How to Win a Rotisserie Baseball League

Fantasy league or rotisserie baseball has grown from a cottage industry to a billion dollar enterprise. With this growth comes more competition for the championship of a rotisserie league. Winning a league title requires the adherence to the following sound drafting and playing strategies.

Instructions

    • 1

      Study the rules of the rotisserie league thoroughly. Know the salary cap and how much the average player costs during the player draft or auction. Understand the waiver rules--how many transactions the league allows and how much each transaction will cost. Follow other rules that are specific to any particular league.

    • 2

      Ascertain which baseball players are in the last year of their contracts. Often players that are playing for the next big contract will have incredible seasons with a possible new contract as the impetus for these big seasons. Conversely, watch out for players who just signed large contracts, because players have a tendency to drop statistically once they have the security of a large contract.

    • 3

      Watch the free agent list especially early in the season. Free agents are players who went unselected in the rotisserie baseball league draft, but every season a few of these players come out of nowhere to perform far beyond their pre-season forecast.

    • 4

      Draft a statistically well-balanced team. The major statistical categories like home runs, RBIs, and batting average get all the publicity and a rotisserie owner can fall into the trap of loading their team with just players who are strong in those areas. Other categories like base percentage and steals are often overlooked. These categories count the same as the glamor categories. Therefore, an owner should draft a team that excels in all rotisserie categories.

    • 5

      Know each player's injury history and age. Some players just seem to suffer injuries at some point of the season every single year. These injuries can be costly if the player misses a significant portion of the season. In addition, baseball players tend to peak in their late 20s or early 30s and start to decline in their late 30s.

    • 6

      Recognize that the early season publicity for rookies can be rotisserie league fool's gold. Every year there are handfuls of rookies whom magazines and pundits tout as the next big stars in baseball. While some of them actually attain this status, most struggle during their rookie seasons. Because of the pre-season hype they will cost much more than the risk involved in drafting these players.