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Our fantasy baseball Custom Rankings Service has been expanded for 2024 and now accommodates Points Leagues, Head-To-Head Leagues, Roto Leagues, Category Leagues, and Best Ball Leagues. Your leagues have their own custom rules and scoring settings. Let us know those details, and we'll generate custom rankings and projections for your specific settings, all powered by ATC Projections.
Playing fantasy baseball can seem overwhelming sometimes, as there are myriad ways to play and every format requires a different way to best evaluate player values and guide your strategies. Points or Roto? Overall or Head-to-Head? Traditional or Best Ball? What are the scoring rules and roster limits? For Best Ball, the increasingly popular points-based format, all you do is draft and let the computer do the rest. How do values change and how do your strategies need to adjust when you'll be given no chances to change your roster?
Even though small and large differences in format can turn relative player values on their heads, fantasy managers are often left fumbling to figure out those value swings on their own, taking one-size-fits-all content and trying to shoehorn it into their specific league. Not only can this lead to being behind the eight-ball before the season begins but the disconnect between perceived and actual value can turn fantasy baseball into a very frustrating experience.
Those dark days are behind us. Fantasy baseball is supposed to be fun, not frustrating, and we have the answers to help you get there. The RotoBaller Custom Rankings Service is here for both Points Leagues (Best Ball, H2H, or Overall) and Roto Leagues (Classic or H2H) to help you step out of the dark and into the warm light, setting your team up for success.
For a more in-depth review of our custom rankings, check out our Custom Rankings User Guide. An MLB premium subscription is required to use this service.
Best Ball Overview
Whether you're an experienced veteran looking for a new challenge, or a newbie looking to dip their toes in the baseball waters, Best Ball leagues are an exciting way to get your fantasy fix without needing to do any in-season management. You draft your team and then you're done until it's check-cashing time at the end of the season. No, seriously - no roster moves, no free-agent pickups, no trades. Draft and dip, baby.
Depending on whether your league is on Rivals, Fantrax, NFBC, Underdog, or another platform, the scoring and formats can differ. However, the underlying concepts remain the same:
- Every manager drafts their entire team for the season, with no roster changes allowed post-draft.
- The scoring is points-based, with the platform creating your optimal lineup for each scoring period. In other words, if Ronald Acuna Jr. happens to have a terrible week and your 40th-round pick Patrick Wisdom has a three-bomb one, Wisdom would be your "starter" for that week while Ronald grabs the pine.
Easy, right? Best Ball is the perfect format for those who love drafting but hate the long, in-season grind. But don't be fooled into thinking this is a simpleton's game. While your post-draft obligations might be zero, so are your chances to improve your roster or fix any draft-day mistakes via the waiver wire. Dying to pick up the latest hot call-up, young breakout, or resurgent veteran? Have you been crushed by injuries so much so that you can't even trot out a full lineup?
Too bad. Best Ball doesn't care. You get what you draft and you don't get any more. So, yes, while Best Ball is infinitely more low-maintenance during the season, that only means you need to prepare for your draft that much more if you're dreaming of championships.
Best Ball Curveballs
While the tenets from above are the basics of Best Ball, as always, the devil is in the details:
- How many teams are in your league?
- What are the rosters? Are they split into individual positions like in most non-Best Ball leagues (C, 1B, 2B, etc), or are they grouped into just hitters and pitchers? If in individual positions, how many of each?
- What platform are you on and what is their scoring?
The first two are tied together when valuing players, as the number of teams and roster composition will determine how many players are above and below replacement value. Think about outfielders, for example, with most leagues generally using three to five. A 15-team league with five outfielders will have 75 "starters", a 12-teamer will have 60, and a 10-teamer will have 50. In other words, the final starting outfielders in a 10-team league will be the likes of Steven Kwan and Lars Nootbaar, while a 15-team league will have guys like Austin Hays and Jake Fraley. That's a big difference when it comes to values. Outfielders will have the most relative value in a 15-team league but that's just one permutation. What about a 15-team league with three OFs vs. an eight-team league with five OFs? Or how about a 12-team league with five OFs and two swing positions (MI/CI) versus a 10-teamer with three OFs and no swings but two UTIL? Every combination can bring big swings to positional values as well as overall values.
And then there's number three. It's all about the points, baby! Because whether you're playing with a platform's standard settings, or in a league where they made their own, the point fluctuations can be massive. On Fantrax, home runs and steals are both worth three points, while on NFBC a home run is worth six points and a stolen base gets you five. Wins and Quality Starts will grab five points each on Underdog but only three points on Fantrax. And on NFBC, you'll get six points for a Win but nothing for a QS. I could go on and on, but you get the gist.
Each change, whether in scoring, rosters, or both, brings swings in value, whether tiny, monumental, or anywhere in between. These changes from system to system need to be accounted for. Those who do will be set up for point-league success, while those who simply ballpark their values will be left floundering.
Luckily, the RotoBaller Custom Ranks service has you covered.
The Process: The RotoBaller Team Goes to Work For You
The easy part is getting your league information to our experts, who will then review all the parameters in detail before getting started on the assembly process. You just have to fill out a simple questionnaire about your league settings and then the RotoBaller team gets to work on constructing the perfect set of rankings for your draft, regardless of format.
The process is simple for the user because our experts do all of the hard work to provide a tailored set of rankings designed exactly for your league specifications.
There are just three simple steps to fantasy baseball dominance:
- Step 1: Fill out our questionnaire in one minute with your league settings (for Points/Best Ball or Roto)
- Step 2: 🤷♂️
- Step 3: Profit
Once we have your information, our magical point elves go to work, using all of your provided league information to calculate total values and arrange them in a way that is easy for you to digest - and easier for you to dominate the competition.
That's all it takes because within 48 hours you'll have custom ranks for your specific league that are formatted for ease of use and delivered right to your inbox, including the projected value in dollars and points, the latest ATC projections, as well as a few bells and whistles for getting the most out of the information.
For an example of what you'll get, here are the top-20 projected hitters according to the latest ATC projections in Fantrax Best Ball Leagues:
With our rankings in your hands, you'll never again go into a draft worrying about your preparedness.
Behind the Scenes: The Making of Your Custom Rankings
We know you may have (understandable!) trust issues, so as the man behind the curtain, allow me to pull it back some and go behind the scenes of the RotoBaller Custom Rankings Factory so you see some of what goes into the actual, thorough process of creating a set of rankings just for you.
Everything starts with the projections and the RotoBaller Rankings machine only runs on premium fuel. This is why our custom ranks in 2024 are again powered by the award-winning ATC projections from RotoBaller's own Ariel Cohen.
Since debuting, Ariel's "Average Total Cost" projections are one of the industry's best, year in and year out. And I believe that the way they are produced makes them particularly suited for the advantages we're trying to press with the custom ranks. ATC is an aggregated projection system that uses different weighted averages from other projection systems (Steamer, THE BAT X, etc), setting the weights according to historical performances from the systems used. In other words, it's a "smart" average of the systems, accounting for which system does best projecting each statistic, and weighting the average accordingly.
Other systems might beat ATC in a given year but I'm a firm believer that Ariel's method is so sound that it's (almost necessarily) always going to be one of the best available. Or, in fantasy terms, ATC's floor is incredibly high. Putting projection systems aside, just the act of turning projected stats into dollar-based values that account for your league's particular rosters and positional replacement levels is enough to give you a monster advantage in your valuations compared to someone doing otherwise. I don't care what projection system you use and it can't be overstated. Using properly calculated dollar values gives you an overwhelming advantage in your drafts. Full stop.
With that big of an advantage already, we don't want any of it to get siphoned away because another projection system (say, THE BAT X, for example) has an off year, for whatever reason. Don't take that as a knock against Derek Carty, as his projections are excellent and continue to improve yearly - which is exactly why ATC incorporates them! But the "smart-average" underpinnings of ATC will just generally make it extremely hard to have a no-good, rotten year of projections. And this high-floor profile makes it the perfect pairing for the hammer of our valuation system.
Need more proof? Fine:
The days of relying on basic cheat sheets and rankings that don't align with your league's settings are over. To get the biggest advantage in your Best Ball League, you need values precisely machined to your exact settings. Mookie Betts doesn't just buy his bat off the rack, does he? No, he gets specialty equipment made just for him, with the specifications that will best set him up for success – and so should you. Think of these custom point ranks in the same way, getting draft prep designed just for you, with values that most accurately reflect the reality of your system.
The more precise you are in points, the better set up for success you'll be. And precision is what RotoBaller is offering.
This service is free for RotoBaller Premium Season Pass subscribers (enter promo code NOTBURT at checkout for an additional discount).
Turning Points Into PAR, Spinning PAR Into Gold
Championship gold, that is. With ATC projections in hand, it's time to turn all of those stats into the dollar values that will give you the most comprehensive understanding of how each individual is projected to perform in 2024.
ATC projections are first converted into projected points using the specific score settings from your league. However, how many points a player will score is only half the story. We also need to know how valuable those points are compared to the rest of the player pool. This is accomplished by finding the player's "points above replacement," or PAR, which is calculated by using your league's size and roster limits to determine which players at each position are projected to be starter-worthy (above-replacement) or waiver-wire fodder (below-replacement). With PAR in hand, we can then calculate the dollar values that put a player's projected worth into a more familiar form.
To better picture how this concept works, let's imagine a 12-team league in which each team starts two outfielders and two infielders, with no bench. Let's say that under this league's scoring system, both Ronald Acuna Jr. and Trea Turner are projected to score 500 points, which is tied for first in the league.
So, who is more valuable?*
*Sidebar: Just by asking this question, you're likely already way ahead of many of your opponents, most of whom will be using total points as their primary source of valuation. This edge cannot be understated.
To answer that question, we need more than the projected points of Acuna Jr. and Turner. We also need to know the quality of the rest of the player pool at their respective positions. In our hypothetical league, there are 24 "starting" outfielders (12 teams x two OFs) and 24 "starting" infielders (12 teams x two IFs). This means that the 25th-highest scoring outfielder and infielder will function as each position's "replacement-level player" - meaning, the best of those players who aren't good enough to be a starter. Continuing the example, let's say that Andrew Benintendi and Tim Anderson are our replacement players, with Benintendi being projected for 300 points and Anderson for 100 points.
Now we can easily calculate PAR and compare. Acuna Jr. would have a 200 PAR (his 500 points - 300 points of Brown), while Turner would have a 400 PAR (his 500 points - 100 points of Anderson). With this extremely large discrepancy in PAR, Trea Turner would be an easy first choice.
The above hypothetical is very limited but these same concepts are expanded and will be applied to your particular league settings, with PAR being calculated for each individual player according to their position (or in case of multiple eligibilities, using their most valuable fantasy position according to the hierarchy of C > 2B > OF > 3B > 1B > SS). Once you have everyone's PAR scores, players can best be evaluated for all your fantasy needs.
Although PAR tells you how valuable a player is compared to his peers, it doesn't do so in a very user-friendly manner. PAR is just points and it's kind of hard to instinctively grasp the relative worth of a group of players in specific scoring environments when using just point totals. So, we need one final step. We'll skip the mathematical nitty-gritty but we put things on a more approachable scale, converting PAR into a dollar value structure that will feel more intuitive, once again using your specific league settings to calculate accurate values.
Arrival Day
After your custom rankings are meticulously created and reviewed, they will arrive in your inbox within 48 hours. Let's take a quick look at some of what you will get.
Each custom rankings set comes included with individual tabs for each position, as well as overall tabs for all hitters and pitchers. Along with the ATC projections in a number of categories, each tab also includes the relative values in dollars and/or points.
Also included for point leagues are the scoring rates (points per PA/IP). These are most useful when comparing hitter to hitter, starter to starter, and reliever to reliever. They are the best way of judging a player's system scoring profile; that is, how a player's projected skill set fits into your given scoring system. Scoring rates can help you find sleepers and values but also help you avoid landmines, such as knowing when there is a large gap between the public's perception of a popular player and how that player performs under your scoring system.
Avoiding big misses is important in any format, and if it were easy, everyone would do it. But point-based systems allow you to see when there are more direct (and predictable) lines to these value bombs, and with the right tools, you can more easily step around them. Luckily, your new custom ranks will give you those tools.
Playing in a league that punishes hitters for strikeouts? Or punishes a pitcher for earned runs but not hits and walks? These differences will show up in the different value estimators (dollar values, points scored, point scoring rates) and allow you to gracefully step over any tripwires by eschewing names that might be more popular in favor of the players that perform best in your specific league.
For example, consider a H2H league with standard ESPN settings - i.e. batters collect (-1) points per strikeout:
Judging by the above chart, is this a league where you should be drafting Elly De La Cruz (and his +30% K%) anywhere close to his current ADP? I say not!
Remember, many of your opponents will have a hard time separating a player's actual point value from the general reputation they currently carry in the roto content community. This is something to be leveraged. Over and over and over again until your league-mates say no mas.
The Extras
We've also included a few extra ways to help with your preparation. Your customized rankings now come included with:
Draft Results: Each set of rankings includes a "Draft Results" tab where you can enter draft picks as they happen. Information from the tab will then populate every other sheet in your rankings set.
Keeper Results: Custom rankings also include a "Keeper Results" tab where you can enter any league keepers. Like with the draft results, the keeper information will then populate across your rankings.
What If?: These columns allow you to input new plate-appearance projections and see how they affect overall point totals. This may seem contradictory after preaching above that points must be turned into PAR to get accurate values. This is still very true! But turning this product into one that could recalculate dollar values would require turning it into a whole other animal and one that would be large, complicated, and CPU-intensive.
However, changing projected points is relatively easy and can still be useful, IF used properly. So, along with your custom ranks, you'll also receive an expanded version of this article that goes over how to best use "What If?" as well as some other information of note.
Mystic Secrets: Finally, the User Guide included with your custom ranks will also go over the mystic secrets involved with properly valuing pitchers in a points-based system. Okay, so they're not that mystic. But what they will do is give you insight into the most overlooked part of player evaluations for point leagues, as well as other tips and tricks for getting the most out of your custom ranks when preparing to draft.
Get Your Custom Fantasy Baseball Rankings
Get your personalized custom rankings for 2024 with this exclusive one-of-a-kind service for both Points Leagues (Best Ball or H2H) and Category Leagues (H2H or Roto). You can sign up for the RotoBaller Fantasy Baseball Season Pass here, using promo code NOTBURT at checkout for an additional discount.
We know you've been long neglected, my fantasy-playing brethren, left to fend for yourself. You're given few tools and the ones that are offered are often the wrong ones, calibrated to doing jobs that don't always fit what will work in your league. But no more, I say, my friends... No more.
Trust the process. Break your league. Try not to be smug.
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