There are two main ways of holding the draft. The first is by random selection—if there are ten teams in the draft, each owner puts his or her name into a hat, and one person starts picking out names. The first name picked gets the first pick in the draft. This continues until the last name is picked, and then that person gets to pick. After all ten owners select a player for their team, the first round of the draft is completed and the second round begins. In the second round, teams pick in a reverse order from the first round. So the last owner in the first round picks first in the second round. These rounds continue until all the rosters are filled.

The second way to draft a team is through an auction. Each owner is given a certain amount of fictitious money. The auctioneer starts with the best players of the previous year, and the owners bid for him. Whoever has the highest bid wins the player, and has that amount of money subtracted from his total. The auction continues until every roster is full, or until everybody runs out of money.

The Scoring
To win in fantasy baseball, the owner must put together a team of the best players possible. There are three different ways of scoring the league. The Sporting News’ fantasy baseball page explains the differences between rotisserie, cumulative, and head-to-head scoring. http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/baseball/fullseason/dnt/about/scoring_faq.html

“In Rotisserie Scoring, owners are awarded points by ranking them against the other teams in the league. For example, assume there are 12 teams in the league. At the end of the day, the manager who has the most RBI for the season gets 12 points for RBI, the manager who has the 2nd most RBI gets 11 points, etc. Each manager's awarded points are summed up to arrive at one overall point value. The manager with the highest point total is in first place, etc.

In Cumulative Scoring, managers are awarded points for each statistical category that the league tracks. For example, assume that the league awards 2 points per RBI. At the end of the day, the manager's total RBI for the day is multiplied by 2 to arrive at his subtotal for RBI. Other subtotals are similarly calculated depending upon the league's settings. The subtotals for all stats are summed up to arrive at the daily point total, which is added to their season total to date. The manager with the most overall points is in first place, etc.

In Head-to-Head Scoring, managers compete against another manager every week. Wins are awarded for each statistical category in the league setup, based on team weekly stats accumulation. Manager that wins the most categories, wins that weekly matchup. Weekly matchups run from Monday to Sunday each week of the season.”

“Keeper” Leagues
A keeper league is one in which team owners are allowed to keep their players from the previous year. This allows an owner to build upon the success of the previous year by keeping the best players, the standouts, and the prospects.

Trades
Like in professional baseball, team owners are allowed to trade players with each other. If one team has an abundance of hitters and not enough pitching, the owner can trade away a hitter for a pitcher to make both teams better.

Free Agency
After the draft, there will still be many players (often numbering in the hundreds) who were not drafted by any team. These players are considered to be free agents, and may be picked up by any team during the year.

There are a number of reasons to pick up a free agent. For example, if one of the players on a team’s roster gets injured and won’t play for the rest of the year, the owner can drop the injured player and pick up a free agent to replace him. Or if a player is not performing well, and an undrafted free agent is tearing up the basepaths, that is another reason to drop a player for a free agent.

Game play
To get points (or win statistical categories, in head-to-head matchups), your team must do better than the other teams in a number of categories. Typically, eight categories are used—four hitting and four pitching categories. These are:

For hitters:
Home runs
RBIs
Team Batting Average (total team hits divided by total at bats)
Stolen Bases
Runs

For pitchers:
Wins
Saves
Team ERA (total earned runs divided by total innings pitched by your team, multiplied by 9)
Team WHIP (total hits plus total walks allowed, divided by total team innings pitched)
Strikeouts

Playoffs
Most leagues will separate their season into two parts: the regular season and the playoffs. To win a league, a team must do well enough in the regular season to make it into the fantasy playoffs, and then win the playoffs.

The playoffs occur towards the end of the regular baseball season. They aren’t held during the real baseball playoffs, because many professional teams (and thus players in the fantasy game) won’t be playing.

Generally, there will be a set number of teams who enter the fantasy playoffs. In a 12 person league, there may be six teams in a three-round playoff, seeded by their regular season record. The first and second seeds will have a “bye,” meaning they automatically advance to the next round. The third seed will play the sixth seed, and the fourth will play the fifth. In the second round, the first seed will play the winner of the 4/5 game, and the second seed will play the winner of the 3/6 game. The winner of those two games will play head-to-head to determine the league’s champion for the year.