Fantasy Baseball: 10 Reasons Fantasy Baseball Is Better Than Fantasy Football

Fantasy Baseball.

My mom's least favorite phrase. I'm pretty sure it ruined my entire childhood. I sat on the computer for days at a time, plowing through mock draft after mock draft trying to find that one sleeper, that one potential rookie call-up who would put me over the top.

By the way, when I say "ruined my childhood," I mean it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Aside from the births of my niece and nephew, and possibly my Bar Mitzvah, playing Fantasy Baseball as a teenager was probably the greatest time of my life.

It just felt so good.

Winning.

All the time.

Now, my friends might say that I didn't always win, and they are right. But I won a lot. It's not like I would be sitting in front of my computer refreshing the Yahoo box scores until my hand turned blue—Oh wait, yea I was. I was totally, completely, undeniably obsessed.

And then along came Fantasy Football. I know, I know, it was there the whole time. But for some reason, I started playing Fantasy Baseball first.

I think it was at Sandlot.com. Then to Yahoo and then, finally, to ESPN (free stat updates? I'm in!).

Either way, somewhere along the way came Fantasy Football, and it left a sour taste in my mouth. I didn't like it as much. There was something missing.

Folks, my top-10 reasons why Fantasy Baseball is better than Fantasy Football.

10. Injuries Play Way Too Big of a Role in Fantasy Football

Yes, that is the holy Tom Brady playing golf.

Why?

Well, that is a good question. Why don't you go ask former Chiefs safety, Bernard Pollard?

Despite the absurdity of the NFL not doing enough to protect their quarterbacks from devastating knee injuries, these are the injuries that destroy Fantasy Football seasons.

In Fantasy Baseball, if you are drafting hitters, you can assume, with relative certainty, that they will play more than 75 percent of the games that season. Obviously, drafting pitchers is a different story, but it is extremely rare for a Fantasy Baseball teams' best player to be a pitcher.

And if you draft a pitcher first, you probably deserve the injury.

Still, I can't even describe how ridiculously frustrating it is to use your No. 1 pick on Tom Brady, and then half a quarter into the first game of the year, his season is over.

Enjoy Byron Leftwich.

With so few players on your roster, Fantasy Football teams are way too prone to the crushing season-ending injuries that strike every year.

In Fantasy Baseball, you are only likely to lose a pitcher or two along your chase for a title.

9. More Players in Fantasy Baseball Make the Draft All the More Enjoyable

Can you count how many players are in this picture?

I can see 14.

Do you know how many will be drafted onto a Fantasy Football team?

One.

In Fantasy Football, only about three or four of the 22 players on the field on a given play will actually be on a Fantasy Football roster.

That is ludicrous!

In Fantasy Baseball, almost 75 percent of the players on the field at a given time will be on a Fantasy Baseball roster. Everyone from the ninth to the clean-up hitter, the staff ace to the closer. Everyone matters.

Obviously, one of the highlights of owning a Fantasy team in any sport, is the draft.

You order a bunch of chicken wings and sodas, chips and salsa, get together with your best friends, and just straight rip on each other for three solid hours. Everyone has a great time, except for the moron who keeps drafting players who are already taken.

Those three hours are glorious, and they can very easily be the last time half of the managers in the league actually check their team. Three hours. But only in Fantasy Baseball.

In Fantasy Football? Maybe an hour and a half.

Two words: weak sauce.

8. Fantasy Football Players Go to Waste on Bad Teams

It's something that bothers all of us.

It's the fourth round of your Fantasy Football draft, and Larry Fitzgerald, the best receiver in the world, is still on the board.

And why?

Because we all know not to take a guy whose quarterback sucks. Sorry Derek Anderson, John Skelton and Max Hall, but it's true. They are just awful, pitiful, garbage, whatever you want to call them.

Fitzgerald, as a result, is left to wander around aimlessly wondering what the hell happened. Despite not losing a millisecond of speed, an ounce of weight or a sliver of talent, Fitzy's TD totals dropped from 13 in 2009 to a measly 6 in 2010.

Pathetic.

In Fantasy Baseball, no matter how bad your team is, your individual effort can basically stand alone (I say basically, because Adrian Gonzalez has been in hibernation for five years, and now we see what happens when you leave Petco Park). There are a few exceptions, but for the most part, if you are a great hitter, your numbers will reflect that.

Will your RBI's be higher on the Yankees than the Astros? Of course.

But it is more likely that you will find talent trumps team. For example, the 2007 Florida Marlins finished the season 20 games under .500; Their superstar Hanley Ramirez finished with 125 runs, 29 HRs, 81 RBI, 51 steals and a .332 batting average.

Case closed (and if you don't think I gave football a fair chance, name me one top-five player who played on a team with a terrible QB in the last five years).

7. The Lockout

This is a cheap reason, but come on!

A lockout!

Now!

WHY!

This is the most lucrative league in the whole world.

Nine. Billion. Dollars.

You are leaving $9 billion on the table you jerks. Get a deal worked out so we can play. Enough is enough, the time is now.

Luckily for Fantasy Baseball players, there is no lockout to worry about.

Fantasy Football players?

You better hope and pray, or we may have to use one of Rick Reilly's ideas.

6. The Fantasy Baseball Season Is a Lot Longer Than the Fantasy Football Season

Simple math.

Would I rather be engrossed in a ridiculous amount of meaningless stats for three months or six months?

Six months, obviously.

We play Fantasy sports because we love it. Unfortunately, Fantasy Football seems to be more like a bridge from one Fantasy Baseball season to the next, as opposed to its own season.

Three months is minuscule.

I need to be entrenched for no shorter than five months in order for it to be considered a real Fantasy season. In Fantasy Football, by the time I get all my analysis and pre-draft research done, the season is already over!

The only time a baseball field isn't used for baseball is when it's freezing outside and the NHL Winter Classic is in town.

Football? It's used for soccer games, concerts, scholastic athletics and a whole lot more of just total boring garbage.

Give me six months of Fantasy Baseball all day.

5. Fantasy Baseball's Standard Settings Are Infinitely More Effective

No receptions?

Are you kidding me?

How is this rule still debated? Receptions must be added to standard league settings. It isn't even a question in my mind. You mean to tell me that Wes Welker should be punished for not being a red-zone target, when guys like Rob Gronkowski and BenJarvis Green-Ellis get rewarded for TD's that are only made possible because of Welker's receptions (to get them downfield)?

Ridiculous.

Get me when you learn how to make the rules fair for all players.

Welker lead the league with 123 receptions for 1,348 receiving yards in only 14 games played (in 09'), but he only scored 12th in Fantasy Football's top receivers that year?

Give me a break.

Fix the damn rules. Receptions matter.

4. Fantasy Baseball Has Minor League Players Waiting for Their Call-Up

Is there anything more exciting then the rush to the computer to pick up the "next best thing?"

You know what I'm talking about.

Best example of all time?

Ryan Braun. He came into the league in June, and then went on to massacre everybody. It was inspiring as hell for me, because I was the lucky bastard who picked him up. Everyone else? They cried until the bitter end.

Look at these gorgeous numbers:

91 runs, 34 HRs, 97 RBI, 15 steals, .324 avg (in only 451 ABs!)

That, my friends, is a Fantasy Baseball owner's dream. Amazing.

Of course, you could always play Fantasy Football, where the only players who join the season in progress are guys coming back from season-ending injuries the year before.

Doesn't even compare.

September call-ups can win you a championship, and Fantasy Football has nothing even close to it.

3. Fantasy Baseball Stats Are More Advanced, and Therefore More Fun

Damn straight that's Billy Beane.

Forget about real-life baseball, Beane's additions to the Fantasy world are life altering.

The advanced metrics that are involved in baseball are just light years ahead of whatever advanced metrics they have in football.

Targets. Seriously? That's considered an "advanced metric" in football?

Thank you Billy Beane, for not only making us smarter, but for bringing about game changing statistics like BABIP, VORP and the easy, but extremely useful, OPS.

Plowing through these statistics might make your brain bleed, but hell, if it gives you a leg up on your competition, you better be using it.

There is a stat that is used in all sports that I find extremely useful, but especially in baseball.

It is called "split stats," and is is what I consider to be maybe the most important stat in any pitching decision in Fantasy Baseball. Seeing how well a pitcher pitches at home and on the road, and against certain teams, it gives you a higher potential of choosing the right pitchers to start that week.

Regardless, until Fantasy Football gives us something more interesting than targets, I'm going to be sticking to baseball.

2. When You Are Bored as Hell in the Summer, Fantasy Baseball Is Always There

I don't know about the rest of America, but I get bored so quickly in the summer.

There is no school.

There are no tests.

You work, you don't work, you bum around with your friends.

Whatever it is, there will inevitably be a time when you have absolutely nothing to do.

And guess what is always there to entertain you? Fantasy Baseball.

Fantasy Football is right smack in the beginning of the school year. You are usually pretty busy, starting off the school year right, enjoying your last few weeks of autumn. And then BAM, it's already playoffs time.

Where did the whole season go? Oh right, I had school and tests and I didn't even have time to think about Fantasy Football, much less waste 20 consecutive hours on it.

That's where Fantasy Baseball stands alone in Fantasy sports. It's during the summer.

A time of freedom. A time of boredom.

And most of all, a time to waste time.

1. Fantasy Baseball Is Every Single Day

Every. Single. Day.

Heaven.

This is what truly separates Fantasy Baseball from the mere mortals.

It is like a Fantasy paradise.

Roster changes every day. Waiver pick-ups every day. Breakout performances every day.

This is what we play for.

This is what we live for.

Fantasy Baseball, six months straight.

Fantasy Football? Maybe next year.