After a long, cold, often frustratingly slow offseason, Opening Day is right around the corner — and that means fantasy baseball season is too. But before you get into who to target in your draft, you have to know which kind of league you’re drafting for. Fantasy baseball leagues are hardly one-size-fits-all; they can vary widely based on everything from roster size to starting slots, and probably the biggest distinction is what scoring format is used.
So, whether you’re a newcomer to the fantasy baseball scene, or you’re just trying out a new format for the first time, let’s run down the basics of the three most common types of scoring formats — along with which kinds of players are better- and worse-suited for each.
2024 fantasy baseball: Which type of league is for you?
Rotisserie leagues
Rotisserie leagues are the O.G.s of the fantasy baseball scene, the format in which the earliest versions of the game were played. The idea is simple: Each league tracks various statistical categories across a full season, with points allotted to each team based on how they finish in each category. Standard rotisserie — or roto — leagues use five categories for hitting and five for pitching, often labeled 5×5, with points awarded to each team based on their performance in each category. (For example: The team that ends the season with the most homers in a 12-team league is awarded 12 points, with the second-place team awarded 11 and so on down the line.)
The most common statistical categories are runs, homers, RBI, steals and batting average for batters, and wins, ERA, WHIP, strikeouts and saves for pitchers. As our understanding of the game has advanced, so to have our roto formats; nowadays it’s increasingly common to encounter 6×6 leagues that add stats more indicative of a player’s true value, like on-base percentage or quality starts. But the basic idea is the same: This is a marathon, not a sprint, and it’s also about catering your team to a set group of specific categories rather than simply drafting based on a player’s holistic, real-life contribution to their team.
Roto leagues aren’t simply an exercise in collecting the best, most productive players. You have to weigh what each player contributes across several categories and then strike the right balance across your entire roster. It’s a quirk that leads to artificial scarcities, elevating a stat like stolen bases beyond its real-life utility. Efficiency is of greater concern, particularly on the pitching side, where 40 percent of what’s scored is ERA and WHIP — volume can actually be a detriment, then, if it negatively impacts those ratios.
H2H leagues
H2H stands for head-to-head, which is really exactly what it sounds like: The scoring format is the same as a rotisserie league, but rather than simply tallying up a team’s statistical totals at the end of the year, team will compete in head-to-head matchups every week — much like fantasy football. The team that wins the most categories wins that matchup, and each team’s win-loss record determines their place in the standings. This adds a bit of spice to a long season, while also allowing for more drama towards the end; there are playoffs in place in H2H leagues, and that keeps more teams in the hunt for longer. For the most part, as long as you’re competing in statistical categories, your draft strategy should be largely the same whether your league is H2H or roto — although H2H places slightly more value on players who are extremes in one or two categories, as winning a category each week has more bearing on your team’s fortunes than helping that same category over the course of a full season.
Points leagues
Where category leagues — both H2H and roto — keep track of only certain statistics, points leagues attempt a far more holistic approach. Virtually everything a player, hitter or pitcher, does on the field is ascribed a numerical value, positive or negative: a point for a single, two points for a double, minus half a point for a strikeout, and so on. As you might imagine, this affects your draft strategy pretty drastically, forcing you to consider the full scope of a player’s contributions rather than just the handful that matter in roto leagues. More overlooked stats like doubles, walks and strikeouts can be real differentiators for hitters, and accumulation — rather than pure efficiency — is the name of the game, since rate stats like batting average, ERA and WHIP have no direct value. In roto leagues, Rafael Devers and Austin Riley are early round picks; in points leagues, however, someone like Max Muncy — whose batting average drain has him picked outside the top 100 in drafts, some 75 picks later — actually averaged more points per game than Devers did last year.
