Yahoo! has started taking free registrations for its fantasy baseball leagues. MLB.com starts on February 16, and I’m assuming that’s free too.

In fantasy baseball games, “teams” are drafted from the list of baseball players available on draft day. Each team has the same number of people allowed on a team. Only one team can “own” any certain player. Baseball players can be traded among teams or hired and fired, to increase the statistical performance of the team.

There are two major formats to fantasy baseball: rotisserie, and head to head. The “commissioner” of a league determines what statistics will be used in a season to score points: batting average, home runs, steals, pitching wins, earned run average, strike outs, and so forth.

In a rotisserie league, you take the teams and rank them in each stat category. The team that has the most steals and the least home runs in a 12-team league during the course of the season gets 12 points for steals and 1 for homers. Summing up all the points, one then sees who has the “best” team. In a head-to-head league, two teams total up their performance in the given statistical categories for the week, and they are awarded a win, loss, or tie for each category. At the end of the season there is often a playoff of the top four or six teams. I prefer the head-to-head format, because a team that has had a bad season can enjoy beating a good team having a bad week.

Prizes? Only your honor in a free league. :)

Fantasy baseball requires more effort than fantasy football, changing lineups daily or every other day to pick the people who will earn the most points. Given that there are a lot more real baseball games (162) than football games (16), the pay-for options like live statistics tracking become more economical per game.

Fantasy sports have a major coolness factor in that one learns about players that they don’t normally care about. I cheer for the Royals, but maybe I end up cheering for Johan Santana of the Twins if he’s pitching that night.

Would anybody be interested in participating in a fantasy baseball league?