Best Free Fantasy Draft Tools

Top 38 FREE Fantasy Baseball Tools to Use In-Season For Lineups & Waivers

Free Fantasy Baseball Lineup Tools 1000x600
Jose Altuve Photo Credit: Keith Allison

Every year, I post the top Free Fantasy Baseball Draft Tools, and now that we’re deep into this season, I thought I’d refresh some of the top Free Fantasy Baseball tools to use during the season! These tools will help you with your lineups and waivers specifically! (And don’t forget to check out Top 51 Free Fantasy Football Draft Tools!)

As I’ve mentioned before, these lists are fluid because I’m always adding (and in some cases subtracting) since there are new sites popping up all the time, new apps, new tools, etc.

So if you have great free Fantasy Baseball tools you think I should add to this list – the best thing would be to shoot me an email through my contact page. You can also comment on this page, but I’m guessing you’d rather ME talk about what I like about your free Fantasy Baseball tools, rather than you. (Readers would probably prefer a subjective voice, also.)

When I do add to this list of free Fantasy baseball tools, I’ll indicate it’s new by calling it a “NEWLY ADDED” and add a number to the article’s headline. Me smart.

Feel free to comment on any of these free Fantasy Baseball tools or sites and mention how they have helped you, or a specific way you’ve used them to dominate your league.

Top 35 FREE Fantasy Baseball Tools For Lineups and Waivers

As I mentioned, these are tools you would use in-season, not for your draft. That’s from another post, but even so, a lot of these tools you can still use for your next Fantasy Baseball draft.

1. Daily Fantasy Articles from FantasyRundown.com

This site has been around for a few years now, and they painstakingly go through all of the Fantasy Baseball and Fantasy Football articles – every day, several times a day – to pick out the best articles for their users to check out. Writers love Fantasy Rundown because they highlight only really good content. Websites love Fantasy Rundown because they reward good content with a ton of readers. And users love Fantasy Rundown because they save tons of time by not having to scour through dozens of websites.

Here’s my video that reviews their site — it’s for Fantasy Football, but the same idea revolves around their Fantasy Baseball help. Plus, they’re WAAAAY bigger into Fantasy Baseball than they are football.

2. My Playbook from FantasyPros.com

In all honesty, this is not just one of the best Free Fantasy Baseball tools to use for lineup decisions, waiver wire add/drops and trades, this is THE best.

FantasyPros.com - Free Fantasy ToolsConnect “My Playbook” with one of your teams on CBS, ESPN or Yahoo!, and then you’ll get a dashboard for your team. On that dashboard, you’ll get Player News & Advice, which can be broken down by recent news, articles or player notes from several websites, including CBSSports.com, KFFL.com, Sports Illustrated, RotoWorld, Beast Dome, and MLB Soup. You can also look at the Rankings tab to see where your players rank for the rest of the season, as well as where free agents are ranked.

Obviously, the Player Rankings at FantasyPros.com is one of the best free Fantasy Baseball tools all on its own.

3. (NEWLY ADDED) Razzball’s MLB Trade Analyzer

These guys do a great job with their content — it has that off-the-wall tone that strikes a perfect chord with us Fantasy owners — and this tool is super helpful. They use their Rest-of-Season rankings and their daily updated Player Rater dollar values to help you figure out if you are winning or losing in a proposed Fantasy Baseball trade (or coming out even!). Who wins in a trade between Kris Bryant for Buster Posey and Ender Inciarte? Now you can find out! (It even shows what their rest-of-season projections look like!)

4. Start/Sit Tool from FantasySP.com

You can finally stop tweeting the same “Who Should I Start” question to two dozen writers! This tool is fantastic! Go here, insert the two players you are debating for the coming scoring period, and you’ll get the following:

  • Most recent player news bite for each player from several sources, including CBSSports, RotoWire and Rotoworld.
  • Performance trend graphs showing how consistent each player has been over the past several weeks.
  • Own/Start Breakdown over thousands of leagues (not sure which league services this comes from, however.
  • Expert Consensus, with rankings.
  • Player breakdown, with stats, an overview broken down in a bullet-list, and trending hitting stats for each player.

I piddled a little bit when I found this page.

They also have a few other tools on their site that might interest you, like their “Trade Analyzer” or their “Team Analyzer.”

5. More Daily Fantasy Articles from TheRotoFeed.com

Well, if you’re still hungry for even more content, you can check out this site, where they aggregate RSS feeds of articles, blogs, podcasts and other such items. They also have a great Twitter feed that runs the links to these articles as they come through. Great tool, great help.

6. Fantasy Baseball Player Headlines from RotoWorld.com

Of course, the guys at RotoWorld.com also still do a really good job. When I worked at OPENSports.com, we designed our page to have Fantasy Headlines much like theirs. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery! Starting your day by checking the Fantasy MLB Headlines section is always a good idea.

7. MiLB.com – Minor League Stats

Now that the minor leagues are in full swing, you can track your favorite prospects and the top minor leaguers. I like how they give you a quick look at the last 10 games for a player. Very useful.

8. MLB Depth Charts by RosterResource.com

You’ll find the updated 40-man roster for every team, each team’s “Go-To Starting Lineup,” their bench on the 25-man roster, their rotation and bullpen setup, their disabled list with injury news, notable minor leaguers with their current level of play, and a pretty awesome chart that shows how the team was assembled (where each player came from and when).

9. FNTSY Radio App

Listen to Fantasy Sports talk all day long, with radio shows from Jake Ciely, Nando Di Fino, Gregg Sussman and a bunch of other great Fantasy minds. You can listen on your PC, or download the app for free!

10. Trade Analyzer from BaseballMonster.com

While you need to be a member to see their projections, the Trade Analysis Tool is quite powerful. You can choose more than one player at a time, and sort the stats over a certain time period. It shows you stat breakdowns to explain which players are better than the others, as opposed to just a thumbs up or thumbs down on the possible trade.

11. CBSSports.com’s Fantasy Baseball Rankings

Call me partial, but I like to check out CBSSports.com’s rankings – mostly because I was the guy that spurred them into creating this page in the first place, back in 2006. (I just broke my arm patting myself on the back. I didn’t “build” this tool, however. That takes a MUCH smarter guy than myself, and that credit goes to Blue Jays fan Jake Payton.) Heath Cummings and Scott White are manning the controls now, and the green arrows up and red arrows down are helpful touches.

12. MLBTradeRumors.com

As the trade deadline gets closer, no website does a better job of tracking who might go where and who would benefit or not benefit from it.

13. Real-Time Alarm Emails from FantasyAlarm.com

The Lite version is free, with advertising, but they’ll send you an updated immediately when it’s known that one of your players is not in that day’s lineup (usually known about 60 to 90 minutes before first pitch). You’ll also get an email notifying you if your player lands on the disabled list, involved in a rainout or any other breaking news surrounding him.

14. RotoWorld.com’s Injury Report

I think the guys at RotoWorld do the best job of laying out their injury list table, giving readers a good idea of who’s hurt for each team, what the injury is, when it happened and when they’re expected to return.

15. FanGraphs.com’s Projections for the Rest of the Season

They have an easy-to-sort table loaded with Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS Projections to determine what a player might hit for the remainder of the season.

16. Baseball America’s Email Newsletters

Get emails during the season, like the Baseball America Prospect Report, which gives you daily stats on dozens of prospects from the previous night’s box scores. It will also highlight a few of the best performances of the day. They also have a Draft Update email, a College Update and a High School Update.

17. @MLBPlayerAnalys Tommy John Tracker

Track who has had Tommy John surgery over the past few years! It’s a free spreadsheet!

18. ESPN Closer chart

Want to keep a close eye on the closer situation on every ballclub? The guys at ESPN do a nice job of it, showing you who the current closer is, who is next in line, who might be a dark-horse candidate and who is “looming” with possible saves in the future. (Run that PickemFirst app on this page and life is good!)

19. CloserMonkey.com’s Daily Bullpen Report

While the chart above is helpful, I really like what CloserMonkey.com does with their daily wrap-ups of the situations from the previous day’s games. While you’re scurrying around for the newest stopper, those that read CloserMonkey.com have known about him for days.

20. ESPN Ballpark Factors

This tool helps you learn which parks are playing better for hitters or pitchers during a given year. I also love their Cy Young Predictor and their Hitting Streaks tracker!

21. ParkFactors.com For Daily Fantasy Baseball Players

Updated hourly, up until game time, these guys use the current weather and updated ballpark factors to determine how good or bad a park will play for a hitter on a given day. It also shows where the wind is blowing out – and how hard. Got some money on the line? Check this place out first!

22. DailyBaseballData.com’s Weather Forecasts

They have the hourly weather forecasts for every game going on in a given day. This is especially helpful for Daily Fantasy League players.

23. Baseball-Reference.com

This is another one of those no-brainers, but one I need to mention. This site has a ton of useful things on it, but I mostly use it to look up past players or the stats for current players, like Matt Holliday. One thing I like, unlike many sites, is they break down a player’s stat line by the two teams he played for in a given year if he was traded midseason, and then they also give the total for that year. Want to see something else cool? Click on the 2010 row, and then click on 2006. Boom. The stats for all of those years are combined and broken out into a separate window. It’s awesome.

Other reasons this site is awesome? They show player nicknames, Twitter accounts, all the transactions he’s been involved in, his contract status and the jersey numbers he has worn.

24. Yahoo! Sports Split & Situational Stats

Along with the Baseball-Reference.com stats, I like to use Yahoo!’s player pages to look through splits and situational stats.

25. FanGraphs.com’s Library Stat Glossary

Every now and then, you’re bound to come across a stat acronym you just aren’t familiar with. These guys do such a great job of explaining what it means, why it’s beneficial and what is usually considered average, good or bad for each stat that warrants it.

26. RotoGrinders.com’s Market Watch

They look at the player salaries at several of the top Daily Fantasy Baseball services, and they measure the difference in salary from this week to last week at each position. So you can see which hot players are still a bargain on some sites, and which faltering players still cost too much on other sites.

27. Prospects Matrix by ScoutingBook.com

This site actually has several good tools on it, but their top prospects list has some good write-ups and is easy to sort through. The list is actually a combined list of the prospect rankings  of several sites, including Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus and MLB.com.

28. CBSSports.com’s Roster Trends

Find out which players are getting picked up and dropped at each position, and it will help you with your own waiver decisions.

Free Fantasy Baseball Tools: Audio You Should Listen To

I like to listen to podcasts and SiriusXM Radio when I’m at work, and it’s a great way to keep up to date with news and injuries.

Free Fantasy Baseball Tools: Standout Twitter Feeds

A couple years ago, I posted the “99 Fantasy Baseball Twitter Accounts You Must Follow,” which were based mostly on writers and not just websites. So here are a handful of other Twitter accounts you should subscribe to:

  • 36. @MLBDailyLineups – They post the lineups for every team for every game for every day … for real. They’re also posted all on one page at RotoInfo.com.
  • 37. @MLBDailyBullpen – Any news on changes for any team’s bullpen gets posted here.
  • 38. @CloserNews – Another great Twitter account that tracks closer situations across the league. This one is powered by RotoAuthority.com.

Don’t forget to check out last year’s Top Free Fantasy Football Draft Tools also. I’m sure I will be adding more FREE Fantasy Baseball tools to this page throughout the year! So check back often.

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