Sport: MLB

You have an endless amount of ways to succeed in a fantasy baseball draft. Various strategies can lead to a winning season. But there are just as many ways to sabotage your draft as there are to do well. Below are 10 ways to sabotage your draft if you are not careful.

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Sabotaging Your Fantasy Baseball Draft in 10 Easy Steps
1. Drafting Based on Name Value

Drafting based on name value is a problem to a certain extent. First-rounders tend to carry high value because of their names, but also because of their performance. The issue with drafting based on name value is when players age or return slowly from injuries, but because they have a certain reputation, fantasy managers will ignore their problems. Spending early picks on name-value players could tank your team.

Think about spending a top-10 pick on Jose Ramirez in a few years because he is Jose Ramirez, expecting to continue his run of 30-30 seasons. Let’s imagine that as he ages, his bat speed slows, and he stops running as much. Maybe that 30-30 season becomes a 20-15 season, and you could have spent a round five pick to get that production, but you burned a first or second round pick on him. That could create major problems.

This happened with Mike Trout a few years ago as he began dealing with injuries that hampered his performance. You have to look beyond the name to other factors, or you will sabotage your draft.

2. Not Knowing Your League Settings

Most experienced fantasy baseball drafters know to look into league settings, but you do not know the things you do not know. Here are some settings to consider prior to drafting:

Number of teams in the league
Scoring type – Roto, Categories, Points
Head-to-Head or not
Weekly or Daily lineups
FAAB vs Waivers
Snake vs Auction draft
Roster restrictions
Innings/Starts limits
What stats are counted?

Not knowing these things could lead to some major struggles. Planning could help avoid your season turning upside down from the beginning. It is a major way that you could sabotage your draft, so be aware of your league settings.

3. Drafting Based on Spring Training Performances

Spring Training is an important time for baseball players. Many use the time to test new pitches or grips. Batters adjust their swings or try new plate approaches. This can create a false image for drafters on how these players will perform in-season.

Batters could have an incredibly productive spring, leading them to be drafted earlier than the value they return. Spring Training can drive up prices just as much as it can drive them down.

A bad spring could lead fantasy managers to draft players later, and they could have a great season. The issue is when you ignore past performance and trend data, and base the value on spring performance. This is recency bias and can sabotage your draft.

4. Punting a Stat or Category

Some fantasy drafters may argue that this works – ignoring a stat entirely in drafts, especially in categories leagues. In category leagues, typically, you have a total of 10 categories to win against an opponent. Theoretically, if you can win at least six each week, you should have a good year. The problem is that winning those categories is not guaranteed.

Players go through slumps, and there are schedule quirks that could leave you with low playing time. This could end up creating problems during the season, when your team has low-scoring weeks. If you punt a stat like steals, for example, it may be that steals could have won you a week when your team does not score enough in other stats.

Usually, if drafters employ this strategy of punting stats for pitchers, saves is the one. Doing so might work, but relievers also help lower ERA and WHIP, and not having many could negatively affect your team.

Instead, try building a balanced team that gives you solid depth at each position and statistic. Why start from zero, having to make major adjustments? Building a balanced team means you just have to make small tweaks during the season. Punting categories is a great way to sabotage your draft and make your season more difficult.

5. Ignoring Playing Time Concerns

This may require more research, but understanding playing time concerns is an essential piece of drafting. Knowing which players will platoon, how they will platoon, or their prospect status is extremely important.

Take Brandon Lowe, for example. He has performed significantly better against righty pitchers than lefties. On other teams with more middle-infield depth, he may be platooned. With Pittsburgh’s roster structure, he likely will not platoon much, getting a bulk of the time at second.

Mickey Moniak also has poor splits against LHP, but with Colorado’s roster construction, he looks like much more of a platoon candidate. Tyler Freeman should take a majority of the playing time against LHP, but because Moniak had a breakout season in 2025, his price will be up. The worry is if he will lose out on playing time and production.

Be sure to identify any playing time concerns and research MLB teams’ depth charts prior to drafting. Not doing so could sabotage your draft.

6. Refusing to Adapt to the Draft Room

You should always go into the draft with a plan. Identify your sleepers and busts, do mock drafts, and find value. But DO NOT stick to that plan if it is not working. Adaptability is key to winning your fantasy baseball leagues, and it starts with your draft.

Adapting could mean recognizing when there is a run on a particular position or stat and adjusting the plans you had for that round. You could get sniped four times in one round, so having players in your queue and having backup plans to your backup plans will help avoid those panic picks.

Going into drafts without a plan or sticking strictly to your plan are both ways to sabotage your drafts this season.

7. Drafting an All-IL Rotation

In your drafts, you have to take some risks. You cannot take all the risks, though, especially when it comes to drafting oft-injured players or ones returning from injuries.

Drafting a rotation of Jacob deGrom, Blake Snell, Hunter Greene, and Kris Bubic could pay off huge. It could also backfire immensely. Between them, they have a total of three seasons of 150 IP or more since 2021.

Instead, pairing one of those pitchers with a workhorse like Logan Webb or Dylan Cease could be much more rewarding if those players pick up another injury or face limitations in other ways.

This goes for hitters, too. I would love to be able to count on a lineup of Bryce Harper, Jazz Chisholm, Royce Lewis, and Corey Seager. That could be a league-winning fantasy team. But Seager has not played 130 games in a season since 2022. Lewis has not made it past 106 games in a season in his career. Chisholm has made it past 130 games once, in 2024. Harper has been the most healthy of the bunch, crossing the 130-game threshold three times in the last five seasons.

Understanding the risks is one thing, but ignoring them is completely different. Be aware of players with injury concerns and those who may be limited because of prior injuries. This will keep you from sabotaging your draft.

8. Drafting With Your Heart

I am a die-hard Nationals fan. I will not draft very many Nats players this season, though. Like me, you have to draft with your head, not with your heart.

As fantasy managers, we likely are baseball fans first. That can create problems as you get to certain points in your draft. You might want to reach to make sure you get your favorite player, or a player from your favorite team. If you ignore value or need, it could end up hurting your team in the long run.

You can always try to trade for your favorite players later in the season if they fit a need, but in the draft, finding value is essential. That means you must be well-researched and that you draft based on your research. Drafting with your heart is how you sabotage your draft, not how you succeed.

9. Building an All-Star Prospect Team

Much like the All-IL rotation, an All-Star prospect team could reward you, but the more likely scenario is that it will backfire. Prospects are prospects for a reason – their success is uncertain, and their skills in the majors are undiscovered. This makes rostering prospects a huge gamble, considering there are plenty of players with track records and consistent data to back up performances and projections.

We get a look at some prospects in spring, and have seen value and cost skyrocket because of strong performances. Those performances do not guarantee regular-season success or playing time, though.

This is not to say you should avoid Konnor Griffin. But drafting a roster of a combination of multiple prospects like Griffin, JJ Wetherholt, Kevin McGonigle, Walker Jenkins, and the like in a non-dynasty league could be dangerous. These players could debut in April. They could debut in August. Either way, they take up roster space from players who are guaranteed to play, and likely to produce.

Be wary not of drafting prospects, but of how many you roster. Taking on too many could sabotage your draft.

10. Stacking Players

One final way to sabotage your draft is to stack players. In fantasy football, stacking players could turn out to be a smart strategy, especially if the players come from a good team. Fantasy football rosters are much smaller, though. So when you have to deal with a bye week, you can fill those voids easily and avoid missing out on production. In baseball, those days with no games are much tougher to handle.

The Dodgers arguably have the best offense in baseball. Drafting a fantasy team full of Dodgers could benefit you greatly. You likely will not complain about rostering a bunch of Dodgers players. But when you have five spots missing in your lineup because they have Thursday off, you might complain. And it is not like you will be dropping Kyle Tucker to grab someone off waivers to fill in for a game. You just have to eat the missing stats.

Fantasy managers need to draft good players from good teams, but not all of the good players from one team. That is how you sabotage your draft.

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