Make no mistake, fantasy baseball rocks

These days, Fantasy sports have become an enormous enterprise. Forget having a group of people predicting the outcome of a game; ESPN has entire teams of people whose only job is to predict which players will give you the best value for your draft picks. Sure, this may sound a little ridiculous when you think about it, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that it is crazy fun.

Fantasy Football is by far the biggest of the Fantasy sports. At any given time, there are huge amounts of people predicting and commenting on players and games. Economists say Fantasy Football hurts productivity so much that it affects the entire country’s economy.

There is even a new show dedicated to Fantasy Football; it’s not bad.
Fantasy Football, while great, has a lot of problems that often makes it more of a crap-shoot than a game that rewards the people who made the smartest picks. Your great wide receiver can, for some reason, have no catches at all one week. If that one week happens to be the playoffs, your season is over. The season is only 17 weeks long, so only a few things need to go wrong for even the best laid plans to be ruined.

Because people are so fixated on Fantasy Football, Fantasy Baseball has had trouble capturing the hearts of the Fantasy world. This really doesn’t make any sense to me and, in my opinion, a lot of people who love Fantasy Football are missing out.

The great thing about Fantasy Baseball is that baseball uses numbers and statistics in a way that football simply cannot.

In baseball, every player, no matter how good or bad, bats once every nine times. Even the best starting pitchers can only pitch once every five games. Everything has a rhythm and a pattern; it makes perfect sense. You also have so much more information than in Fantasy Football, where most predictions are just simple guesstimates. In Fantasy Baseball, you have more stats than you know what to do with. Batting average, slugging percentage, OBP, OBS and OBPS give you huge insight into every hitter. ERA, WHIP and K/9 stats reveal every strength and weakness in a pitcher.

Fantasy Baseball, unlike Fantasy Football, is a marathon not a sprint. It rewards those who pay attention and make smart picks and changes. You can’t really luck into winning a Fantasy Baseball championship. You have to be a fan of baseball and understand how the game works. You have to watch and pay attention to see the new breakout stars. Fantasy Football today is too easy.

With all of the help, advice and statistic-tracking tools out there, it seems like everyone has a team now, even those who pronounce Favre “FAV-RA” Someone may pick DeAngelo Williams because they like how his name sounds or Peyton Manning because they have seen him in commercials. You can’t win in baseball doing that.

Sure, Coco Crisp sounds like an appealing pick up because you think he is named after cereal but, because there are so many factors, it’s too long of a season to win picking randomly. Fantasy Baseball basically just makes more sense, is more of a challenge and is more fair than Fantasy Football.

So this spring, while the big leaguers get ready in Florida and Arizona, look into Fantasy Baseball. You may find that you like it. Personally I prefer Fantasy on ESPN, but you can find a league almost anywhere when looking online. If you do try ESPN and you are feeling adventurous, try doing an auction draft. It is so much more interesting than the typical draft where everyone takes turns making picks. In an auction draft, everyone starts with the same amount of imaginary money and bids on each player and the highest bid wins. If you do this, resist the temptation to throw all of your money on the best player early.

Everyone pays way too much for the Pujols’ and the Utleys in the beginning and then have nothing left when the good-but-not-great players come around. Save your money. If you can get someone for cheap or  hold off on spending big until the middle of the draft, it can be the difference in finishing first or last in the league. It takes will power but, if you can do it you will be rewarded. If you want, you can even practice before your actual draft to get the hang of it.

Yes, that is a bit ridiculous but so is Fantasy in general. But who cares if its ridiculous because its so much fun.

     Sean McKinley can be contacted at smckinley@keeneequinox.com