Fantasy sports have exploded onto the scene in the last 15-20 years as the Internet has made playing immensely easier and more fun than it had been before. Before the Internet boom, anyone playing fantasy sports had to hold their drafts in person or on conference calls and whoever did the stats had to do them from a newspaper daily or Baseball Weekly every week. Now, anyone with a Net connection can go to Yahoo, ESPN, CBS or hundreds of other outlets and join a league and draft a team within minutes in any sport. But what is fantasy sports? Why is it so popular? Why do wives and girlfriends roll their eyes and call their husband a geek when he mentions he needs a couple hours of privacy for his draft or to research some free agents? Well, I am here to answer all those questions as well as hopefully sway you into maybe even joining a league or at least not harassing your husband so much when he does.
First of all, who am I? I am a friend to the Baseball Chix and also someone who has been involved in fantasy sports for a long time. I took part in the leagues that I referred to earlier where we added up the stats manually every week and drafted in person and I have also played on-line ever since it was first available on ESPN.com in a very basic format. I play in a number of different baseball leagues, a couple for fun as a way to stay in touch with friends, but I concentrate on the National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC), which is a high stakes league where all the contestants draft live in 15 team leagues in 4 different cities on a Saturday in March. It features the absolute best fantasy players in the country and is the truest test of how good an owner you are. The league awards prizes not only for high league finishes, but also a $100,000 grand prize for the best overall team in the contest. I had a great last 4 months last year and then the most disastrous August in baseball history, which led to a month-long stream of f-bombs that would have made Andrew Dice Clay blush. I ended up breaking even and look forward to giving it another shot this year.
So how does it work? For this discussion, we are going to just discuss fantasy baseball. There are fantasy leagues for every sport (Even Nascar, believe it or not) and while football is the most popular fantasy sport, baseball is the truest test, as there are 162 games and a 6 month season to grind through. The normal format for a fantasy baseball league is what we call “5x5” scoring. The 5x5 refers to the fact that there are 5 stat categories that are scored for offensive players and 5 for pitchers. The 5 categories that count for offense are Batting Average (BA), Runs, Home Runs, Runs Batted In (RBI) and Stolen Bases (SB). The 5 categories that count for pitchers are Earned Run Average (ERA), Wins, Saves, Strikeouts and WHIP. WHIP is a ratio that measures how many baserunners a pitcher allows and the acronym stands for Walks and Hits per Innings Pitched. Many leagues will add categories for a 6x6 league or maybe takes one away for a 4x4, but 5x5 is by far the most common league format you will find. In addition, some leagues use a point system where you get points for every hit, strikeout, double, etc. There are a number of different ways to play, but we will stick to the conventional 5x5 leagues for this article.
Now how do we figure out the standings? Well, first we need a team. This is what happens at the draft which can be done in person or on-line...or in secret like Paul Rudd in Knocked Up. In the draft, you pick the players you want on your team based on how you think they will do in the upcoming season much like a draft works in any of the major sports. Alex Rodriguez or Hanley Ramirez or Albert Pujols go first and it goes from there. How many rounds the draft goes is all based on the size of your roster. Roster size varies on how many players your league wants to draft, but usually it consists of 9 guys on offense (one for every position and a DH) and 6-7 pitchers. More advanced or “deeper” leagues like NFBC use 14 offensive players and 9 pitchers, adding an additional catcher, a corner infielder, a middle infielder and a couple extra outfielders. A “deeper” leagues is tougher as the more players that get drafted, the more mediocre players you need to research and know something about. Each week (or in some leagues, each day) you set your starting lineup and those are the players that you receive stats for in that scoring period. You then add up all the stats for your “starters” and you get your team stats. If you are in a weekly roster league, the stats for each week are added on to the prior week and so forth throughout the season until you get your final season stats for your team.
The standings for the league are compiled by where in your league you rank in each of the 10 categories. For the ease of this discussion, we will assume you are in a 10 team league. If you have the best batting average in your league, you receive 10 points for that category and if you are 2nd, you get 9 points and all the way down to 1 point if you come in last in a particular category. This is done for all 10 of the categories and you add up your points for all 10 categories and the teams are ranked by that total. Typically, the teams that win are very balanced across the categories, but sometimes you can get away with a very weak category or two if you dominate the others.
So now I know how it basically works, but why does my boyfriend/husband/friend with benefits enjoy it so much? Well, for a lot of reasons. Personally, the challenge of the game at high levels is my number one reason. It is very difficult to field a good and balanced team while also trying to project what will happen in the upcoming season. This is especially true when you have a league full of people who follow the game very closely and very little player news slips through the cracks. Also, the camaraderie with your league mates usually leads to a lot of fun and friendly trash talk all season. Of course, it also makes the game a lot more fun to watch when you have a vested interest in a game when “your player” is pitching or up to bat with guys on base. It can definitely make a game not involving your favorite team a lot more interesting to watch. I have had a lot of Septembers when I am very into baseball even though my favorite team has been eliminated and that because I am still competing in my fantasy league for a few bucks. I don’t even need to get into the bragging right that obviously goes into winning your league. Those rights last a whole off-season and cannot be discussed enough when you get together with friends.
In addition, the enjoyment of the actual draft day cannot be underestimated. On that day, everyone has a chance to win and all your sleepers or busts are 100% right. A couple hours with friends you haven’t seen in a while is never a bad thing either. The NFBC draft takes place in Vegas during the first weekend of the NCCA basketball tournament and it has become one of my favorite weekends of the year. It has turned into a huge get together where approximately 25-30 people I have come to call friends gather to watch basketball games and participate in the drafts. Amazingly enough, all of them that I have met are really good guys who love baseball and the anticipated “fantasy geek” factor that I anticipated has rarely reared its head.
Finally, I can’t say enough about how much I have learned about the game from playing fantasy. Sure, the core 5x5 stats do not tell you everything about a player, but in trying to project what a guy will do in the next season requires a deeper look into numbers and exterior factors (age, playing time, injuries, etc) that have allowed me to watch and enjoy the game on a much higher level. It also has allowed me to appreciate more players as I end up watching different teams play all the time and not just my local or favorite team.
Of course, this is just a very high level introduction to the game regarding its rules and why people enjoy it so much. There are countless different strategies that can be employed during the draft and we have no even begun to discuss adding free agents during the season as hot rookies and no names having career year emerge. In-season management of a squad can be as difficult and as fun as drafting your initial team. If there is enough interest in the fantasy aspect of baseball, we can have a part two of this article where we go much more in depth with some strategy and actual player talk.
Hopefully, this write-up helps you understand not only how the game works, but also why your significant other spends so much time on it and enjoys it so much. Hopefully, you will consider joining a free league on Yahoo or ESPN or maybe we will set one up through the Chix if there is enough interest. You might be surprised how much you get into and how much you learn about and enjoy the game. I know a few women I introduced to the game that now play every year and even have started to play for prizes in some more competitive leagues. Even if you don’t play, maybe sit down next to your husband or boyfriend and surprise him by asking if he started Derek Jeter this week or sat him because he was facing tough pitching in poor hitter’s parks all week. I bet you will be surprised at just how good a reaction you will get.
If anyone has any questions, comments or even needs some draft advice, feel free to contact me. Hope everyone enjoyed the write-up and here’s hoping we all find some good sleepers in our drafts this March.
Back to: How To