The All-Star Break is the traditional middle of the season for Major League Baseball, and this usually means there is a lull in fantasy baseball action. With one day leagues, though, you don’t need to take a longer break than you’d like since many fantasy sites offer action on both the Homerun Derby and the All-Star Game itself. This is much different than your usual fantasy league since these events are not considered part of the regular season and thus cannot be applied. But if you’re just looking for a one day league, you can use these to help earn yourself some extra cash and have a lot of fun in the meantime.
The big question is: how do you predict what the best of the best will do, especially when playing all within the same game? Furthermore, how do you account for the fact that most players will not see a ton of playing time?
These are actually relatively small questions. For one, it’s not likely that one star will see a ton of time in a game that doesn’t count. In this instance, there’s a pretty even chances that all of the players that have been selected will play close to the same amount, and with this in mind, it’s not very relevant to try and choose just the players that will be up at the plate the most. So don’t worry about the second point.
The first is the most important question. And the key is to focus on pitching matchups. You will also find that closers have a much higher value in the All-Star game than they regularly do, if only because they are pitching the same amount of innings as every other pitcher that gets to play. In fact, they might be more powerful in some formats because they will be pitching the same, but get the chance for a win, which no starter will ever get with the way that All-Star games are managed today. Koji Uehara of the Red Sox, Aroldis Chapman or the Reds, and Francisco Rodriguez of the Brewers are all potential closers for this game, and all have been able to post big numbers when things were most important. While you might not usually select these players, they can be great in this type of situation.
