INSCMagazine: Get Social!

If you are a fan of fantasy sports, you could very well know it is a year round hobby. As the NFL season enters week 15 of the season, many fantasy football leagues are in their playoff rounds. Within a few weeks, the fantasy football season will officially be in the books. But have no fear fantasy fans, you can start up you fantasy baseball preparation as 2017 is quickly approaching!

MLB is currently in the midst of its offseason, with the Winter Meetings providing fans with a ton of fun and big moves. So while there are still players out there without a team, and others who could be moved from one club to another, many of the big names have found their 2017 home.

If you are like me, once you get that fantasy baseball itch, it simply does not go away. The Winter Meetings is always the time of year that gets me thinking about what implications all of these winter moves will have in the coming season. Could the Astros become a run scoring machine with the likes of Brian McCann and Josh Reddick joining a lineup that already featured Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa and George Springer? Does Dellin Betances become totally useless  in fantasy with Aroldis Chapman back in the Bronx? Questions like these fill my brain, and they do not stop.

Then factor in this is the time of year where members of keeper league must start giving their roster a closer look. Who will you be keeping as you head into the 2017 season? Do you have anyone you do not want to keep but could bring you someone you would in a trade? Is it worth trading a draft pick for a given player? My fellow keeper league players know what I am talking about.

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This is also the time of year where true fantasy baseball fans will start to get into some research. One great tool I love to use is Ron Shandler’s Baseball Forecaster, which you can read more about here. It offers in-depth looks at every player and their stats. And I am not just talking about their surface stats, but more in-depth stats that can help you identify some potential sleepers and busts.

By the time the New Year rolls around, that draft urge becomes truly real as well. I typically like to draft as close to the season as possible, as it allows for me to take in as much information as possible. But every season I want to get an early look at the Average Draft Position (ADP) of each player, just to have a general idea on when some of my guys are going. The NFBC (National Fantasy Baseball Championship) is a great place to go if you get that early draft itch like myself. They offer countless types of drafts, many of which are also a part of a national contest that allows you to compete against people from all over, in addition to the players in your league. Their most common contest this time of year is the Draft Championship, which is a 50 round league with no in season pickups. You can read more on that contest here.

So with the fantasy football season only a few weeks from completion, it is time to find a new hobby. And for my fellow sports junkies, fantasy baseball is certainly a fun option. Personally I am a huge baseball fan, and I find the challenge of fantasy baseball to be even more fun than fantasy football. So if you feel you have what it takes to play fantasy baseball, start brushing up on some MLB knowledge! Maybe we will even end up competing against one another in NFBC Draft Championship league, as I know I will not be able to resist that urge much longer.