new to fantasy baseball- lots of questions!

[seahawks506]

Hey, I'm playing in a standard roto 5x5 and an H2H 5 category league (non dynasty/keeper) . I am wondering, could anyone give me some drafting advice? Like what kind of players should I look for? What positions should be taken priority? How should I go about drafting my team? I am fairly new to fantasy baseball. I also have a couple of questions.
How does Roto style affect how I should draft/run my team?
I know that there are days when a lot of teams don't play and there are only a few games that day. How does fantasy baseball deal with that? Or do ESPN leagues have weekly matchups?

Thanks!

[SlightlyStoopid]

There are lots of strategies out there and there isn't one concrete way in order to draft. A basic strategy is to pick the best player available regardless of position in the first 5 or 6 rounds, get 2 or 3 top end SP with the next couple rounds and use the next 2-3 rounds filling the holes from the first 5-6 players you took. i.e if you ended up with 3 OF and a 3B and SS with your first 5, then aim to grab 1B and a 2B. All the while keeping an eye out for players that are falling way below thier average draft position. These players may represent great bargains. Also watch for runs on certain positions, like closers, if 5-6 teams start taking up a certain position you may be left out in the cold and end up with a scrub in a position if you haven't drafted one or two already.

The difference between H2H and Roto is that you want to stay away from streaky players in H2H, they can kill your whole team that week when they hit a slump. Do a search on "streaky" and you'll get various posts about streaky players. Stay away from them in your H2H league. In roto it all depends on the final stats so streaky doesn't matter. If you're in a daily interaction league, make sure when your typical starters have a day off do anything you can to fill that role with a bench player. An empty spot gathers no stats. Here is where bench players that are eligible at multiple positions are nice to have. This applies to all positions except C, it's usually not worth the bench spot to carry and extra C. It's usually a offensively black-hole position anyway.

Read the thread started by Fenway Punk here: viewtopic.php?t=400182
It turns into a pretty good thread on draft strategies and opinions.

[BoSoxFan7]

My first advice is to read as much as you can about fantasy sports strategy. There are lots of websites dedicated to this and most of the content is free. Yahoo and MLB both have great columns about drafting strategy and player commentary. If you are still uncomfortable running a draft then you might consider using draft companion software. I have found that it can help manage the sometimes overwhelming barage of information that you have to keep track of during a draft. Some sites that market software include: rotowire.com, rotolab.com, nosweatfantasysports.com and there are others I'm sure. First thing though is to read.

[MaudDib]

A lot of this you will have to learn. There is no one way to play fantasy baseball and every owner figures out the way he likes to play. Some owners draft lots of SP early and then look for cheap hitters later in the draft while others preach about hitters and might not grab a starter until the 8th round.

There are two cardinal rules in fantasy baseball. First be active. The more active you are the better you will be. This includes reading articles/blogs about players or just reading the snippets about your current players, also offering and making trades as well as setting your lineup whether it is daily, bi-weekly or weekly. The second rule is to scour the WW. Your draft will not be perfect. You will make mistakes and some guys will get hurt. The cheapest way to make your team better is to grab guys off the WW. This is where owners get guys like Zobrist or Pablo, who didn't get drafted last year but are now top 100 players.

I also suggest becoming active here. There is a lot of good information here and helpful people. The Draft, Trade, Keeper,Waiver section is usually very active. Ask any question and people are glad to help. We don't care if it is what you might think a stupid question. Just ask away. Baseball Leftovers is also a good place to find out about players. This is kind of the breaking news section and you can find sleepers and duds here as well.