For a long time, I treated all of my fantasy baseball leagues like they were the same, no matter what the format was. I played in a keeper league and made the playoffs every year, winning multiple times, and that made me think I had fantasy baseball pretty much figured out. I was young and dumb back then, but now at least one of those things is no longer true. I have come to realize that not all fantasy baseball formats are the same, and you are doing yourself a major disservice if you fail to take the format into account both while preparing for each specific draft as well as during the season. It is, with that in mind, that we take a look now at one of the most common formats: head-to-head leagues.

As Michael Stein touched on in his draft guide article Starting a Fantasy Baseball League, one of the most important decisions in creating a fantasy baseball league is whether to play in a head-to-head or rotisserie league. This is also a crucial part of determining what league or...