Everything to Know About Dynasty Fantasy Baseball (2024)

Want to learn more about fantasy baseball dynasty leagues? Then you’ve come to the right spot. Over the last half-decade or so, dynasty leagues have been skyrocketing in popularity.

This comes as no surprise to yours truly, who has been playing in and loving keeper and dynasty leagues for many years now. My first ever keeper-dynasty league was a league I started in high school with some friends back in 2006, and it’s still going to this day nearly two decades later.

Redraft leagues definitely have their appeal, but dynasty leagues have always been my favorite. These are leagues where you can be making moves or planning 365 days a year with very minimal downtime, even in the dogdays of the MLB offseason.

Check out our introduction to fantasy baseball!

What Are Fantasy Baseball Dynasty Leagues?

For those who are just getting into dynasty leagues or are interested in doing so, these are a whole different animal than redraft leagues. Dynasty leagues are the closest format we have in the fantasy baseball world to being a real-life baseball general manager. Each dynasty league could go on for decades if run correctly. Just look at my home league above that is now entering year 18 that we started as sophomores in high school.

Dynasty leagues are year-round. You won’t be making moves every day obviously, but trades can happen all throughout the offseason as you prepare for offseason drafts or the following season. Some dynasty leagues will keep every single player on the roster from the previous season, while others will have to trim down to a certain amount and have an off-season draft.

In general, all dynasty leagues will have at least a first-year player draft so that all the recent MLB draftees and international signings can be incorporated into your league. This is usually where the roster cutdown happens with any other players cut added into the available draft pool. So, overall, expect to retain at least 80% of your roster the following season, which basically mirrors MLB teams.

Every move you make doesn’t just impact your roster for one season. You always need to be thinking about the future just as much as the present and how your moves could positively or negatively impact your roster in future seasons.

That’s one of the most beautiful aspects of dynasty leagues, though. There’s always the next season to build toward and look forward to. If you fall out of contention one year, you can begin planning for the next year and exploring trade options to set your team up better for the future.

Types of Dynasty Leagues for Fantasy Baseball

There are many different types of dynasty baseball leagues. Here are some of the more common formats:

Keep Forever (No Round Attachment)

This is probably the most common format. This format allows you to keep a set number of players for as long as you want. If you want to hold Ronald Acuña Jr until the end of time (or the end of his career), you can absolutely do so.

Keep with Round Attachments

In this format, where you draft each player in the initial draft will stay attached to them moving forward. Then at the end of each year, you’ll have the option to keep each player at their round value and then lose a pick in that particular round.

Usually, the round value goes up a certain amount each year, so players get more and more expensive to the point where you don’t believe they’re worth that round value anymore and throw them back in the player pool to be drafted in your league’s offseason draft. This also creates some tough choices as you’ll often have to decide between keeping a better player at a higher cost or a lesser talent that has a better price point.

For example, a decision you might have to make is whether to keep Randy Arozarena at a third-round price tag or Seiya Suzuki at a 12th. In general, with no rounds attached, you’d likely keep Arozarena. However, Suzuki might be the better play for you as he’s nine rounds cheaper and you lose a 12th-round pick instead of a third.

Contracts

In this format, you’ll bid on players and have them assigned to contracts. Each team will have a salary cap to stay under and players will have certain values attached to them that resemble their contracts. Sometimes, these contracts will mirror MLB contracts that the players actually have in real life.

There are other varying formats, but these represent the most popular choices.

Finding a League

The easiest way to dip your toes into the dynasty baseball world is to start one with your friends or people you’ve already shared a redraft league with. If you do start one with people you know, regardless of whether you’re the commissioner or not, I would recommend deciding on league details as a group. That makes the first year of the league go as smoothly as possible with minimal hiccups.

If you don’t have a group of friends to start one with, I’d recommend joining my Discord (link in my Twitter bio) or Chris Clegg’s (link in his bio). You can usually find people posting about league openings or wanting to start new leagues in there.

Another option is to check with @DynastyOneStop (Nathan) on Twitter/X. He runs dozens of leagues and is always starting new ones or posting about openings in current leagues.

Dynasty Fantasy Baseball: Resources and Best Analysts for Help

During my time in the industry, I’ve been fortunate enough to work with, collaborate with and get to know many extremely talented, hard-working and knowledgeable individuals who provide a wide array of content to help dynasty league players.

Obviously, I hope you check out my written work here, my podcast (The Toolshed) and my Patreon along with my dynasty and prospect rankings, but here are other resources to check out that can help you succeed and have fun while playing dynasty fantasy baseball.

Chris Clegg (@RotoClegg) – The Dynasty Dugout, The Toolshed Podcast
Chris Welsh (@IsItTheWelsh) – In This League, Prospect One Podcast, FantasyPros
James Anderson (@RealJRAnderson) – Rotowire
Michael Halpern (@ImaginaryBrickWall) – Imaginary Brick Wall Patreon
Shelly Verougstraete (@ShellyV_643) – RotoWorld, BaseballHQ
Chris Blessing (@C_Blessing) – Baseball HQ, The Eyes Have It Podcast
Jesse Roche (@jaroche6) – Baseball Prospectus, TINO Podcast
Zac Beck (@UpperBeck) – The Dynasty Dugout (Points Leagues work)
Lucas Biery (@LucasBiery33) – FTN Fantasy, DC Dynasty
Jake Kucheck (@TheSFGiantsGuy) – FTN Fantasy
Tristan Cockcroft (@Sultanofstat) — ESPN

I’d recommend utilizing various analysts and sites to help you gain as much info as possible. Use their various rankings, podcasts and content to assist in formulating your own decisions on who you should target/avoid, strategies, etc. Most of the names and sites above produce some form of prospect or dynasty rankings content that can help along with written content and podcasts.

Rankings Are a Good Start

When beginning your preparation or during your league’s initial draft, dynasty rankings are a great place to start. Several of the names above, me included, produce dynasty rankings that you can find and work off of. But remember, all dynasty rankings are different and might not fully line up with your league settings. Use these rankings and adjust accordingly to your league.

Check out Vlad Sedler’s free fantasy baseball rankings for a look at the 2024 season.

Initial Draft Strategies

The first piece of advice that I always stress is to know your league setup and structure. This seems weird to say, but you’d be surprised how many people enter their draft unprepared and have a poor draft because of it. This can cause poor performance during the first season and set you up for a long first few years of the league.

There are three main strategies in the initial draft for a dynasty league startup draft.

Win-Now

For the general public, this is the most popular strategy. Who doesn’t want to win right away, right? However, given that this is the most popular strategy, there’s a strong chance that many others in your draft are attacking their picks the same way you are. This can sometimes lead to you sacrificing too much future value in your selections as you chase down present value.

This is my second most-used strategy personally and there have been drafts where I’ve quickly pivoted to a win soon strategy after analyzing the draft room and seeing a trend of many going with the win-now method. But don’t get me wrong, this strategy is the best one for building a championship contender right away and can be maintained long-term if you’re astute at trading and finding/acquiring prospect talent as well through the year.

And remember, no league is guaranteed to last a decade or longer. Some leagues will fold after just a few seasons, so trying to win-now is never a bad idea.

Win-Soon

If I had to venture a guess, this is the strategy I use the most often in a startup draft. If done properly, this strategy can make you competitive in year one and a true championship contender as soon as the second season.

With this strategy, I recommend layering your dynasty roster. What the bleep do I mean by that? Well, there are four sets of players in dynasty leagues: older MLB (Nolan Arenado/Mike Trout), younger MLB (Luis Robert/Randy Arozarena), near-ready prospects (Colt Keith/Coby Mayo) and long-term prospects (Max Clark/Rayner Arias).

For the most part, you’ll stick with the latter three groupings in this strategy as many in the “win-now” strategy will be targeting the older and younger MLB pieces. I’d recommend trying to get a core set of players/prospects from the latter three groupings. This way, once your near-ready prospects are called up and starting to contribute, your long-term prospects will be getting closer to being ready and you can start grabbing more long-term prospect plays.

Win-Later

This is the path I recommend the least, but it can work if executed properly. In the win-later approach, you’re 100% ignoring pretty much any MLB player over the age of 25 or so and strictly focusing on young MLB players and making the best prospect roster you can.

Within this approach there are two sub-approaches that can be deployed. First, you hold most or all of your prospects and hope they turn into fantasy stars and help you build a juggernaut team in a few years.

Or sub-strategy No. 2 where you use these prospects as trade capital to acquire MLB pieces and strengthen/quicken your contending window. This strategy was sometimes used and usually always executed correctly by Ian Kahn (Formerly of the Athletic), who is one of the best dynasty players in the world. If done correctly, this can be an effective strategy, but you need to fully commit to this strategy for it to work.

More Dynasty Baseball Advice

Hopefully this Dynasty 101 guide was helpful for any of you looking to start playing dynasty fantasy baseball. This is an exciting format and one that has gained popularity in spades over the last several years. If you have any further questions or want to chat more, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter/X (@EricCross04) or join my Patreon/discord where we chat fantasy baseball and dynasty baseball year-round!

Cheers, and may all your dynasty teams be dominant.