Fantasy Baseball In-Season Management Tips & Advice (2023)

Nobody comes out of a draft with the perfect team, so what usually dictates who wins fantasy baseball leagues is who makes the smartest and most shrewd decisions in-season. Here are a few in-season strategies to help you win your leagues. If you’ve already drafted, be sure to sync your league with our My Playbook tool for top in-season management advice!

If you want to dive deeper into fantasy baseball, be sure to check out our award-winning slate of Fantasy Baseball Tools as you navigate your season. From our Lineup Assistant – which provides your optimal lineup, based on accurate consensus projections – to our Waiver Wire Assistant – that allows you to quickly see which available players will improve your team, and by how much – we’ve got you covered this fantasy baseball season.

Best In-Season Management Tips for Fantasy Baseball

Get Familiar With Data

A TON of data is accessible to fantasy baseball managers, from Fangraphs to Statcast. With an endless amount of information, where do you start?

An easy place to start for hitters is barrel rate and HardHit rate. These stats can be found on Fangraphs and help to determine which batters have the best contact. Someone like Aaron Judge had elite hard contact in 2022 with a 26.2% barrel rate and a 60.9% HardHit rate. But targeting players with a 9% or higher barrel rate and a HardHit rate of at least 40% is a solid plan for finding good players.

You should also pay attention to a hitter’s K% (strikeout rate) and, in some points leagues, BB% as well. Looking at a player’s O-swing%, or chase rate is also important. Finding players who hit the ball hard and have good discipline is a not-so-secret sauce for finding good hitters.

As for pitchers, K/9 (strikeouts per nine innings) is a great starting point. Look for pitchers with a 9 K/9 or higher – basically, pitchers who get at least a strikeout per inning – and you will typically find pitchers who accumulate strikeouts.

It is fine to look at a pitcher’s ERA, but identifying their expected ERA through xFIP or SIERA (on Fangraphs) can be more telling. Stats like xFIP and SIERA are more predictive of a pitcher’s performance because they focus more on a pitcher’s true performance.

Trade

Identifying your areas of strength and weakness throughout the season is extremely important so that you can fill those needs and use your surplus to do so.

Do not be afraid to trade away stars if doing so will help your team. Find other teams who have weaknesses where you have strengths so that you can make deals more easily and effectively.

Even if you feel like you have a strength at one point in the season, players get injured and performances dip, so trading is something you should be trying to do all season.

My In-Season Trade Etiquette article outlines more trading strategies and how to be a good trade partner.

Work Waivers

Baseball is a long season, and in daily leagues, especially, it feels even longer. Waivers are extremely important in daily leagues, but of course, still important in weekly leagues too. In daily leagues, you should be watching waivers…daily.

It can be difficult to make trades sometimes, so waivers can be a kind of trade where you can drop and add whomever you want out of the pool of available players.

Do not be afraid to add a player on a hot streak, even if you know you will drop him in two weeks. If he helps your team, that is what matters most. Using data can help identify the players who are on hot streaks or who are the “real deal.”

As part of waivers, streaming pitchers is a necessity, especially in head-to-head leagues where you are competing directly with another team. Finding pitchers who have advantageous matchups or pitchers who have two starts is a great way to win. Pay attention to your league rules regarding how many acquisitions you can make in a scoring period, as well as how many innings or starts your league allows.

Additionally, do not be afraid to drop players. All too often, fantasy managers feel tied to a player they drafted or a player from their favorite MLB team. It can also be difficult to figure out when is the right time to drop a player. Generally, if you drafted a player late and he is not performing after a week or two, you should consider dropping them. For a higher draft pick or a more prominent player, the decision to drop can be more difficult. If the data shows that a player is truly struggling – they are striking out a lot and have weak contact – they could be worth a drop. But if their data shows some “bad luck,” like a low BABIP despite good contact or a low HR/FB rate despite a lot of fly balls, you may want to hang onto them a little longer.

Employing these strategies should help guide you to fantasy baseball victory. Stay diligent throughout your season, and never give up!

Beyond our fantasy baseball content, be sure to check out our award-winning slate of Fantasy Baseball Tools as you navigate your season. From our Trade Analyzer – which allows you to instantly find out if a trade offer benefits you or your opponent – to our Waiver Wire Assistant – that allows you to quickly see which available players will improve your team, and by how much – we’ve got you covered this fantasy baseball season.