For baseball lovers, this is the best time of the year as the new Major League Baseball season is underday. All the fans are full of hope and happiness that they can finally watch their favorite teams play and many celebrate by starting a fantasy baseball league. Fantasy baseball is mostly skill and knowledge of the game and players as well as partly luck. If you can master the tricks to building a successful fantasy baseball team, you can earn 300 to 400 points. Even better, you can blow away all of your friends and win your league’s championship. Follow these five simple tricks to boost your score and train your team.
1. Relief Pitchers
Each team should have at least 2-4 relief pitchers on their pitching staff playing every day. Relief pitchers are a sneaky way to get massive points. Try to find each team’s number one relief pitcher, because those are the pitchers most likely to play almost every day. Obviously, most starting pitchers do not play all nine innings and the relief comes in and throws an inning or two. Those points add up. A good relief pitcher will give you about 5 points almost daily. That will help push you above your competition! Some suggestions for excellent relief pitchers would be Craig Kimbrel, Fernando Rodney, Huston Street, Mariano Rivera, Joe Nathan, Sergio Romo and Jonathan Papelbon.
2. A rotating rtarting pitcher slot
During your team’s draft, you probably picked up a few monster starting pitchers. Those are great to have on your team. They will get you a solid 15-25 points per start. However, they only play every five days and your league matchups are only one week long normally. That is why there should be rotating starting pitcher slot in your lineup. Have one pitcher that is good and will get you a fair amount of points on your team. Then, if you are losing or you have no one starting that day, you can go to the list of available players, search for probable starters, and pick up a pitcher that is starting that day. You can drop that okay pitcher and put the new pitcher in that spot. This is the slot you should always use to rotate pitchers in and out of your lineup. Make sure you check out the pitchers before you pick them up. Make sure they have a decent ERA, a good amount of strikeouts, and their average total fantasy points should be around 10-15. Also check to see what team they are playing against. If it is a really good team, you should probably not play that pitcher. This is a good way to get a lot of points in one day to catch you up or strengthen your lead.
3. The Utility Player
On your team, you should probably have one or two player slots called Utility. In those slots, you can have any player of any position play. This is a great advantage to your team, it is like have a designated hitter spot. In these positions, it is best to have a player that plays multiple positions. It would be ideal if one of those positions was also an outfield one. Have one or two players that can play either multiple infield positions or an infield and outfield position. That way, in case one of your starting players gets injured, you can substitute them with one of your utility players that plays that position. Then you can just put a bench player in for that utility spot. Having versatile players can save your team if one of your stars go down.
4. Don’t trade at the beginning
A huge mistake that people make is trading their players at the beginning of the season. Ultimately, the all-star players take some time to warm up and the new rookies are going crazy with hits and home runs and RBIs. Do not be fooled by this. It happens every season. You need to wait until the season has been going for at least a month. By then, everyone’s batting average will be a normal number, their fantasy points will be a more accurate interpretation of their season-long average, and they will be more consistent at this stage. If you have a player that is doing really hot right now, he might not be so hot in a couple of weeks. If you have a player that should be doing amazing but isn’t right now, give it some time. If he is known to be amazing, he will be. He just needs to warm up a little. Do not make the mistake of trading off all your all-stars because in the end, you will regret it.
5. Watch the DL Free Agency List
There are always people coming off the disabled list. A lot of the time, no one knows that they are off the DL for a few days or weeks. If you check the list often, you can pick up some amazing all-stars coming off the disabled list before anyone else knows about it. Many people do not even know this lists exists, or at least they do not check it half as often as they should. It is a sneaky way to beat your competition to the punch and snag some amazing players.
If you are interested in starting a fantasy baseball league? Good luck this season!
Image sources:
http://finkorswim.com/wp-conte…
http://www.kffl.com/a.php/126875/
http://eriklundegaard.com/item/the-mariano-rivera-posts
http://boston.sportsthenandnow.com/2011/09/08/boston-needs-jonathan-papelbon/