Top-Five Strategies for Winning NFBC Best Ball Leagues

Best-ball leagues have become more popular in recent years in fantasy baseball. Dedicated players have made fantasy baseball a year-round game, and nothing prepares us better than to participate in drafts. Many of us have learned the hard way that overloading on leagues that require FAAB or setting lineups can hurt our overall results. One […]

Bubba's 2022 Tout Wars 12-Team Mixed Draft Recap

Even though Rob Manfred and the MLB owners decided to prolong the lockout and already cancel some regular-season games, we are drafting. I had the pleasure of partaking in the 12-team mixed league draft for Tout Wars on Tuesday. It is my second year in the league, and it is the second year for this […]

Positions to Prioritize: Statistical Scarcity Breakdown

Position scarcity is a big topic of debate every fantasy baseball season. Not all positions on the baseball diamond are created equal, and they often give us quite different arrays of offensive production for fantasy purposes. In this post, I will take a close look at what's going on at each position by the projections […]

Fantasy Baseball Mock Draft Tool and Draft Assistant

  Fantasy Baseball Mock Draft Tool and Draft Assistant Here at RotoBaller HQ we're constantly looking to add more tools and resources to help our readers win their fantasy baseball drafts. In case you haven't heard, we'll be releasing some cool new free fantasy baseball tools this year and we're really excited about it! First up […]

Custom Rankings User Guide for Head-to-Head Point Leagues (Premium Content)

Whether you used our custom ranks last season or are brand new, welcome to RotoBaller's Custom Rankings Service! I'm RotoBaller's resident points lothario, Nicklaus Gaut, and I truly believe, both practically and mathematically speaking, that applying the information within these spreadsheets will give you the biggest advantages a points player can have. Premium subscribers can […]

Statcast Exit Velocity: Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball

If you've watched a baseball broadcast in the Statcast Era, you have undoubtedly noticed the broadcasters commenting on a batted ball's exit velocity, or EV. Many have taken to using stats like Hard% and Soft% to forecast how a player should be performing, expecting larger Hard% rates to produce larger BABIP and HR/FB figures. There […]

Ballpark Factors: Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball

If you have ever selected a streamable pitcher based on a home park or benched an otherwise must-start arm at Coors Field, you already know how much a stadium can impact a player's bottom line. Ballpark Factors quantify the influence each stadium has, allowing you to make the most of your fantasy team's real-life schedule. […]

Pitch Info: Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball

One of the most fundamental questions in fantasy sports is if a player's current performance is sustainable. More than any other sport, baseball has a slew of statistical measures that can be dissected in numerous ways to analyze player performance. Pitch Info is a publicly-available pitch tracking system that provides a lot of different data to […]

Batting Order: Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball

You may be wondering why there aren't any advanced stats aimed at predicting a player's counting stats like runs and RBI. The answer is simple: modern sabermetrics reject the idea of a "clutch RBI guy" and therefore do not bother inventing predictive metrics for it. Runs and RBI are team-dependent stats and are unhelpful in ascertaining […]

Pull%: Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball

We have previously determined that fantasy managers generally prefer batters to hit the ball into the air to have a chance at a home run. Yet, all fly balls are not equal for this purpose. A player can maximize his power production by pulling the ball in the air. One way to illustrate this is […]

HR/FB: Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball

Using BABIP to predict a player's batting average is great. Batting average is a category in many league formats, and every hit is an opportunity to steal a base or score a run. Most fantasy managers find the long ball sexier. Every HR comes with a guaranteed run scored and at least one RBI. Many […]

FIP/xFIP: Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball

While we've only examined how to evaluate hitters using advanced stats thus far, sabermetrics are at least as useful for pitchers. The first advanced pitching stat most fantasy owners encounter is FIP. FIP stands for Fielding Independent Pitching and attempts to measure a pitcher's actual skill instead of the effects of luck or his supporting […]

Pitcher BABIP: Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball

While FIP is a useful tool to predict a pitcher's future ERA performance, fantasy managers should remember that ERA, not FIP, is what matters in most formats. This means that we are interested in the "luck" that separates the two statistics. While some of this luck is unpredictable, we can and should predict some of […]

Plate Discipline: Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball

No matter how high a particular player's BABIP may be, his average will be mediocre at best if he strikes out too much. This is why fantasy managers have known for years that players like Mike Zunino are potential drains on a fantasy team's batting average. Furthermore, players that whiff a lot tend to continue […]

Who's #1? Early Look at Picking First Overall

With the off-season fully underway and early drafts already taking place, it’s time to start looking at those players being selected first in drafts. This year offers a very different set of players than we’ve seen in recent memory. Mike Trout, Mookie Betts, and Ronald Acuna Jr. have all fallen out of contention for first […]

Batter BABIP: Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball

The most accessible of the fantasy-relevant advanced stats is BABIP, or Batting Average on Balls In Play. It simply measures a player's batting average on balls in play, with outcomes such as strikeouts and home runs removed from consideration. In general, the league average hovers around .300, a nice round number to remember. Many know […]

Hitter Batted-Ball Distribution: Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball

Fly balls can turn into home runs. Ground balls never do. It would seem as though fantasy owners want their batters to hit nothing but flies, yet this is not always the case. Why would this be? The answer, of course, comes down to batted ball distribution and how batters make contact. The league average […]

Introduction to Advanced Stats - Sabermetrics Fantasy Baseball Analysis

Hello, fellow RotoBallers! Sabermetrics have become an integral tool for fantasy baseball draft prep, but a concise resource for understanding the basics can be difficult to find. This series will attempt to define and explain all of the metrics fantasy owners may find useful, citing examples of how to use them in the process. Multiple […]

Early One-Man Mock (Rounds 2-5) - 2022 Fantasy Baseball

I've already run through the first round of my one-man mock, which you can check out right here. Now, let's move on to the next few rounds with a look at how early drafts might shake out. I took roster construction into consideration so that a team didn't select three outfielders in the first three […]

Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball: Statcast xStats

Statcast is a valuable tool for fantasy analysis, and it can be easy to look at a stat called "Expected Batting Average" and blindly use it as your projection moving forward. Of course, proper use of these metrics is a little bit more nuanced than that. First, a disclaimer: This article is about the "Expected […]

Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball: Pitcher Statcast

Statcast metrics such as Barrels and Brls/BBE are great ways to evaluate a batter's performance, so it is only natural to assume that the metrics would be predictive for pitchers as well. As much as batters want to hit a Barrel every time, pitchers want to avoid them at all costs. Yet there is evidence […]

Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball: Spin Rate

Spin rate has become one of the most recognizable Statcast metrics, with supporters of a given pitcher highlighting his spin rates to make their case. It has also become controversial as of late due to allegations of pitchers using foreign substances to increase their spin. Unfortunately, the baseball world has done a lousy job conveying […]

Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball: Statcast Exit Velocity

If you've watched a baseball broadcast in the so-called Statcast Era, you have undoubtedly noticed the broadcasters commenting on a batted ball's exit velocity, or EV. Many have taken to using stats like Hard% and Soft% to forecast how a player should be performing, expecting larger Hard% rates to produce larger BABIP and HR/FB figures. […]

RotoBaller Friends & Family Industry Mock Draft Recap

The 2021 RotoBaller Friends & Family Mock Draft is the continuation of an annual tradition where we gather some of the biggest names from the fantasy baseball world and put together a mock draft just as spring training has commenced. Thanks to RT Sports for once again hosting and providing a custom draft site where […]

Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball: Barrels

We've previously looked at how exit velocity (or EV) is only one piece of the fantasy analysis puzzle. Baseball broadcasts will commonly cite Launch Angle (LA) to complement their EV figures, but it is given in terms of degrees. Am I evaluating a baseball player or trying to find the hypotenuse of an isosceles triangle? […]

An Introduction to Advanced Stats for Fantasy Baseball Managers

Hello, fellow RotoBallers! Sabermetrics have become an integral tool for fantasy baseball draft prep, but a concise resource for understanding the basics can be difficult to find. Over the next two months, this series will attempt to define and explain all of the metrics fantasy owners may find useful, citing examples of how to use […]

H2H Points Leagues Draft Primer

We recognize that some of our readers may be new to fantasy baseball and interested in trying a points league for the first time. The goal here is to outline the traditional format scoring while offering up suggestions for draft strategy. Below is a pretty generic Head-To-Head Points Format scoring outline. You will need to […]

Points League Players and the Platforms Who Hate Them

Trust. Whether in roto, point leagues, or otherwise, players should be able to trust that the rankings and values they choose to rely on will be accurate and specific to their league format. That standard seems to be a bit fuzzy when it comes to points leagues, even though point leagues should be fantasy baseball's […]

Later-Round Category Targets - WHIP

Welcome back to RotoBaller and my later-round category targets series, thanks for being here. In this article, we're going to talk about some middle and late-round starting pitchers that can help your team in the WHIP category. It's important to note that there is a ton of overlap with WHIP and ERA, and I've already made […]