Which Fantasy Baseball Website is Best?

There is a wide range of fantasy baseball players out there. Some only play redraft leagues with their coworkers and some play serious year-round dynasty leagues with their college buddies. So also there are a very wide range of fantasy baseball websites available to host your league. The four main websites that get the most traffic are ESPN, Yahoo, CBS, and Fantrax.

You would think ESPN would be the leader of the pack as it is probably the most popular sports network in the world. Its website however is laden down with an overabundance of scrollable sidebars and links to their own articles, most of which are Insider-Only anyway. The fantasy dashboard that they use takes a little bit of time to get used to. The individual team lineup page is useful as it includes relevant information such as start percentages and ownership change percentages shown right on the starting lineup and can be helpful when contemplating roster changes. However cycling through the standings, matchups, and statistical categories can be cumbersome. Sometimes it’s nearly impossible to find what you’re looking for even though you think it might be one of the more basic things to find. My guess is its the odd series of menus on each page that cause this confusion.  I must say after using it multiple times ESPN is probably my least favorite site to use.

Yahoo seems like it might be the most popular of the websites. It’s very user-friendly, it’s free, and very rarely are there problems with their site. The individual team pages are very easy to use and to swap out players on those starting lineup. The one downfall for Yahoo is the player database is not very deep relative to the other sites. Very often they do not have some of the most popular minor-league players in their player system. For example last year Yuliesky Gurriel wasn’t listed in their players list until after he made his debut. This severely limits Yahoo’s usefulness for keeper and dynasty league players. In recent years Yahoo has added a lot of cool functions that have improved their site including a fairly comprehensive system for keeper leagues. Another big plus for me personally is the ability to easily link a league with previous years so you can scroll through the past league history, for those who play with the same group year after year.

CBS might be one of the more useful sites as far as functionality but it is both ugly and expensive. A lot of the functions that keeper and dynasty leagues use cost money, which is to be expected. It has a very deep player pool and does allow you to use contracts for some of the more complicated leagues out there.

Fantrax is one of the newer sites out there available for fantasy baseball players. The biggest plus for Fantrax is that it has the most customization available, by far. The biggest downside for Fantrax is that it can get very complicated for commissioners to set up their leagues. If you are starting a new league on their site you might want to block out some time because with all the customization available comes a lot of options to wade through. However, its worth mentioning they do have some options to simplify this process for those in the most basic of leagues. I will say the more you use Fantrax the easier it is to find your way around and you can appreciate how in-depth they are. Of all the sites they are probably the most responsive to user complaints or questions, as would be expected for a smaller/lesser know website.

As far as mobile apps go Fantrax might be the worst out of the group. Their app is getting phased out and they will be going with their mobile site for the time being. Yahoo has updated their fantasy app in the last year or so and it is incredibly useful and easy to find your way around your league. Looking up and making a waiver claim can take as little as 20 seconds (I know as I’ve raced my coworkers upon the news of the latest top prospect callup). The ESPN app is also very useful however sometimes I find myself unable to find what I’m looking for.

All in all I would say the site to use would depend on what type of league you’re hosting. If you are just doing a redraft league with your coworkers and some members of your league might not be as committed to the fantasy league is everyone else then I would suggest Yahoo Fantasy Baseball as it is the most user-friendly and offers plenty of customization for the average fantasy player. If you are the type that likes to play in serious dynasty leagues I would recommend using Fantrax or CBS (worth noting if you are a serious player you probably already know this all). Both of these options will cost you money but can offer quite of bit of customization to fit almost any need.