It’s the offseason – and if you aren’t like some of us who never stop playing fantasy baseball you may be looking to start up a new league. And so, if you don’t want to play in either a Fantrax run classic draft or best ball, or check out the new leagues that I’m starting up, we’re going to take a bit here to look at how to think about setting up a league. (Of note – many of these settings apply to all Fantrax sports, not just baseball.)
Now, commissioning a league is a lot more than getting the settings right – but that is a crucial first step. And in order to get your league set up right in Fantrax, you first need to set up a constitution and rules so that they are clearly laid out for all potential, and actual, managers in your league.
What?! Your league didn’t use Fantrax for the 2021 fantasy baseball season? Compare how we match up to the competition and see why you should move your league over in 2022.
Getting Started
Some things to be sure to think about when creating a league:
- The scoring – of course – is crucial. Once scoring is set up in a league it needs to stay the same because drafts, trades, almost everything with strategy hinges on the scoring categories. You can’t have a saves league and suddenly go to saves+holds, or a AVG league and flip to OBP – those change the value of players in that league and so this needs to be clear from the start.
- Roster size, roster makeup, minors, injured reserved and all other roster settings need to be known before you get going as well since this dramatically impacts league depth, how a team builds a roster and all other settings.
- What is the system for adding and dropping players – FAAB – if so vickery or not? How often do adds happen?
- What are lineup periods? Weekly? Daily? Bi-weekly? Weekly with lineup moves for injuries?
- What are trade rules? Are there in draft trades? Can future picks be traded?
- Minimums and maximums? What are the rules there – this has be clear as well since you can draft very differently depending on this.
- Player pool – are minor leagues included? Are players who are not yet signed available?
- What makes a roster illegal and what are the penalties?
- Is the draft live? Slow? Auction? What are the rules if a team times out?
- Positional eligibility – how many games does a player need at a position to be eligible?
- For dynasty/keeper leagues – how many players are kept? What does the yearly draft look like? Is it a salary league
- What is the league price and how do payouts work?
Ok. Now that you’ve got all of those questions answered and written out in painful detail that would make a lawyer proud – now it’s time to actually create your league.
League Creation
To start you’ll want to go to Fantrax.com, scroll down, and click on baseball.
Then click on create a league under the commissioner option and you’ll see this:
If you already have a league with very similar settings to the league you’re going to create then you can click on option 3: copy another league, select the league you want, un-click copy teams/players/matchups, etc and copy it and then you can edit the settings you need to edit.
If you are moving to Fantrax from another site (a great idea I promise you) we have some options to click there that will help and then I would recommend you contact our stellar support team if you have any questions about transferring anything over (bonus you get a year premium free on Fantrax when moving from another platform).
Finally – if you are creating a league from scratch, just click option 1: “use a Fantrax default setting” and then select the schedule type and scoring you want, roto, h2h, points, etc. Click whatever is CLOSEST to the league rules you’ve already established and we’ll then tweak any settings as needed.
League Settings
Now that your league is created – you need to set up the rest of the league. As commissioner, you will spend most of your time doing commissioner things in tools under the commissioner dropdown.
Most of the time you’ll be in the all options or under league setup, and of the two you’ll spend far more time in league setup most likely (though if you get it right to start you’ll spend little time in either).
The general page doesn’t make you do a whole lot – you can change the league name there and also decide if your league will have a password or if you’ll use the easy join link. I recommend the easy join link and just send it only to people that you want in the league.
Other than that you can select if you want duplicate players in your league:
Generally, you don’t use this unless you’re doing some sort of playoff league or a league where people can pick only 1 from each roster for a full roster. The other time you would use this is if this one league actually holds a few different “leagues” set up as divisions that then can compete against each other in overall standings. That’s a more rare and involved setting that we won’t cover in this article.
Otherwise, this is what’s left on the page:
You can add a league description if you want, change the images, and if you clicked the wrong type of league setup to start, change the setup.
Teams & Setups
On this next page you’ll put in your team name if you’re in the league as commissioner, and then have these options:
Generally you only have one team per manager, but if you want more than that you can turn that on.
IMPORTANT side note – if you see the diamond by something that means it is a premium setting so using it will require that your league be a premium league. Also note that almost every setting has a ? by it – if you click on that a bubble shows with a description of the setting that is immensely helpful.
Then you can set up the number of teams in your league (note you can add by changing the top drop-down and remove by clicking the red Xs.) Be sure to turn on teams stay in league even if manager quits if you have teams already drafted so you can give that roster to a new manager. Even if you want to fold it into the player pool you can do that by clicking the red X after a manager quits should that occur.
Finally, the change/edit managers is a super helpful button. If you are replacing a manager or adding someone as a co-manager I recommend just using that tool. You can also add players in the table below that and click send email invite (using the button at the bottom of the page), but this is a quick way to simply add a manager who wants to be in the league, especially to existing teams.
Next you have the divisions tab. IF you have divisions (typically only in H2H leagues) this is where you set them up – it’s a pretty straightforward process.
Schedule
Next the schedule tab. This will look different if your league is a head-to-head league or not. First for a non-head-to-head league you simply put in when the season starts and ends. It defaults to the full season, typically what you want for non-head-to-head leagues, but you can change it.
In head-to-head leagues, you will not only have the schedule tab, but also playoffs, matchups, and consolation bracket(s) tabs. This page is very very important to get set up correctly before the season begins. Once the season starts parts of this page are locked down because changing them can seriously mess up the league and so you need to contact support for help – which they will give, usually very promptly, but it’s easier on everyone to get it right to start.
So first, many head-to-head leagues across sports end the season a week early, or sometimes two, so first make sure your league end date is when you want the final week of playoffs to conclude.
Then you can decide how many of the first weeks of the season you want merged for matchups – in baseball this is usually 2 since the season tends to start more on a Thursday. Then, some leagues like to merge the finals matchup so you can click merge last two weeks if you want that. IF you want all playoff periods to be two weeks do not click this – we’ll do that later.
Finally, select if you want the All-Star break merged (you likely do), and scoring period interval and what day it starts (ie weekly and daily). Then you can decide how many teams you play per period, up to every team playing every other team every period (be it daily/weekly/biweekly etc).
Next, we go to playoffs – if you use them – and turn on use playoffs.
Select the last scoring period – note this is the last week where it will still be regular season, not the first week of playoffs. This is then where you can make all playoff periods two weeks (if you have 5 weeks of playoffs it will make weeks 2-3 and 4-5 merged with week 1 as one week). Then you can set the number of teams, unless you want to enter them manually, and if it reseeds each week. In leagues with divisions, you will also have an option to pick how seeding works – if division winners get top seeds or some other structure. Again – set this up before the season – since once the season starts you will need support to change it to ensure it doesn’t break the league.
Matchups
The matchup tab will show you all of the matchups. If you change the number of teams, add more weeks to the regular seasons, or anything like that, it is on this page that you can regenerate matchups automatically. This is not something you should do once the season starts since it will regenerate them for the past too and change the standings, but is helpful if you decide to be a 14 teamer instead of 12 or 10 instead of 12 or anything of that sort. Finally, this is also where you insert matchups if you have playoffs set to manual.
The last thing on this page is the consolation bracket. IF you want the teams who aren’t in the playoffs, or who get eliminated, to keep playing, this is where you set up those matchups, be it for all teams not in playoffs, or a 3rd place matchup. Just add a new consolation bracket and then you can set up the periods and teams come playoff time.
Player Pool
This page is pretty clear cut – just do you only want players who are signed by major league teams included (which as noted will not include MLB Free agents – so if you did this now, Trevor Story, Kris Bryant, Nick Castellanos, etc would not be in the player pool), do you want minor leaguers included, and you can select what teams you want, typically used in NL- or AL-only leagues (if not the default which includes all). The other option on this page is to lock the player pool. Only do this if you do not want players to be added if they are added to the Fantrax database or, if you have only players signed with MLB teams eligible on, players who sign or are drafted in-season to be added.
Rosters!
This page is very important so we’ll spend the rest of our time here for part 1.
First – you want to set your total roster size. You’ll need to know if this includes minor leaguers and IR players for you. You’ll check boxes for that later, but it will determine the total number. Then you can select total active (so all starters), total bench, and your minors and IL rules. Personally, in many of my dynasty leagues I like the no max on IL and IL doesn’t count toward roster total to be on – but then also turn on the rule we’ll see in part 2 where IL players can’t be added as FAs so that the IL doesn’t become a massive stash list.
Then you can build your roster
Add in the positions you want, the number of each position starting, and if you require a minimum or maximum of those positions (these can be turned on by the checkboxes above the table).
For “Prevent any transaction that would cause a roster to become illegal:” I highly recommend for total roster size only, so that if a move would make a team not have the min active or have an extra reserve it will still process, and then they have to correct it so as to not have an illegal roster, rather than missing out on a claim or trade because of that. When this is set to only you’ll see more claims denied for reasons that will likely just frustrate your managers because they didn’t move someone to the bench before making a claim or something of that sort.
Next there’s a lot of options for IR. I recommend allowing suspended players and Covid players to the IR. In the screenshot above you’ll see I have “IR players count toward total number” on. I generally do NOT have that on, but I do in my leagues in the offseason to just have a total roster since IL eligible is an odd thing in the offseason so this solves that as well as making it so that every team has the same number of players to trade from and one team doesn’t have extra just because they had a lot of injuries in September.
You can then decide what the punishment and restriction is for violating IL rules – be it an illegal roster, a locked roster, or something else, and if minor leaguers count toward the overall roster.
For minor leaguers, if you have a set number of minor league slots (min/max) then you can easily not include those. I tend to keep it more flexible on minor league and bench slots and so do count minor leaguers towards the overall roster size.
Finally – you have some options on minor league eligibility. You can set it simply to – is a player in the minors or not. Or you can use more advanced settings:
Here you can set it so that a player is eligible until they exceed rookie eligibility. Or based on age. Or you can make it so a player is eligible if they haven’t exceeded rookie eligibility OR if they are in real life minors. There are a lot of great options with this. If you use this, in addition to seeing a green flag by players in real life minors, you’ll see a green M next minor eligible players.
Finally, before we leave the important roster page – go to preferences:
Roster preferences
Here you can set what positions players are eligible at (in baseball – this is different by sport).
You can set the minimum for appearances needed this year and/or last year to make a player eligible at a position. I would recommend for most standard leagues to leave “Players are ONLY eligible at their initial Primary position (Beta):” and “Use Fantrax’s default position(s) in addition to any position(s) a player qualifies for based on above criteria” unchecked unless you fully understand what they do by reading the ? and are sure you want that.
We’ll stop there for now – and pick up next week with scoring, trades, salaries, draft settings, and a few other important things to consider for setting up your league!
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