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The amount of fantasy players who are participating in Head-to-Head leagues continues to grow. While the roots of Fantasy Baseball are in the Rotisserie Game, the popularity of Head-to-Head leagues in other sports, especially football, has led to many fantasy types gravitating to similar types of formats in baseball.
Head-to-Head Fantasy Baseball has indeed been with us for a while, as I can recall participating in my very first H2H leagues at SportsLine USA (later to become CBS SportsLine) in 1996. The rush of checking for wins and losses and watching the earliest versions of live scoring offered a unique and highly compelling alternative to the Roto game. Both styles of play have their positives, but the H2H game is appealing to many for its quicker return on results while still rewarding the work put in over a full season.
More than half of fantasy baseball players now engage in H2H leagues on ESPN, Yahoo, CBS, Fantrax, and NFBC. But finding the ideal set of rankings for your specific league purposes can be a daunting, if not impossible, task. Many H2H points leagues vary in their scoring setups. The time is long past a way for you to have rankings that address your league’s specific points leagues scoring setups. The wait is now over. The RotoBaller Custom Points League Rankings Tool is here. An MLB premium subscription is required to use this service.
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Custom Head-To-Head Points League Rankings
It’s a simple process for the user, and our experts do all the important work to provide a comprehensive set of rankings that are designed to meet your exact league specifications. You don’t have to rely on general "points league cheat sheets" or rankings that do not meet your exact league settings anymore. The RotoBaller team sends your custom rankings to your inbox within 24 hours of the staff receiving your request for ranks built exactly for your own league parameters. Think of it as having a high-end baseball glove or bat designed for you by the very best manufacturers with input from top Major League Baseball players to suit their needs.
This service is free for RotoBaller Premium Season Pass subscribers (enter promo code KING at checkout for an additional discount).
RotoBaller's Experts construct your Custom Head to Head League Rankings much in the same meticulous manner that a pro-style baseball glove may be designed with insights from Major Leaguers on what they want. Photo Credit: the-daffodil.
The easy part is getting your league information to our experts, who will then review all the parameters in detail before getting started on the assembly process. You just have to fill out a simple questionnaire that asks you to include weighted values for all of the key statistical categories in your league and enter in notes on any additional categorical items that may be needed to calculate your ranks. Review and submit your request, and then the RotoBaller team gets to work on constructing the perfect set of rankings for your draft.
The Process: The RotoBaller Team Goes to Work For You
It really doesn't get easier than this:
- Step 1: Fill out our questionnaire in 1 minute with your league settings
- Step 2: Sit back and wait
- Step 3: Receive your own custom points league rankings
Behind the scenes, we work our magic. We use #1 accuracy ranker Nick Mariano’s CUTTER projections, and based on the settings entered, our experts calculate the total projected points for all players, the replacement levels at each position, and the projected PAR (Points Above Replacement) for every player. Using a z-score based methodology, the PAR is converted to dollar values. And voilà, the points, dollar values, scoring rates and other factors are then ported into a final, perfectly customized set of rankings for your leagues and jettisoned to your inbox.
Behind the Scenes: The Making of Your Custom Head-to-Head Rankings
Let’s take you inside the RotoBaller Custom Head-to-Head Rankings Factory so you see some of what goes into the actual, thorough process of creating a set of rankings just for you. As we have indicated, your requested settings are blended with our very best RotoBaller projections, such as Nick Mariano’s CUTTER projections.
Nick is one of the elite rankers in the industry. He named the projections after the obvious connection between his surname and that of the greatest closer of all time. It also is due to Nick taking a very unique approach to pitching projections, including factors such as development, modeling for certain pitcher types, drilling down on certain pitches, velocities and movement, plus age, injuries, Statcast data, and much more. Nick’s projections also consider metrics such as Exit Velocity factors, Launch Angle buckets, Sprint Speed, and 90-foot split speed with BABIP and shifted-against rates.
Hitter projections take into account factors such as lineup slots, plate appearance and game ratios for the slots, park factors, Exit Velocity analytics, manager styles, steal tendencies and catcher defensive metrics within the division, and a whole lot more. Nick looks at each facet of a player’s game in tremendous detail and carefully factors in team tendencies.
The z-scores turn all of a player's scored stats into an all-encompassing metric. First, a different z-score is calculated for each category, by comparing a player's projected stat to the average stat, using the standard deviation of the statistic. The higher a player’s z-score is in a category, the higher above average he is in that specific category.
For my specific league, I requested a set of rankings based on the CBSSports.com Head to Head Points scoring system in a proposed 12-team format. The player values in a CBS standard format are heavily influenced by a roster that uses only three outfielders (as opposed to five on other platforms), with no middle- or corner-infielder slots. Our custom ranks will take all of this into account, with the values reflecting how deep the player pools will be.
Here is an example of how Juan Soto was projected to score 607 points, from the Rotoballer team of Head-to-Head rankings designers.
The replacement level for outfielders is 399 points, giving Soto 208 Points Above Replacement (PAR). PAR is analogous to a player's total z-score (which is the sum of their individual z-scores for each scored category). In some ways, calculating dollar values for point leagues is like doing it for a one-category roto league. We then divide Soto's PAR by the sum of all players in the pool with a projected positive PAR. That number is converted to dollars by multiplying it by the share of dollars in the pool allocated to hitters.
Here is a piece of the final output that was delivered to my inbox:
Even though Soto is projected to score more than many of the pitchers above him, those pitchers offer greater replacement value and are higher values. This means they're better, relative to their peers, than Soto is. Or in other words, OF is deeper than pitchers. The difference between Soto and your 2nd or 3rd OF is not as great as the difference between the starting pitcher aces and the 2nd or 3rd pitcher. These are incredibly valuable insights, only available for your custom points leagues through RotoBaller's custom points league service.
Arrival Day
Once the process of generating and meticulously reviewing your rankings is complete, your Custom Head-to-Head package is delivered quickly and directly to your e-mail address. As a Rotoballer Season Pass subscriber, you are then ready for draft day with your very own personalized, deluxe suite of rankings. Get ready to execute the ultimate draft day plan, as you will be like a superstar with a customized bat and glove strutting onto the virtual diamond.
Get your personalized set of Custom Head-to-Head Rankings right here! You can sign up for the RotoBaller Fantasy Baseball Season Pass here, using promo code KING at checkout for an additional discount.
Nicklaus Gaut contributed to this story.
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