Fantasy 101

Should go without saying if your playing a daily fantasy game you need to make sure you draft a team that actually takes the field. There is nothing worse than starting a player just to find him hurt or riding the pine. I see it happen more often than it should. Don't end up handicapping yourself before the game even begins. With a little research you can avoid some of these pit falls.

Being MLB is the only sport in full swing out of the big 4, let say we drafted a fantasy baseball team. There are 2 key things you need to manage before the start of your daily game. First, you want to be sure your players are going to be in the starting line up and secondly, the weather.

The weather is pretty self explanatory. If there is no game, you get no points. Last thing you want to do is have a player in your lineup and then have the game called or postponed. If it is predicted to rain cats and dogs all day at Wrigley, it may not be the best idea to have any Cubs or their opponents players in your lineup. Manage the weather risk. It is simple enough to go to weather.com and check the forecast for game time.

Be sure to check the injury reports. There easy to find. MLB, ESPN, USA Today, Yahoo Sports , they all have them, there all the same. The best bet is to just to go to MLB.com and get it straight from the horses mouth. Word of warning. While the IR's are good for finding players on the DL, it can be kind of tricky for them players that are 50 / 50, probable, or a game time decision.

Sometimes the easy road is to checking the lineups cards for the days MLB games. See which players are plug into where on the battering order of the starting line up. There are various sites offer this. My main digs for starting lineup is rotowire.com. It has all you Fantasy baseball needs on one page. Starting lineups, player updates and a 6 hour weather window and radar link for each game.