5 Early-Season Fantasy Baseball Strategy Tips For Dynasty Managers

Evaluate Your Team & Your Opponent’s Teams

It’s too early to have any idea of the twists and turns the season will have, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make some high-level assessments about your team. You should already know if you’re trying to win this year, planning on rebuilding or taking a wait-and-see approach. You should also have an idea of what your opponents’ plans are. For instance, has someone traded an injured prospect—think Chase DeLauter (Guardians) or Charlie Condon (Rockies)—for a veteran who is clearly expected to contribute in 2025, such as Rhys Hoskins (Brewers)? In that case, you can make a note that they are “going for it” this year. Or, in the leagues where the FYPD drafts are in reverse order of finish—or where there is incentive to tank—are some of your opponents benching their stars? All of this is information to help you in trades and waiver wire bidding.

For those who have the time (or inclination) to do so, try to understand as many of your league mates’ individual tendencies as possible. One of the more important ways you can do that is to determine which industry outlets they follow for prospects or news and notes. For example, did Rotowire’s James Anderson just release his Top 400 prospects and the highest-ranked available prospect was immediately bid on in the next FAAB period? Or maybe someone in your league is constantly trying to add Geoff Pontes’ favorite players? If so, it’s likely they follow James and Geoff’s work, and you might be able to use that information to your team’s advantage. Another common strategy is knowing which league mate is a diehard fan of his home team. You know, the one whose team is called The Real Bronx Bombers and rosters more Yankees than anyone else.

If You’re Going For It: Depth, Depth & More Depth

If you’re competing to win your league, you must have depth. As unsexy as it is, ensuring that you have some kind of coverage at each position in the case of injuries—and you will be beset by injuries—is absolutely necessary. Spend the time to make sure that you have some kind of contingency for injuries at each position, or at least know the consequences.

In order to understand your vulnerabilities at each position—or where to focus on building depth—take a look at the waiver wire to see what is available at each position. If you had to pick up a catcher, who would it be? If you had to add an outfielder, who would it be? If you needed to get some strikeouts for your pitching, who is available? Knowing whether there are reasonable options available or if it’s an absolute wasteland of potential productivity can help you strategize pickups or help you make trades to prepare for those future possibilities.

As a sidenote, in most dynasty leagues that aren’t specifically SOLDS leagues where, because “holds” provide value, middle relievers have more fantasy value than in traditional roto leagues, middle relievers are often widely available on the wire. This typically means you can get reasonable coverage for pitching ratios if need be. At the same time, in a deeper league, outfield options often dry up. In a 20-team league with five outfielders rostered, that means at least 100 outfielders are rostered at any given time. That usually leaves paltry replacement-level options in case an injury occurs. If that same league is a one-catcher league, it’s possible that the best available catcher on the wire is better than the best available outfielder.

If You’re Rebuilding: Don’t Disengage

The point of dynasty leagues is obviously to win your league and, written into the name itself, create a dynasty that sustains a period of winning. The simplest rule, therefore, is to try to increase the dynasty “value” of your team. This is most clearly exemplified by picking up “the next big thing” prospect who goes from free on the wire to a desired asset. This applies to major leaguers, too. Players who suddenly get full-time playing opportunities—for example, Ryan Bliss (Mariners) or Derek Hill (Marlins) or a potential new closer like Jose Alvarado (Phillies)—have higher dynasty value now than a week ago.

If you’re not competing in the current season, it’s very tempting to tune out and just wait until next year’s FYPD to reshape your team. By doing this, however, you will be missing out on opportunities to help your team increase its value for next year. In order to maximize any chances of sustained success, you have to stay engaged all season, whether that’s by staying up to date on minor league performance to pick up prospects (using RoboScout, of course), following news and injury situations to keep up with playing time situations or pending callups or just tracking which players seem to have increased bat speed or added a new pitch to their arsenal so you can trade for a player at a discount to their “true talent.”

Try to think of a player’s potential perceived value for 2026. For example, Dennis Santana might look like the current closer for the Pirates right now with David Bednar being sent down to the minors, but is it expected that Santana will be the closer in 2026? It is definitely within the realm of outcomes that Santana is no more than a middle reliever in 2026 and should be valued accordingly. This would also apply to, say Jhonkensy Noel of the Guardians. There is a reasonable chance that he “wins” the final outfield spot over Nolan Jones or Johnathan Rodriguez in 2025. But how precarious is it? What happens when DeLauter is once again knocking at the door? Taking a shot on someone like Noel or Jack Suwinski (Pirates) or Griffin Conine (Marlins) might pay off, but you should try as much as possible to understand the precariousness of their future.

Working The Waiver Wire

It’s a well-worn truism that sample sizes need to be large enough to separate “true talent” from random variance. Unfortunately, if you wait in dynasty leagues until a pitcher’s BABIP has stabilized or a hitter’s exit velocity seems to have settled, he’s likely to have already been grabbed in your league.

Ultimately, this means you must take shots on guys before their projections have caught up to their performance. Of course, this will lead to a lot of misses, so you need to try to make the best decisions you can with the imperfect information available. For major leaguers, the key things to look for are changes to playing time or changes to underlying skills. Playing time is straightforward enough and is usually tied to injuries or if a former platoon guy is playing against same-arm pitching.

Evaluating underlying skills is a bit more difficult. For hitting, the key things to look at are changes in exit velocity, launch angles, contact rates, chase rates and pull tendencies. Knowing whether these changes are “real” or just variance is even more difficult and may require some guess work. But by looking at how significant the change seems to be, you can begin to paint a clearer picture.. For example, if a hitter with a career 30% strikeout rate is only striking out at a 12% rate for the past two weeks, and a two-week moving average graph of his strikeout rate shows he has never had a strikeout rate that low, it would tend to mean that something fundamental has occurred. Sometimes you might have to go on subjective information to validate that these are “real” changes—Kristian Campbell (Red Sox) doing bat speed training, for example—but information can often be found, all the same.

For pitchers, velocity gains are the easiest to identify and determine if there are new thresholds being attained. Adding a pitch—which can be confirmed by looking at the pitcher’s Baseball Savant player page—is another one that would suggest a real change. Of course, merely adding a pitch doesn’t guarantee improvements.

Even this early in the season, take some shots at some big performances. Kyle Karros (Rockies) hit two home runs in his first game. Maybe he’s unlocked something—grab him and find out. Now, don’t go and drop Kevin McGonigle (Tigers) to do it, but if you have one or two spots to churn, it’s definitely worth a gamble. If it doesn’t work out, in a couple weeks there will be someone else to drop him for and repeat the process. I don’t know about you, but I always wish I have more spots available to churn. I rarely find myself in the position where I have empty spots on my roster and don’t have anyone on my watchlist to take a flier on.

Trading

We could have an entire article just on the art and science of making trades but for now, we will highlight a few universal(ish) truisms.

It Takes Two To Tango

The biggest mistake I’ve seen in trade offers is an imbalance in the offer. Obviously, an offer of Mike Clevinger (White Sox) for Aaron Judge is a terrible offer. But what about Elly De La Cruz for Judge? Well, if the manager with Judge already has Gunnar Henderson and Bobby Witt Jr., it’s a bad offer, too. In order to set up a trade for success, you need to know what your corresponding trade partner needs and is looking for. If they’re rebuilding, they likely won’t want Justin Verlander. If they’re competing, you probably shouldn’t offer Jesus Made (Brewers) for Rafael Devers, especially if it leaves their roster with a hole in it. If someone has a shortstop in their middle infield spot and another shortstop in their utility spot, they do not want to be offered a shortstop.

Injured Players

Trading for injured players is a bit of a sensitive area. If a key player on a team fighting for the pennant goes down with injury, that’s an opportunity to perhaps make a trade. But it takes some nuance. No one who just found out that their ace pitcher may need to get Tommy John surgery responds well to receiving an immediate low-ball offer. However, in a few days after the dust has settled a little bit, you can try inquiring about whether they are interested in trading their pitcher for some backfill reinforcements. Try to put yourself in the shoes of the other league manager and think of what they’d be looking for or, just as importantly, what they wouldn’t want to receive.

Trade Block

Another way to get trades going is simply to update your trade block or inquire with your league mate about players they have just put on their block. With the latter, if your league mate puts a player on the trading block, they are likely going to get an immediate bunch of inquiries from the rest of the league. Considering they have just actively kicked off the process and are looking for some initial negotiations, they are much more likely to trade in the immediate near term. Sometimes, you can use the trade block to gauge player value. If you’re not sure what the value of one of your players is, put him on the trade block and you may quickly get an idea based on the offers or lack thereof.

Final Thoughts

While some of the above is advice that pertains to your dynasty league in general, I tried to focus it on what to do in the early going of the season.

As the season progresses, different tactics will make more sense and become more viable. For example, as the short-season minor leagues open, different prospects and prospect archetypes become targets, often requiring different waiver wire strategies. At the time of the major league draft in July, which is hugely informative for next season’s FYPD, new information comes to light. When BA updates our Top 30s midseason, new information becomes widespread. And finally, as your dynasty league’s trade deadline (or waiver wire pick up deadline) approaches, different strategies and tactics emerge.

We will check in again at various stages later in the season to talk about these strategies to help you win your dynasty leagues, so stay tuned.