To Make Money in Fantasy Baseball & Football, Know and Exploit the Rules

The best way to make money in fantasy baseball and football leagues is to know your leagues scoring rules inside and out and then to exploit the scoring rules for maximum fantasy points each week. By knowing the scoring rules better than your opponents you can easily gain a significant edge over them. I'll illustrate what I mean by using two fantasy leagues I play in, one baseball and one football.

This past baseball season I played in the Wanna Be's fantasy league. It's a head to head league and the weekly scoring runs from Monday to Sunday. Score more points than your opponent over the week and you get a victory. I've been exploiting the scoring rules in this league for all five of the years I've been in it and have won money every year. Which rules do I exploit?

Since the scoring is week to week and we are allowed to accumulate points for any player's performance over the week, I start as many pitchers as I can who will be making two starts over the scoring period. In this way I maximize my pitching points for each week and the season as a whole. For the season I led the league in scoring with 9,248 total points. That was 410 points more than the second place team. But I was only ranked 7th in hitting points. In pitching points I was first by 559 points. Over the course of the year my pitchers made 296 starts which was 1st for the league while the 2nd place team had 257 starts. The average team in this league had just 186 total starts. By starting as many two start pitchers each week as possible I averaged 110 more starts over the season than my opponents.

Before you start saying that I am just playing against a bunch of dummies the main reason I have that many more starts is because my opponents bother with closers and I do not. We are alloted 7 pitching spots per week. While I try and fill those seven slots each week with two start pitchers, most of my opponents will start at least one closer and some as many as three. Here's where understanding the rules comes into play.

The league rules are that each win is worth 10 points and each save is worth 8.5 points. A loss is minus 2 points. A blown save is minus 4 points. A complete game is worth 10 extra points and a complete game shutout is worth another 10. Each inning pitched is worth 1.5 points and a strikeout is worth 1 point each. When all of that is added up each starter, on average, will accumulate 15 points per start. Each closer will post about 7 points, on average, per appearance. A closer will appear about three times each week on average.

So on average each closer will accumulate about 21 points per week. By ignoring closers and using two start pitchers for every pitching slot open I average about 30 points per slot. That gives me about a 9 point advantage per slot for each closer any of my opponents use against me. Some weeks, of course, I am unable to fill each slot with a two start pitcher but in general I overwhelm my opponents each week and over the year using this strategy.

This past season I did not win this league but finished in 3rd. Even so I made a great return on my money because the league offers high score bonuses each week and bonuses for winning your division and leading your division at the All Star break. Not only did I lead my division at the break and win my division but I got the high
score 9 times this year which is just about my five year average. I paid $96 dollars into this league's fund and got back $349. A total return of 264% (my girlfriend likes to joke that I should just join 200 leagues each year and retire early but those who play know that's impossible to do).

Two years ago in the Air It Out fantasy football league I play in some of the owners decided to jazz up the scoring. Instead of the standard 1 point for 10 yards stuff they added in all kinds of scoring bonuses for each position. For example: any play in which a player gains 20 yards or more you get an extra point. 40 yards you get 2 points and anything over 50 was worth 4 points. Bonuses were also given for just touching the ball enough in each game. Any receiver who had 5 catches you got 1 point. Ten catches were worth 5 extra points. Fifteen carries in a game was worth a point and 25 carries were worth 5 more points.

It took me a couple of weeks to fully understand how this new scoring was affecting my players but once I did understand I exploited the new rules right to the Super Bowl Championship. The new rules greatly favored running backs who got lots of touches of the ball each week. A workhorse back was worth his weight in gold under the new scoring rules and any RB who touched the ball a lot in any given way, carries and or receiving, would really rack up the points.

So what did I do? I grabbed every available RB and added him to my roster. The league allowed a flex position and I made sure to fill that spot with the best workhorse RB I had on my roster. Anybody who put a WR in the flex spot had no chance but because I grabbed just about every RB anybody could ever use I forced many of my opponents into using a WR in the flex spot. I also stayed active on the waiver wire and would pick any RB likely to get lots of carries due to injuries or whatever. For example when Fred Taylor of the Jacksonville Jaguars got injured I quickly grabbed Greg Jones, the team's starting FB, and used him a couple of weeks because the team gave him a ton of carries while Taylor was out. He ended up giving me two very productive weeks because of all the carries he got.

After starting the season 1-5 (we play two opponents each week in that league) I ended up losing just two more times the rest of the season and then wiped out my opponents in the playoffs and the championship. I also ended up getting the high score six times, including five in a row and easily led the league in totals points scored. I also won my division and had the best record for the year. I put $114 into the league's kitty and ended up getting back $513. A return of 350%. If I could just do that with a couple of stocks I'd be rich.

In response to my winning the league so easily changes were enacted. First the league owners voted to entirely re-draft the league even though it was a 3 player keeper league and I still had to draft last for winning the league. Scoring was reduced especially for the RB's. And the league voted to limit each roster to just five RB's. All of which cost me my edge and all I could manage last season was a 3rd place finish and four high score weeks.

By understanding the scoring rules a little better than my opponents in my fantasy leagues I have been able to exploit those rules and make money. In baseball I have taken advantage of the fact that starting pitchers will, on average, put up more fantasy points than closers will. And in football I was able to exploit the scoring rules that greatly favored RB's.

To make money in your fantasy sports leagues know your leagues scoring rules inside and out and exploit those rules to your full advantage.