No one plays fantasy baseball for fun. As I have mentioned previously, the season goes on forever and there are way too many players involved. Its only purpose is to distract from the fact summer is basically awful. It’s hot, there is nothing interesting going on and people want to talk incessantly about stupid vacations to not interesting destinations. But if we could improve fantasy baseball, maybe…just maybe…it could be more than a distraction.
This is a tough ask, of course. Firstly, you have those diehards who balk at any suggestion to improve fantasy baseball. In most cases, these are also the same people who are passionate about the purity of the Baseball Hall of Fame. But let’s not get sidetracked on that.
Secondly, there are just some things that aren’t changing about baseball. The season will continue to be long. Managers will keep adopting fantasy-unfriendly tactics like bullpen games. And whoever is on your bench will almost always outperform who you started. However, there are a few things that can be done to improve fantasy baseball.
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4 things to improve fantasy baseball
Get rid of catchers
If you thought the tight end position in fantasy football was a wasteland, you should get a load of the catcher position. There is J.T. Realmuto, who finished as the 55th best hitter in Yahoo! rankings, and then a bunch of guys who play one out of every three games without doing anything of note.
The main issue with the catching position now and ten years ago is depth. Simply put, there are no longer enough catchers playing enough games to make this position matter. And honestly, even the ones that do play don’t hit much.
Ditto for WHIP
WHIP is important as it relates to baseball. From a fantasy baseball perspective, it’s no fun. Every other category has a positive/negative outcome. WHIP just muddies the waters. A starting pitcher gets a win and doesn’t allow an earned run, but because he walked a bunch of guys it still hurts your team. That’s lame.
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Make players declare for one position
Much like fantasy basketball, positions in fantasy baseball are out of control. Yahoo! dishes out position designations like milk at an elementary school cafeteria while ESPN is a little more controlled. It’s one thing for Max Muncy to eligible at 1B/2B/3B but Jurickson Profar given this flexibility is ridiculous.
Ultimately, a ton of multi-position eligibility makes drafting less fun and reduces the need for trades. If your starting second basemen gets hurt, why bother going after another when like three other guys on your roster can already play there? A way around this would be to make managers declare every player for one position. There can be some flexibility when it comes to changes in season, but this should add some fun when it comes to roster building and management.
Create a spilt season format
At its core, fantasy baseball is a six-month grind to see what team can be slightly better than mediocre. Every league will have a really good team or two and a couple of neglected one. But everyone else usually ends up in this quagmire of averageness for most the year. It’s hard to get pumped about setting your lineup in late June. No one cares about mile 13 of a marathon.
Splitting the season in half or even thirds would make things much more interesting. Make it so the split season champions qualify for the playoffs along with the two best teams remaining using full season records. A reset or two during the season would do wonders to improve fantasy baseball.
