Ah yes, it’s that’s time of the year again. It’s staying lighter a little later in the day, you can occasionally have a beer out on the patio, it’s getting warm enough to rock just a hoodie outside and maybe occasionally wear flip flops, and baseball season is almost upon us. That also means it’s time to start getting ready for fantasy baseball. I know fantasy football is probably the king of fantasy sports now (unless you count march madness brackets), but fantasy baseball has always been my favorite.
Since I love fantasy baseball, I decided to try something new this year. I’ve played in just about every format I can think of: head-to-head, points only, roto, keeper leagues, etc. But I generally only play on one site (Yahoo), even though I use other sites like ESPN and CBS Sports to do some research and analysis. But this year, I’ve decided to play in a league on each of the major sites (ESPN, Yahoo, CBS Sports), and to also include MLB.com since they’re in the fantasy game as well now, and over the course of the season I’ll review each site and what they offer in terms of:
- Pre-draft materials and options for creating leagues as a commissioner
- Live draft performance and presentation
- In-season options like ease of adding/dropping players, making trades, comparing free agents
- Additional items like mobile phone apps, stattrackers, etc
- End of year review
They say you can’t win your league during the draft, but you can definitely lose it there. I’m not entirely sure that’s true seeing as how I’ve won leagues where I only had 5 players on my roster that I actually drafted. But no matter what, research and preparation can definitely help you out before your league starts. The sites I’m comparing won’t have that much that’s different between them, but it’s the way it’s presented that’s the key.
The first thing I notice about Yahoo’s fantasy baseball site is that they really seem to be keen on their own “experts” rankings, rather than projections. Now I understand that projections aren’t always correct, and aren’t the best way to evaluate players. But with all their talk about comparing and trending stats, it seems to me that they should have projections on what players will do. They do have projections in their draft kit, but you have to do a little searching to find it as it’s not prominently listed. Instead, they focus on ranks, and have their own “O-Rank” system which (almost always incorrectly) rates players. I understand the point of O-Rank, but I really dislike it because it’s not updated enough to be useful throughout the season.
They do have a very nice list of player ranks where their experts each rank the positions and then a composite rank is given. And they have usually well-written position primers where they list their top-5, players they’re staying away from, players to reach for, and bargain picks, as well as top prospects.
Usually you’ll find one expert that you agree with, so it’s nice to see where they all rank players against each other, especially for the mid to lower-tier players.
They do have some AL and NL-only cheetsheets, and auctions values, as well as sleepers, busts and injuries provided by rotowire. But it’s just a page with a link to a set of PDFs. Pret-ty lame Milhouse. They have mock draft lobbies for H2H, roto, and auctions. So just about everything you need is on the site somewhere, but the main thing I dislike about Yahoo is how their articles are displayed and how they’re archived. New articles push old ones off the main page. To find an archived article you have to do a little searching (and trying to search based on an individual expert is kind of a pain). Overall, their site is just kind of disorganized, and if you don’t go to it daily, you’d have a tough time finding exactly what you’re looking for.
I give it 3 Ubaldo Jimenez heaters
Out of 5.
Their main fantasy baseball draft page is similar to Yahoo’s. Recent links from their experts, news, etc. I do like that there’s an upcoming article schedule, so I can see what’s going to be on the site in the next few days. But instantly you’ll notice that like half the crap on their site is for “insiders.” I’m not going to pay to be an ESPN insider, and it sucks that so much of their content that’s prominently displayed is blocked.
However, the thing that really sets ESPN apart from the other sites in my opinion is their draft kit (which thankfully is almost entirely free). The number one most useful tool to me is their player projections. Like I said earlier, projections aren’t always right and not always the best way to evaluate players, but ESPN has full projections for all players (not just the top-10 or 15), as well as analysis of why they think they’ll get to those numbers. They have very in-depth position reviews, cheatsheets for all leagues and auction values, mock draft lobbies, keeper rankings, depth charts (and closer charts), sleepers and busts, and injury roundups. Basically, it’s just about everything you can use, and it’s all easy to find right on the main page.
The one thing that does really stand out is that their position ranking and review doesn’t include where they actually get the composite rankings. Sure they’re giving me the top 40 second basemen in the league, but what I like about Yahoo is at least I see where each “expert” ranks them. I like seeing the individual rankings that lead up to the actual composite ranking.
While the main page is just average and they try to pimp being an “insider” on you, their prominently displayed draft kit is awesome.
I give it 5 Evan Longoria bombs
Out of 5.
The first thing you’ll notice about CBS sports is that there’s a lot of news and a lot of articles. And you’ll also notice that it can all be broken out into specifics for your type of league. While many sites offer ADP, auction values, rankings, etc for AL and NL-only, H2H or roto, CBS actually gives you the option to get all those by themselves. Now that’s not a huge deal, but say you’re playing in a NL-only roto league, you can get a draft kit specific to that. It’s definitely much more catering to the experienced players. They have multi-position player guides, and position changes from the previous year. They have hitting and pitching optimizer calculators, hitting and pitching consistency charts, and a few other tools that, again, cater to the more hardcore players. They’ve very interesting, but for the average Joe just looking for some ranks and projections it’s a bit much.
They do offer the standard assortment of rankings, sleepers and busts, depth charts etc. Their articles are more in-depth than Yahoo, but not quite as thorough as ESPN. But in terms of quantity of news and articles, they are at the top. I didn’t see a place to do a mock auction though, only mock drafts for H2H and roto, which was disappointing.
They offer projections, and in those projections each player does have a nice bit of analysis. I don’t think it’s quite on par with ESPN, but it’s very close (and leaps and bounds ahead of Yahoo). However, my biggest problem is their projections are based around standard points league values. So when you see their projections, they’re sorted by CBS-specific fantasy points. For example, their projections have JJ Putz as the 4th best closer in the league (ahead of Mario Rivera, Joakim Soria, and Jonathan Papelbon). Now that could happen I suppose, but it seems wrong to me.
Overall, it’s a good site. It definitely caters to more experienced players, and I don’t like how they incorporate their fantasy points into their projections, but it’s a solid place to go for research.
I give it 3 Joe Mauer frozen ropes.
Out of 5.
They’re kind of the new kid on the block. MLB.com has had fantasy related articles, but they were more of the top-10 players, and sleepers or busts variety. They’ve upped their game lately though and have a decent fantasy section. You’ll find articles and blog posts about fantasy strategy, player news, and they also offer player previews. It’s pretty simple stuff, very nice looking, but simple. You can tell it’s tailored to the casual player as they don’t have draft kits that compare roto to H2H values, ADP, AL or NL-only, that sort of thing. No mock draft lobbies. Just a ranking of players with projections, though it includes generic auction values, which is nice.
Their player preview is pretty good. Maybe it’s just because it looks so much better than the other sites, but I do like it. It gives a projected line and analysis or each player; and not just the top guys, you can get a blurb on former #1 overall pick Luke Hochevar if you so desire.
They have this Bloomberg Sports draft list that they’re trying to pimp as well, but I don’t quite know what it is. I clicked on their link and was given a popup that had some projections, but at a glance it told me that Carlos Gonzalez would have 47 RBIs this year, Miguel Cabrera was going to hit .301, and that Tim Lincecum would K 208 batters. Maybe that’s just a sample as it’s clearly trying to get me to buy something that go along with the Fantasy Commissioner league, but it was really weird.
There’s really not much here, but what they do have looks nice. There’s some okay analysis, but nothing that you can’t get at the other sites. Their projections seem right and it’s nice to see them right out there on the front page, but this site should be used as more of a plan B, or somewhere to go to get a little extra info on a player. But its overall usefulness as a pre-draft research tool is limited.
I give it 2 Jose Reyes head-first slides
Out of 5.
Read Part 2 of our Fantasy Baseball Review: Creating Your Own League
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