Welcome to our 10th season of fantasy baseball coverage. We will help you get ready for your drafts and prepare for the upcoming season so you can become a champion.
As a refresher for those who have followed our coverage throughout the years and for any new readers, there are different league formats that are used in fantasy baseball. The traditional is the five-by-five rotisserie league format, and that is what I will base my opinions on.
For those who are not familiar with what that means, there are five hitting categories — batting average, home runs, runs scored, RBIs and stolen bases. For pitching, the categories are wins, strikeouts, ERA, walks plus hits per innings pitched (WHIP) and saves.
On-base percentage (OBP) continues to become more popular as a replacement to batting average, so I will refer to that stat as well since it could change how we evaluate certain players.
I personally feel fantasy baseball continues to be at a crossroads with the current format. Major League Baseball teams are not valuing starting pitchers and closers anymore and we need to adjust as an industry. Unfortunately, this hasn’t happened.
Even though roto leagues are still the standard, I encourage commissioners to think about implementing head-to-head formats along with total points. Adding more categories and getting the fantasy football feel of going against an opponent every week will only help enhance the fantasy baseball experience.
This is part one of my fantasy baseball guide.
Drafting Multiple-Position Players
Flexibility is crucial in fantasy baseball, and having players you can move around to different positions will set you up for success. This is especially important for those in leagues that require daily moves.
The shortstop position is always one to target in drafts, and 2024 is no different. There are 14 shortstops ranked in the top 100 overall, according to FantasyPros.com. Out of those 14, six are eligible at other positions. Fantasy managers will have an opportunity to draft multiple players eligible to be used at different positions.
This may be one of the most important strategies, so I can’t stress it enough. Targeting players who can help at multiple positions is paramount.
It is important to know the rules of the site you play on. Some players are eligible at a position on one site but may not be on another. Other sites grant eligibility quicker during the season than others. Knowing your league rules goes a long way to building a championship roster.
Drafting Multiple-Category Players
In order to build a strong, well-rounded team, we need to target players who will help in every category. Fantasy managers fall in love with a player who hits a ton of home runs or drives in a bunch of runs, yet that player may have a low batting average or not steal any bases.
I would draft a player like Texas Rangers second baseman Marcus Semien. He will score 100-plus runs, drive in 80-plus runs, post a strong batting average, hit 25-plus home runs and chip in with 10-plus stolen bases. Semien provides elite stats in some categories but delivers solid marks in all five.
The perfect early-round strategy is to draft elite hitters who will finish in the top 10 in many offensive categories. Then in the middle rounds, attack hitters who will help in each category even if they don’t perform in the upper echelon of those categories. A balanced roster allows fantasy managers to compete during the long season and helps minimize the possibility of making mistakes on the waiver wire or through trades.
A player who can be taken after Round 7 and fits this profile is Cincinnati Reds infielder/outfielder Spencer Steer. In 156 games last year, Steer hit .271 with 23 home runs, 86 RBIs, 74 runs scored and 15 stolen bases. The stolen bases may dip a little, but Steer is going to hit in the middle of the lineup for a very good Reds team this season. Steer is eligible at multiple infield positions along with the outfield, making him even more attractive. He has an average draft position of 96.
Positional Tiers
In case you aren’t familiar with positional tiers, it simply means ranking players by position who managers think will put up similar value, and it helps managers avoid drafting players based on their overall rankings. The elite players at their position go in the first tier, the next level in the second tier and so on.
Some positions may have five elite guys in the first tier and others may have two. Some positions may have a strong second tier, while others are deep and have three tiers of players who make sense to draft. Instead of targeting a certain player, target a certain tier.
Fantasy owners get so caught up in drafting a player based on his average draft position, they lose sight that they could fill that position later with another player who could give them similar value.
If managers draft solely on player rankings and not positional tiers, it’s more likely than not that they are going to reach on a position that they probably could have drafted later and gotten similar value from a player they drafted a couple of rounds earlier.
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