How to Play Classic and Showdown MLB Snake Drafts on DraftKings

After a shortened season and a wild ride through an expanded postseason, Major League Baseball is ready for somewhat of a return to normalcy this season with 162 games on the schedule for each team and the hope of a full season ahead. DraftKings is ready to go with a wide array of fantasy baseball options starting with some great options and promotions to start the season strong.

What is MLB Snake?

If you’ve been all about fantasy baseball draft season and don’t want the fun to stop, Draftkings is also rolling out a new format which should be exactly what you’re looking for. If you’ve never done a snake draft before, it’s relatively quick and simple. Unlike standard DraftKings contests, players can only be on a single team, so it’s more like most season-long leagues in that respect. There are contests with three teams, six teams and 12 teams.

Each player makes one pick per round in a randomly determined order. The order flips in each round, so the team that has the first pick of the first round will get the last pick of the second round, and vice versa. The order alternates in this manner for each round until each team’s roster is filled.

What does an MLB Snake roster look like?

MLB Snake will give players a chance to live draft a small squad of hitters to go out and mash on a given slate of games. For Classic slates, each roster will include two infielders, two outfielders and two flex spots, and for showdowns, rosters will include three hitters, regardless of position. After the draft, no roster management is required. There’s no need to add, drop or trade players.

To help mitigate some of the weather concerns and protect against players being scratched, there is also a bench slot in each format. The lowest scoring player will be slotted there automatically. So for a classic slate, the top six scores of your seven players will be counted.

For both Showdown and Classic format, players must come from at least two MLB teams.

How does MLB Snake scoring work?

The scoring for each player is below and should be familiar to everyone since it’s the same as standard scoring for batters in DraftKings contests.

Again, there are no pitchers in MLB Snake, so there’s no need to worry about who is pitching except that they will impact the matchup for your specific hitters. You may choose to stack multiple hitters from a single matchup or team, but that will raise the risk if that lineup gets shutdown or that game is canceled. If you diversify your attack, you get that bench spot to clean up any unforeseen scratches or rainouts.

The Player Pool will consist of all MLB players expected to be on the active roster for any team scheduled to play in the contest Game Set. Occasionally a player may be missing from the Player Pool due to trades or other unforeseen circumstances.

When does the draft start and how long does it take?

Snake drafts will take place once the slate is established once the required number of entrants join the contest (snake draft contests must fill completely). There will be a one-minute period between the time the contest fills and the time the countdown begins for the first pick of the draft. The draft order is determined at random once the contest fills and you can withdraw from a snake draft at any time before the contest fills.

Snake drafts don’t take long since they use fast draft settings, which means up to 30 seconds to make each pick. In order to be eligible for prizes in snake draft contests, you must either edit the pre-draft rankings, add a player to your queue during the draft or make a manual draft pick during the draft. Failure to take at least one of the prior three actions will result in an invalid entry and you will not be eligible for prizes and your entry fee will be forfeited.

Do I need draft prep?

There will be content on the DraftKings Playbook to help you find some of the best hitters to target and avoid.

If you want to work ahead, You can create your own personalized ordering of a snake draft player pool by editing the pre-draft rankings, but if you don’t you’ll use the default DraftKings player rankings.

When it’s your pick, if you let the pick clock expires, a player will be drafted by one of the following methods.

-DraftKings will pick the highest player from the queue.
-or-
-DraftKings will pick the highest-rated player from your pre-draft rankings.

Should a player fail to make two consecutive manual selections, DraftKings will automatically turn auto-draft on and this can be turned off at any time in the draft settings. Players who have auto-draft on will not receive any push notifications for that specific contest during the draft.

What about games being canceled or suspended?

If for any reason a draft does not finish before the contest goes live, the contest will be canceled and all users will be refunded. In order to ensure all drafts finish before the contest goes live, all unfilled contests before the contest start time. In the event that a game is canceled, postponed, or rescheduled to a time outside of the original Scoring Period, the game will be disabled from the Game Set and players listed to play in that game will not be eligible to accrue points.

The Scoring Period for MLB is defined as the timeframe between the scheduled start of the first game within the Game Set and 11:59 p.m. ET on the date of the start time of the last scheduled game within the Game Set. DraftKings may choose to adjust the Scoring Period for a Game Set at their sole discretion to accommodate schedule changes to any time before 12:00 a.m. ET on the day after the Game Set is scheduled to start. If canceled or games rescheduled for a later date result in a Game Set including only one active game, then all contests for that Game Set will be canceled and refunded.

Games are “known” to be canceled or postponed once their status is updated as such by DraftKings’ MLB stats-provider, STATS LLC. DraftKings uses official MLB statistics and only includes statistics from games MLB deems to be official. If the MLB declares a game “suspended” then the statistics generated before the game is suspended will count in Game Sets containing that game, but any statistics generated on a later date when the game resumes will not be included.