New to Fantasy Baseball? Here's Every League Format, Scoring System, and Draft Type Explained

Fantasy Baseball can be challenging for beginners to figure out. Part of this is due to the numerous options available. 

There are different year-to-year formats, scoring formats, draft formats, free agency systems, tons of roster customization options, and even player pools to choose from. It can be a lot to figure out, especially if you are setting up the league for your friends.

Even if you are playing as a regular manager, you’ll still want to know which options are available and what type of formats and systems seem the most interesting to decide on a league to join. Note that if you aren’t creating the league yourself, you likely won’t have the ability to choose a league fit to your preferred format for every element of the game; you’ll have to compromise.

These are the various format types and all the options available when creating or joining a fantasy baseball league. Not every fantasy baseball site has all these options available, but I recommend checking out the free fantasy baseball sites if you’re just starting out.

Year Over Year Set Up Formats

Best Ball

Best Ball is not a common format, but it is the simplest. All you do is draft a team at the beginning of the year. That’s it. There is no roster management, waiver wire, trades, or drama. Your best-performing players automatically get placed into your starting lineup, and you win the league if you put up the most points. It’s mind-numbingly simple but perfect for players who don’t have any time to manage a team throughout the season.

Redraft 

Common for first-time fantasy players, Redraft leagues are the standard for casual fans and fantasy enthusiasts who want to play for a season online or in an office league. There is no multi-year commitment. Redraft leagues, as the name suggests, require you to draft a whole new team at the start of the year, even if you are playing with the same group year after year. 

These are common types of leagues for people who don’t have a group of fantasy baseball pals who are committed enough to play year after year actively. It’s also a fun way to mix up your teams every season. If you couldn’t get a particular player one year or if one team ends up with a boatload of fantasy studs, you can remedy that in the following year. It’s different from Best Ball in that it utilizes the usual roster control inherent in most fantasy baseball leagues.

Keeper 

Keeper leagues are similar to Redraft leagues — there is an annual draft, but in Keeper leagues, you keep a select number of players from one year to the next. Often, keeping a player comes with a penalty; in an auction or salary cap league, these players become more expensive every year they are kept (a standard would be $4 added to their auction price for every year they’ve been kept by your team). In a snake draft, the penalty is often a loss of a draft pick, and it’s up to your league how the penalty pick is calculated. 

This format enables you to develop a strong core of young talent and stars that you believe in, while also providing the excitement of drafting new players every year. It also incentivizes you to draft younger guys in hopes that you can keep them for years to come if they turn into stars.

Dynasty

In a Dynasty format, you keep the same team year after year. This format emphasizes active trading and hunting for prospects; it could be your format if you’re big into the minor leagues and top prospects. The rosters are often bigger than typical fantasy baseball rosters, and the managers are usually more active and knowledgeable than your standard Redraft or Keeper leagues. Free agency is widely utilized, and trades are more common. It’s fun, but it requires a lot of work and skill to stay competitive.

Die-hard fan groups across the nation love the Dynasty format. If you’ve a group of good friends who are baseball fans and know they will take the league seriously (a big prize pool every year can often help with this point), then this is the format for you. It’s also a great way to make lifelong friends. There are often people looking to organize Dynasty leagues on online forums and in local communities — if successful, these leagues usually last for years, sometimes decades, and you build bonds with the other managers. These are people who share your interest in fantasy sports and baseball, and can sometimes be some of the greatest, most interesting people you’ll ever meet.

Ottoneu

The most complex and serious of all fantasy formats, Ottoneu is a FanGraphs-exclusive format perfect for armchair GMs and amateur scouts alike. Ottoneu is the best recreation of managing an actual MLB club in fantasy baseball and is often compared to Over The Top Baseball as a near-perfect management sim.

Ottoneu utilizes a 40-man roster and an open market salary cap contract system, just like MLB free agency. You can also use their “arbitration” system to add dollars to other team’s players, making them more expensive. You get a 400-dollar budget for players every season, and you can stash young players and utilize trades just like you would if you were an MLB GM.

Scoring Formats

Original 4X4 rotisserie (Roto)

This was the original scoring method and is still the favorite for most serious fantasy baseball players. This style ranks your stats throughout the season in four batting and four pitching categories 

Batting

• Average
• Home Runs
• Runs Batted In (RBI)
• Stolen Bases

Pitching

• Wins
• Saves
• Earned Run Average (ERA)
• Walks and Hits per Inning Pitched (WHIP)

Points are awarded based on your standing in each statistical category. For example, if your league has ten teams and you had the most home runs, you would receive ten points in that category. If you had the worst ERA, you would receive one point for that category. The team with the most points at the end of the season wins.

5X5 Rotisserie 

Same as classic Roto, but the stats are:

Batting

• Average
• Home Runs
• Runs Batted In (RBI)
• Stolen Bases
• Runs

Pitching

• Wins
• Saves
• Earned Run Average (ERA)
• Walks and Hits per Inning Pitched (WHIP)
• Strikeouts

6X6 Rotisserie 

Same as classic Roto, but the stats are:

Batting

• On-Base %
• Slugging %
• Home Runs
• Runs Batted In (RBI)
• Stolen Bases
• Runs

Pitching

• Wins
• Saves
• Earned Run Average (ERA)
• Walks and Hits per Inning Pitched (WHIP)
• Strikeouts
• Innings Pitched

Theoretically, any stats can be added to create any #X# rotisserie format, but these three are the most common.

Head-to-Head Points

This style is how most fantasy football leagues are scored, but it’s not as popular for fantasy baseball. In this scoring system, stats are assigned point values (I.e., each hit equals one point, home runs equal three points, and saves equal five points), and you match up against a different team each week. Whoever gets the most points that week wins, and the teams with the best records by the end of the fantasy regular season make the playoffs, typically in the last month of the MLB regular season.

Head-to-Head Rotisserie 

Also known as “Head-to-Head Each Category,” this system is a weekly version of the Roto system. You compete against a team for a week (sometimes two weeks), and you are given a win for each category you beat them in and a loss for each category you lose to them in (there are also ties). After week one, if you win your competitor in five of the eight categories, lose in two, and tie in one, your record will be 5-2-1. The team with the best record at the end of the season will advance to the playoffs and compete for the championship title against the other teams.

Head-to-Head One Win

Also known as “Head-to-Head Most Categories,” this system is similar to Head-to-Head Rotisserie, but instead of a record based on the categories won, you receive your record based on whether you won more categories than your competitor. Consider our earlier example of a week-one 5-2-1 category victory in the H2H Rotisserie system. In this system, that same victory would only earn you a 1-0-0 record. The best record moves on just as the previous systems did.

Draft Formats

Auction

An auction draft allows you to bid on any player that is put up for auction in the draft. You are given a set draft budget, and you must use that budget to assemble a team while the other managers attempt to do the same. You can take an aggressive approach and outbid everyone for the best three or four players and then fill the rest of your roster with scrubs, or you can be patient and use your budget to create a well-balanced team. It’s often more strategic than a standard snake draft.

Snake

This is the standard for any non-auction draft. The draft order refers to how it snakes from one side to the next, with the last pick in the first round being the first pick in the second round, and the last pick in the second round being the first pick in the third round. For example, if you pick third in the draft of your 10-team league, you’ll draft third, then 18th, then 23rd, then 38th, then 43rd, and so on.

Free Agency Types

Waiver Wire 

Waiver Wire is the standard free agency practice in other sports, such as football. Although it’s not as common, it’s still a popular strategy in fantasy baseball. This system gives priority to the lowest-ranked teams in the standings for picking up free agents. Therefore, if the fourth-best team and the eighth-best team attempt to add a player before the end of week three, the eighth-best team will receive priority and be awarded the player, even if they submitted the free agency request last.

Free Agent Acquisition Budget 

This system assigns each team a budget, similar to an auction draft, and teams can allocate a portion of their budget to acquire a free agent. If multiple teams try to grab a free agent in the same week, the team that offered the most money will get the player. You have to be careful not to offer too much money on obvious free agents because, in most leagues, you lose your money regardless of whether you get the player.

First Come, First Serve

As the name suggests, you receive the player if you are the first person to claim it. This is the most common type of free agency in fantasy baseball because it allows for quick additions and replacements that don’t require a team to wait a week to replace an injured or underperforming player.

Roster Options

As with all fantasy leagues, there is a hard cap on the number of players you can have on your roster at a single time. The commissioner usually sets the number of players allowed in the starting lineup (and at what positions), but each site has its own default settings. 

Position	ESPN	Yahoo	CBS Sports
Starting Pitchers	0	2	5
Relief Pitchers	0	2	2
Any Pitchers	9	4	0
Catchers	1	1	1
1B	1	1	1
2B	1	1	1
3B	1	1	1
SS	1	1	1
2B/SS	1	0	0
1B/3B	1	0	0
OF	5	3	3
Utility	1	2	1
Max Bench	4	5	5
Max IL	3	4	2

Player Pool Options

Almost every league allows teams to pick all eligible 40-man rostered MLB players, but occasionally, some leagues will mix it up and allow you to only have AL or NL players. This makes fielding a full team of everyday starters a lot more difficult, especially if you have more than ten teams in your league!