Shandler has been around forever so I’ll have to spend more time looking at this because he must know something. Or I’m an idiot..
Good luck. Maybe he really knows something other people don’t, but if his system doesn’t use numbers at all publicly, then I have to think it’s a smoke screen/proxy, and it really is doing stat projections behind the scenes. After all, the only thing that matters in a fantasy league IS the stats and the numbers. Unlike in real life, there is no paradigm that matters in this context other than the numbers. One way or another, any fantasy ranking system must have some algorithm behind the scenes that translates its data into statistical projections, or else it has zero value as a fantasy ranking system.
Yes, he says that we need to use numbers to measure past performance and measure success, but for planning and roster construction, the numbers are too deceptive, which is what he writes about in the report. When you think about it, if we agree that you can’t trust the projections, why are we using them to plan? He could be on to something. Got to read more.
What is the best site that allows you to do weekly line ups? My group doesn’t have a lot of free time due to work so we would like the flexibility. We are also first time baseball fantasy players. Hoping you don’t have to pay for a service either.
Any site can be set up to do weekly lineups. Your commissioner sets the parameters at the beginning of the season.
Thanks! Is it the same for how the draft gets played out? Like either snake or audit rules?
Exactly the same. No difference.
I tried to do fantasy baseball, but I’m a nerd. It set my OCD off when you weren’t trading for prospects, or using salaries or anything, so I started my own thing by myself and I’ve been doing it since like 2013.
I like fantasy baseball better but it is hard to find dedicated people. Plus I have won most of my competitive friends leagues and people get sick of someone always winning. Football has a lot more luck involved. My good teams usually win it all. My best teams usually lose in a first round upset. It’s all fun as long as your expectations are not too high.
First off it’s not free… so that’s bs
I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT I JUST WASTED 20 MINUTES OF MY LIFE READING A FLIPPIN INFOMERCIAL ADVERTISED AS ADVICE FROM RON SHANDLER. HIS POINT: ALL CURRENT ROTO ANALYSIS IS FAULTY, SO BUY MINE. ONLY $19.99!
SHAME ON YOU FOR HOSTING THIS BLATHER, MLB TRADE RUMORS.
I’m always looking for a good fantasy baseball league but have not found any. When I run a league with friends, half of them lose interest halfway through the season. I’m looking for a league where everyone pays attention the entire season. Typically the way to do that is by charging an additional penalty for players who finish in the bottom 1/3 of the league (or something like that). I’d love to run a league but it is hard to find players. Anyone have any ideas? I’d be more than happy to run a league ($100-$250 buy-in, I’m flexible) – but the obvious concern is if I get people I don’t know to sign up and pay, they don’t know who I am and won’t want to send me money. Any idea if there is some kind of third-party money/escrow service that would be willing to hold fantasy league payments until a winner(s) is determined? That may not exist, but figured I’d ask.