If you have never played in a draft and hold a league, they are 50-round drafts where you are stuck with your drafted team the entire season. That means no waiver wire pickups or FAAB.
Draft and hold leagues have become more and more popular each year because they allow you to draft and not worry about FAAB as well as being a great way for people to learn the player pool for early drafters before your more important leagues later in draft season.
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Fantasy Baseball Draft & Hold Strategies
Roster Construction
Rosters for draft and hold leagues are similar to your standard leagues with very large benches. Typically, they look like this:
- 2 Catchers
- 1B
- 2B
- SS
- 3B
- CI
- MI
- 5 Outfielders
- Utility
- 9 Pitchers
- 27 Bench Spots
While there are many ways to construct your roster, the most common and best way is to roster 3-4 catchers, 6-8 corner infielders (1B and 3B), 6-8 middle infielders (2B and SS), 10-12 outfielders and 21-24 pitchers with a 2/1 split between starting pitchers versus relief pitchers.
Category Targets
It is important in draft and hold leagues to build a balanced roster, especially if you play in a format like the National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC), which has an overall contest because being weak in any particular category puts you too far behind in points to be competitive in the overall.
If you are less concerned with the overall or in a format that does not have one, you can be more imbalanced, but it is very risky because you can’t pivot the way you would in a league with picks up when injuries hit. Here are the 80 percentile category targets from the 2024 NFBC Draft Champions contest, which can give you a better idea of what you should be shooting for.
Hitters
Runs | HR | RBI | SB | AVG |
1037 | 289 | 999 | 186 | .255 |
Pitchers
ERA | WHIP | Wins | Saves | Ks |
3.57 | 1.16 | 89 | 72 | 1382 |
Risk Management
Typically, this type of section would be towards the back of an article, but I think it is one of the most important aspects beginners to the format (and some more seasoned players) don’t realize. Draft and hold leagues are battles of attrition.
The most successful teams are ones that rack up at-bats and innings pitched. Of course, they need to upside-down their teams, but they often look a lot more boring than you would expect. This is because injuries are going to happen you would not expect coming into the season. Despite rostering 50 players for 23 spots, getting hit by a rash of injuries can be disastrous.
This is why when drafting you should be very conscious about how much risk you take on from individual players. Luis Robert Jr. has a ton of upside if he stays healthy, but that is a big if. If you get hit by a couple of random outfield injuries at the same time Robert gets hurt, you could be starting a player who isn’t playing much or at all, making it difficult to rack up at-bats you need to be competitive.
The same can be said for prospects. Prospects are really fun to gamble on, but if you do not know when they will arrive and you get hit by early injuries, that can leave you in a tough spot. Even when prospects come up, there is no guarantee you will want to play them if they struggle. How many people wanted Jackson Holliday or Evan Carter on their rosters after they struggled early?
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take risks on prospects or injury-prone players. These players are often underpriced because of their risk, which is why people are attracted to them. What you don’t want to do is compound the risk. What often happens when people draft risky players is they add to that risk by adding a bunch more later.
If you have favorite high-risk/high-reward players, take them, but don’t draft too many. I will draft five lottery ticket-type players in a 50-round draft. So, if I want three prospects, I make sure I don’t take more than two injury-risk players. I also prefer to make sure I am taking them at different points in the draft.
If you want Royce Lewis early then drafting a pitcher like Tyler Glasnow, who also goes early and has struggled with health, is a bad idea. What I will not do is draft players who are already injured to start the season, especially pitchers returning from Tommy John surgery.
Multi-Positional Players
One of the ways to mitigate risk in draft and hold leagues is to target hitters who have eligibility at multiple positions. This allows you to cover more spots in case you are hit by injuries. I especially like players who have eligibility in the infield and the outfield at the same time or at a corner infield position and a middle infield position at the same time.
I also look for players who may pick up eligibility during the season, especially early on. For example, Colt Keith is a second baseman only to start the season, but he will add first baseman eligibility early on in the season, making him a lot more valuable. As the season wears on and injuries pile up, players who can move around your lineup are very helpful.
Closers
Unlike your traditional fantasy league, closers are expensive in draft and hold leagues. This is in large part because you can’t go get the next guy off the waiver wire when someone goes down or loses his job like you would in FAAB leagues.
This makes it important to roster closers that you feel pretty confident are not going to lose their jobs. It also makes it a viable strategy to handcuff the closers you do draft with their potential backup. As the draft gets into later rounds, take shots on guys with good skills and a potential road to the job because the closer in front of them is risky, a potential trade candidate or has an injury past.
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