Fantasy Baseball League Managers

Updated for 2009: A comparison of the Internet sites that can run your league

CBS Sports

It's the priciest (up $10 to $159 per league), but they've refined this site for 16 years now. (Disclosure: I've had a team on Sportsline for more than 10 years.) If you're the commissioner, essentially all you have to do is a quick setup, set your draft date (you can have a live draft over the Internet or input your teams later), conform the site to the stats you'd like to use, the format, etc., and the site takes over from there. Owners can make their own pickups and trades based on your league rules. They also tout mobile phone access and scouting tools.

You can do a lot worse, but the price tag is the highest. Sportsline also offers free leagues for those who don't have a league to join and other "premium" baseball games.

Yahoo!

Yahoo has two versions of its baseball management tools. Baseball '08 (free) and Baseball Plus 08. Both services offer live drafting (super stable over the years), wireless capability and commissioner tools. But the free Yahoo service is not as customizable, and there are bells and whistles in Baseball Plus (still $124.99 for a league for the season) that aren't in the free version, such as StatTracker (live updates), a draft kit and a weekly scouting report. Those extras can be bought a la carte in a free league, but if a few owners want it, it probably would be cheaper to just pool the resources of the league and buy Baseball Plus.

They also offer a prize for your winner – either a T-shirt or commemorative bobblehead. That's a nice touch.

ESPN

ESPN is where I go to prepare for my drafts, as their tools for draft prep might be the best. They've been in the stat service biz for a while, but my experience with ESPN a few years ago wasn't great. They also had a bad meltdown in 2007, when the company had to apologize to its customers.

But the price is still right for ESPN for all of its leagues: Free.

Like Yahoo, ESPN also has a league where you can jump in and play in a standard 10-team league for no cost (either with your friends or strangers) and it uses basic stats that aren't customizable. In their custom leagues, you can do almost everything you can do in the Sportsline and Yahoo leagues.

If ESPN ever gets its act together technically, they've got a winner here for everybody.

The Smaller Guys

While the bigger companies pay MLB for all of the extras on its sites, these are more of the no-frills variety. But you'd be much more likely to get the technical support and help from these smaller companies than the media conglomerates above. And the prices are a little better than Sportsline or Yahoo.

All-Star Stats

This costs $40 per team (which is a little pricey), and is definitely designed for serious players. If you want to run a very complicated league with salaries and contracts, this might be an option. They've been around since the 1980s, so they should know what they're doing. They also tout their privacy policy, and don't use advertising to support themselves. It's affiliated with RotoWorld.com.

Sports Voice

It's $38 per team for the full-service league and $23 for the Internet only (unchanged from 2008). If you don't need fax and e-mail support as well as mailings, the Internet-only package could serve you well. They had 500 leagues in 2007, and this company was one of the first to provide raw stats to plug into a program 18 years ago, back before the Internet was public.

Fanball

In business since 1992, Fanball has a good price point ($50 for a league) and comparable features to the big boys. They've made some upgrades for 2009 in their roster management capability as well. They track up to 200 categories, the most of any site.

RotoWire

It's $89 for the entire league (up $20 from 2008), and is a viable alternative to Sportsline and Yahoo. This service has been around since 2001, and has very similar features to the bigger sites. This, SportsVoice and ESPN are the only three sites I can find where you can have a live auction over the Internet. And they have new servers for 2009.

Your Fantasy Team Sucks

No, I'm not poking fun at your fantasy abilities, but perhaps this site is. Aside from the childish name, this site offers a pretty robust package that's comparable to the more expensive sites. It costs $89 per league (unchanged from 2008). This and RotoWire are the only sites (including the big boys) where you can have a live auction draft over the Internet.

DraftHelp

This service costs $79 to run a league ($59 for returning leagues), and is similar to the ones above. One small foible: It has no live draft capability (it does have a pre-ranked players draft capability). If you're having a draft in person, that won't matter. On all of the other sites above, you can have a live draft.

TQ Stats

This is the program run by CDM Fantasy Sports that sued MLB for the right to exist, that baseball stats were in the public domain. The company won, and have probably the biggest variety of products for fantasy baseball out there. Their TQ Stats Fantasy Baseball Manager costs $99 for the league (unchanged from 2008) and has been around since 1994. It can run a league with up to 50 teams in 200 customizable statistics, and news from The Roto Times.