Fun Fantasy Baseball Games | Daily, Weekly, Season-Long Formats for Fantasy Owners

Discussing some non-traditional fantasy baseball formats for the fantasy owners that want a different challenge.

Fantasy football reigns supreme when it comes to fantasy sports. It’s great for all types of fantasy owners, because you don’t really need to be engaged every day and only have 17 matchups (at most) to play.

On the other end of the spectrum is fantasy baseball, which features 162 games for each MLB team across 26 1/2 weeks.

For those in daily leagues, that means setting 162 lineups (if you want to win a title). There’s weekly lineup leagues that can keep owners engaged a little more, but even that gets somewhat stale after a couple months.

Today, I wanted to talk about some fun fantasy formats I’ve seen that might appeal a little more to the casual fantasy baseball owner (or fantasy football expert that’s yearning for some fantasy action to pass the time).

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Draft and Hold Leagues

As you might guess from the title, draft and hold fantasy baseball leagues are ones in which you draft a team, but in-season transactions aren’t allowed. That usually means much larger rosters (usually 50 players), but also means you won’t be spending countless hours trying to improve your roster over the course of 26 1/2 weeks.

If you are someone who likes to trade and play the waiver wire, these leagues probably aren’t for you. But if you put a lot of time into draft prep and don’t do much wheeling and dealing, then this kind of league could really appeal to you. The lack of waiver wire transactions really adds another level to things.

Some draft and hold leagues still allow daily lineups, while some are weekly or bi-weekly. I’ve even seen some draft and hold setups that don’t have any bench spots - every player you draft is in your starting lineup for all 162 games. Choose whichever one can best accommodate your life.

There’s different strategies that fantasy owners take in this kind of league (something we can cover in another story) and just makes fantasy baseball a little extra fun.

Best Ball Leagues

Best ball leagues are similar to draft and hold leagues, but slightly different. Most best ball leagues also don’t allow in-season transactions (I’ve seen some that allow a couple waiver wire periods), but you also don’t need to set any lineups.

After drafting your team, you just sit back and watch, because the stats from the best fantasy players that week/time period are used. No more worrying about which player to start, because the best numbers are taken. 

Much like the draft and hold formats, best ball leagues are all about the draft. If you would rather put all your efforts into drafting and then not have to worry about anything after that, best ball leagues could be a fun alternative to the traditional fantasy baseball season. 

Contests

Another fun format I’ve seen (and joined this year) are contests focused on one particular stat. I joined a Fantrax league entitled “Home Run Derby” where you can probably guess the goal is to pick the players with the most home runs over the course of the season.

You can only pick one hitter per week, and you can only use a player once over the course of the season, so there’s still a ton of strategy involved. The only goal every week is to try to pick the player that’s going to hit the most home runs. You can also have multiple entries in case you want to try out a couple different strategies.

If you are interested in the league, this link should take you to the league home. This particular one has a $10 entry fee.

This kind of league could be easily replicated with any stat you want. Pitcher strikeouts would be another fun setup I’d think, as would player hits. A more challenging and intense setup would be closer saves, because there’s only 30 MLB teams to choose from over the 16 1/2 week season. But you could join a league for any kind of stat out there. 

It’s just another fun little game to play over the course of a long baseball season and something that I think could become popular in every fantasy sport in the coming years. It’s almost like DFS, but something you do over the entire season instead. A lot of the same strategies could apply, just over longer stretches of time.

Do some searching on fantasy forums and social media to see what other kinds of fun alternatives are out there. There’s bound to be something to scratch your fantasy itch.