You might be asking yourself, how did I end up on this website? Why didn’t Google search work it’s magic as usual? You may have searched for Justin Timberlake or how to put together a bookshelf. However, now that you are here, you are trying to figure out…what IS fantasy baseball? Surely you probably know what baseball might be. Arguably the nation’s oldest pasttime? Played in a park on a diamond? Well, we at Baseball Instinct give you the credit that you deserve and will assume you know what baseball actually is. But for goodness sake, what the #$%& is fantasy baseball!?
Fantasy Baseball is comprised of taking real Major League Baseball (MLB) players, using these players with a bunch of friends in a fantasy baseball league, or with random people that you may not even know over the internet, that you create and dividing them up into teams with a draft and using their playing statistics to determine a winner. In a more concise explanation, fantasy baseball is using real life MLB players to create your very own baseball franchise where you hire, fire
and trade MLB players to acquire the best baseball team you can. Fantasy Baseball is a way for a baseball fan to invest more in the game and enjoy it from a totally different aspect – a truly interactive experience.
The statistics these MLB players generate in their real games are collected, and fantasy points are awarded based on these numbers — the better a player performs, the more fantasy points he accrues for his owner’s team. In fantasy baseball, these points determine a winner. The team that accumulates the most points or victories over the course of the season is declared the league winner.
The modern form of fantasy baseball as we know it was more than likely introduced in 1980 by sportswriter Daniel Okrent from USA Today. He and a group of other sportswriters would meet at a French restaurant in New York City called La Rotisserie Francaise to play. Fantasy baseball is also well known by the name “Rotisserie Baseball” and that is where this name comes from. In fact, the hobby was first known by this name instead of Fantasy baseball.
There are generally two ways to go about compiling your very own fantasy baseball team. The first is by auction where all of the teams in a league have the same amount of money (fake or real) to spend to acquire players. The other way is a draft where each team takes turns selecting players until each team’s roster is filled.
At first, scoring was very basic because in the early 1980′s, newspaper box scores of Major League Baseball games were difficult to find. And when they were found, often only the most basic of statistics were listed, such as home runs, runs batted in (RBI) and team batting average. Therefore, in the beginnings of fantasy, or rotisserie baseball, only eight baseball statistics were used and four each for offensive statistics and pitching statistics. Home runs, runs batted in, runs scored and stolen bases were used for offense while wins, earned run average (ERA), saves and WHIP (walks and hits divided by innings pitched) for pitchers. This became known as rotisserie, 4×4 (because of the four offensive and pitching categories) or “roto” scoring.
Over time, more categories have been added such as on base percentage and runs scored for offense while strikeouts and holds are sometimes used for pitchers. The definitions and validities of these categories can be debated in other columns. This column is just trying to explain to you what the #$%& fantasy baseball actually
is. The original scoring system of rotisserie baseball has gone through many adaptations as well. Many leagues still incorporate the original “roto” 4×4 or 5×5 scoring with four or five hitting categories and the same amount of pitching categories. However, there are many different ways to score and that is one big reason why fantasy baseball is so popular. A “head to head” style of scoring is a very popular method, where the same rotisserie categories are used, but each team in a
league plays against one other team and gets a win or loss at the end of a week. The team with the best record wins the league. Another very viable style is points scoring. In this method, a team gets points for each statistic one of his players produces such as home runs and a pitcher registering a win. This style of scoring lends itself well to head to head scoring or the classic method of adding points up all season long. Fantasy baseball scoring is a very detailed subject and Baseball Instinct will have articles in greater detail detailing the different types of scoring mentioned here.
In addition, there are many different ways to set up leagues as well. There are leagues that play with high stakes that give a large amount of money to the league winner and there are many leagues that simply play for free. There are leagues that incorporate rookie drafts as well as some that have keepers – a system where each team in a league can keep a select number of players on their team from one season to the next. All of these subjects and more will be covered in depth on this website, but this article’s purpose is to simply give you a rough overall outlook on what this hobby is in a very general overlay. It is up to you to keep reading and to continue to learn more. If you like baseball at all, you are already well on your way. Fantasy baseball will take that enthusiasm for the sport and will likely foster it and give you another outlet to pursue that interest. Baseball Instinct very much hopes that this will be the first step on a new journey to take your interest in baseball to new heights and we are here to help.
