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Fantasy Baseball Glossary 2026

Originally posted on Athlon Sports | By Rick Wolf | Last updated Nov 26, 2025 11:41 AM ET

Everyone loves an acronym, especially when it is three letters. Makes them a TLA… three-letter acronym. In fantasy baseball, as in life, there are acronyms and terminology that you likely know, but let’s just make sure by running through some of the things that you need to know to enjoy playing fantasy baseball more.

We are not trying to be complete. We will not include statistical acronyms. We will do individual articles on the core statistics that you need to know beyond the obvious. Also, BaseballHQ has a complete glossary with every statistic defined, here. We assume you can find the stats definitions, it is how to use them that is critical.

Core League and Format Terms

Scoring Formats & Rosters

Rotisserie or Roto: A style of play that was invented by Daniel Okrent in New York in 1979. It describes a method of play that has you receiving one point plus one point for each opponent you beat in a statistical category and then aggregating all your points to compare with all opponents.
Head-to-head categories: You receive one point for each statistical category that your active roster beats your opponent in a particular period (usually one week). Either each category represents a win or a point. If it is a point, all categories are aggregated, and you win if you have more points than your opponent for the period.
Head-to-head points: Each player in your active roster receives points based on a scoring grid, and these points are aggregated to create your score for a given period, usually one week. The same process is used for your opponent, and the one with the most points receives the win for that period.
Active Roster: The players who are set to be “active” are the only players on your team that can accrue statistics or receive points.
Weekly vs daily lineup leagues: Leagues determine at what period you can change players from your active roster to your bench and vice versa. Weekly is the most popular. Daily lineup leagues are much more competitive, especially for starting pitchers, which can be changed daily to maximize starts.

League Types

Redraft League: Refers to a league that does not retain any of its players from year to year and starts as if it were the first year the league was in existence. This makes it easiest to add or remove league members.
Keeper League: Refers to a league that allows for a certain number of players to be held from one year to the next. In the original rules for Rotisserie, there was an attempt to mirror the Major Leagues, and contracts were included. Many leagues like the idea of drafting well and being rewarded in future years. Most leagues have a limit on the number of players kept, which is usually between 3 and 7.
Dynasty League: Refers to a keeper league where everyone keeps ALL their players and only drafts from the player pool a certain number of rookies or available players.
Best Ball League: Refers to a league that drafts and has no in-season moves. It takes its name from a style of golf where teammates take turns, but then they each hit from where the “best ball” landed. In fantasy baseball, it refers to the computer setting your best lineup for the week AFTER the games have been played and thereby giving you the “best” base”ball” score for your team.
Champions League: Refers to head-to-head or Rotisserie leagues that reward a champion's list of teams across a lot of leagues through a playoff system to compare teams across leagues. Teams play against each other for a “regular” season and then are pooled to compete against all remaining teams after a cut-off is implemented. The team scoring the highest across 3-5 weeks, depending on the rules, wins.

Draft-Day Terminology

ADP and Market Value

What ADP represents: Ha. ADP is a TLA. The three-letter acronym ADP stands for Average Draft Position, which is an average of all the positions that a player was drafted in a given period. So if Tarik Skubal is drafted 3rd, 8th, 18th, 5th, 7th, and 10th in six drafts, his ADP would be 8.5 (sum of all the drafted positions divided by six).
Why ADP is a guide, not a rule: The ADP list can be helpful as a guide to tell you when players should be expected to be drafted. If you use it as a rule, it will hurt your draft. The way you should use ADP is as one more piece of data.
Using periods for ADP trends: An important note, ADP can get stale. If a player gets hurt in the pre-season or doesn’t rehab as well as expected, his previous ADP can be reflected for weeks or months. Most systems have the ability to take the ADP for the last week or two weeks. I ALWAYS use that rather than the sum of all ADPs from all drafts executed. FantasyAlarm.com also has a consensus ADP, which takes many of the sites and combines them by player to give a consensus ADP. This is just another data point to help in decision-making.
Helium: This describes the phenomenon of a player who is rising fast in ADP. A pitcher with amazing talent wins a starting job. A pitcher is named the closer. A hitter crushes home runs in spring training. These are examples of things that could make players be drafted earlier, and a player whose ADP jumps is said to have helium.
Cheat Sheet: Refers to a small set of charts that allows you to make your draft selections with more confidence. It usually includes ADP within the rankings and shows you the position or price that a player should be rostered at.
Custom Projections: Refers to a set of next year’s statistics projected by you or a service and then customized for your league or scoring system to help you in your draft.

Auction Draft Vocabulary

Live auction: Players are put on rosters in a live auction way literally. Each team owner “nominates” a player to be bid on to determine which roster he will be on to start the season. Then the auctioneer takes bids from the team owners until the player is rostered. Most leagues use the original setup for this, with $260 for 23 players (14 hitters and 9 pitchers).
Blind bidding style auctions: These are rare for leagues of friends or colleagues, but are used for some simulation fantasy baseball games. Each player puts in bids for players or puts in ordered lists, and the computer creates all the rosters automatically. Baseball Manager is a good example of a system that uses this.
Nomination strategy: This refers to the strategy created before and during drafts as to which players to nominate when it is your turn in an auction draft. It is a critical part of the draft as you can learn information from the other team owners about their plans and about what to project prices will be for similar players.
Category scarcity: This references categories that acquire lower numbers to win or there are a limited number of players who contribute to that category. Saves is a good example of a scarce category.

Remember to also check out these other stories if you are starting your fantasy baseball career in 2026:

Player Type Labels

Sleepers: Refers to players who are not expected to be drafted early or bid on for a lot of bid dollars, but whoever is discussing them thinks that they have high value.
Busts: Refers to players who had a bad year when expected to do well.
Post Hype sleepers: Refers to players that most fantasy baseball players thought would do well last year, and they didn’t. This year, they are “post” all the “hype”. If you believe that they will do well, you call them a “post-hype sleeper”.
Breakouts: Refers to players who had a dramatically better year than the previous year. Many people will also say that someone is a “breakout candidate,” meaning that this year may be dramatically better than last year.
High-floor player: Refers to a player who has a track record that tells you that he will perform at least at a minimum level (a floor) as a safer pick in drafts.
High-ceiling player: Refers to a player who is inconsistent or has not done well yet, but has the talent and opportunity this year. He has the ability to perform at a very high level and produce fantasy baseball statistics, so he has a high ceiling.
Position scarcity: Refers to a position or set of positions where the players who are good or great at that position within your league are few. For me, since I put them against the SMART system Rules of Engagement, my scare positions can be different from the rest of my league.

Roster Management Terms

Waiver Wire and Free Agency

There are many ways to add players to your roster during the season based on injuries or lack of performance. Here are some terms you will need to know.

Waiver Claims: Refers to a process where each team has a claim number. When team owners put in a list of changes they would like to make. The computer works in order of their claim numbers for fairness. Players who make claims are placed at the bottom of the list. Each week, the claims list is cleared and reset to the reverse order of the standings to give preference to those doing the worst.
Blind Bidding (FAAB Bidding): This is one of the most popular ways to add and drop players from team rosters. Each year, team owners are given a Free Agent Acquisition Budget (FAAB). Each week, team owners can use some or all of that budget to bid on available players. At the weekly deadline, the computer awards the players based on bid and a tiebreaker, which is usually the lowest in the standings. It is fair and has a lot of strategy. We will study this later in this offseason.
Claims (First-come, first-served): Refers to a process where team owners can add and drop players at any time, with a claims period. This can be combined with Waivers or FAAB.
IL: 10-day, 60-day, 7-day: IL stands for Injured List. It used to be called something else, but that was deemed to not be politically correct, so they disabled that. There are a number of different IL lists that teams can employ. Players can be placed on 10-day or 60-day ILs when there is an injury. The 7-day IL is used for things like paternity, bereavement, or any personal issue filed with the league.

Sep 24, 2025; West Sacramento, California, USA; Athletics first baseman Nick Kurtz (16) hits a fly ball against the Houston Astros in the seventh inning at Sutter Health Park. Mandatory Credit: Cary Edmondson-Imagn Images

Streaming

Streaming: Refers to taking a roster spot or set of roster spots and switching or streaming those players every period from the free agent pool to get an advantage, usually based on matchup or ballpark.
Matchup-based decisions: As alluded to above, this refers to starting a lesser player because you think that their matchup this week will make them perform better.
Multi-position eligibility: Refers to a player who can be in the starting lineup at more than one position, which allows you to rotate your starting players more effectively. Each league sets the rules for what makes a player eligible to start in a position. It is usually 10-20 games at that position in the previous season or 5 games in the current season.

I hope this helps. I know there are a ton of TLAs to come when we look at the statistics categories next. Be great and remember…

Baseball is life.

This article first appeared on Athlon Sports and was syndicated with permission.

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