Rotisserie baseball was born in 1980 among a group of friends in New York City. A simple pastime has exploded into a national phenomenon since then with as many as 7 million participants on a yearly basis. The game allows fans to "draft" real major league players onto a team, and compete against fellow owners based on select statistics accrued by the players on their roster.
The Draft
There are two common ways to filling out a rotisserie baseball roster. The first is a draft. Teams are put in a random selection order and select players one at a time until each squad has a full roster, usually 25 players. When the first round of a draft is finished, the order in which teams pick is reversed, and repeated for every round.
The second way is by a live auction. Teams are assigned a maximum amount of real or imaginary money to spend on players. As each player's name is called, teams bid on the player. Highest bid acquires the player in question.
Point-Scoring System
Rotisserie leagues keep score either through cumulative statistics or head-to-head match-ups. Cumulative statistics keep track of each team's totals in a number of categories throughout the year. If there are 10 teams in a league, the squad with the highest total in each category receives 10 points, the second-highest total nine points and so on. Common statistical categories include runs, home runs, batting average, RBI, wins, strikeouts, saves and earned-run average.
In head-to-head play, the statistics are still tallied, but on a week-to-week basis. A seven-day period marks a match-up between two teams in a league. Whichever squad tallies the highest total in each category wins that category, and whichever team has the most categories wins the week.
Roster Moves
Just like in real baseball, team owners can make a variety of roster moves throughout the course of a season to account for bad performances, injury or categories in which their squads are lacking. In most leagues, players dropped by one team can be added by another after a small waiting time. Players not included in the original draft or auction can be added as well.Trades are also a part of the fantasy realm. In many leagues, owners install a veto power to prevent collusion between owners. Some roto leagues are known as "keeper" leagues. Their rules state that owners can choose to keep up to five players from one season to the next, giving the game more of a franchise feel to it.
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