MLB Draft Assistant Guide

RotoWire's Draft Assistant is our premier tool to help ensure you don't lose on draft day. Whether you've used it before or this will be your first season doing so, this guide will cover how you can get the most out of it.

Getting Started with My Leagues

Getting Started without My Leagues

Draft Prep Features

1. Tiers

2. Notes

3. Edit Projections

4. Category Targets

5. Edit Draft Strategy

Mock Drafting

1. Auction

2. Snake, Straight, or Third-Round Reversal

Live Drafting

During Your Draft

1. Category Targets

2. Projected Standings

After Your Draft

FAQs

Using our My Leagues feature is not required, but it will help you get more out of the Assistant. If you don't already have your leagues imported to My Leagues, you can do so from here and also learn more about our My Leagues feature from our tutorial here.

What makes My Leagues integration useful is that once you have your league imported and all of your settings intact, you can use the "Export to Draft Software" link to transfer your league's data to the Assistant.

This will include all of your settings and league information, including keepers and their salaries, when applicable.

After you click "Export To Draft Software" and move over to our Draft Assistant, you will find your league here, and you will be able to click "Start New Draft" across from it.

Clicking "Start New Draft" will then open the Draft Assistant in the Draft Grid.

If you have keepers, please note they will all end up as reserves on rosters. You can click the "Rosters" tab near the top of the page, and if you scroll down in the roster pop-up, you will see them. From there, you will want to use the "move" tab to put them into their proper positions.

If you're not using My Leagues as a starting point, you will click "Start New Draft" at the top of the Draft Assistant.

After doing so, you will be taken through a series of prompts to ensure the Draft Assistant is populating the correct data for your league. In this process, you'll be able to choose your draft style, player pool, number of teams, draft order, scoring, and roster settings, while clicking "next" to go through the menus. Once done, click "Start Draft."

Once in the Draft Room, you will see our cheat sheet, geared toward your league, with either rankings or auction values. From here, if you need to add keepers, you can click the "Rosters" tab, then in the pop-out, select "Add Keeper."

Where it shows "My Team" in the image, it can be toggled through each team in the league, as you add everyone's keepers.

If trades are needed, you can select the "Draft Picks" tab and "Trade Picks" in the roster pop-out.

These features may not be necessary for everyone, but after your settings and necessary predraft roster moves are logged, you can go further with how deeply you want to prepare for your draft.

The Draft Assistant offers eight color-coded tier levels, as well as a sleeper and bust category, for 10 total options. You can assign a player to a tier by selecting them in the player table, then using the toggle under their image.

During your draft prep, did you come across anything you felt was useful about a player that you wanted to log, so you didn't forget? Then "Notes" is for you. Just select the player from the table you want to make a note on, then click the "Notes" tab on their profile, and make a note, which will save automatically once you move from the Notes section.

Do you disagree with any of our projections? That's OK! We offer the option to edit these in two ways. Firstly, you can click the "Edit Projections" tab in the top right corner of the player table, which will allow you to edit all players in the player table.

Or, if you're not interested in making more sweeping changes, you can click on an individual player and select edit 2026 projections on their player card.

*Please note, at this time, there is no option to import your own projections.

Do you know how many strikeouts you'll likely need from your pitching staff this year to compete? If you don't, that's OK too, and we can help you figure that out.

Use our category targets option to note what you think you need to reach to take the crown this season, or use our "Project My Targets" tab to get a number based on your league's settings.

You can find this under "Targets." Either manually input the numbers you're comfortable with, or just hit that blue tab on the bottom left, and let us do the work.

You'll be able to revisit this tab throughout your draft to get the latest tallies and see where you need to make up ground.

Our "Top Picks" option allows you to "weigh in" by adding weights to certain categories, which will adjust the rankings for how you may want to draft.

Do you want to make sure you grab a top-tier shortstop before a big drop-off in projections? If positional scarcity is important to you, you may find adjusting the slide over beneficial.

Each adjustment here will impact a player's RotoScore, which is a grade we give between 0 and 100 for each player, and impact their ranking.

Once you've made it this far, all of your settings should be set. Your rosters should be filled with all pre-draft players, if that applies to you. Any adjustments to the just-mentioned features made, and player rankings representing your league and style will be in place.

All that should be left to do is draft, for practice.

Before making that first selection, you'll likely want to have the "Rosters" tab or "Draft Picks" tab open. Draft Picks will be a chronological running list of each player drafted in order, while Rosters will allow you to toggle between each team and see who has been selected.

There is no option to do a mock auction draft, where opponent picks are simulated. You will need to enter each pick manually. Select the player you want to draft, use the toggle to select what team he is being sent to, and then the cost. Once that is done, you can hit "Draft."

To keep track of money left to spend and max bid remaining, you will find those numbers at the bottom of the roster tab.

**Please note that if you're doing an auction draft, you will likely want to account for inflation, which can be done by clicking this tab near the top right of the player table.

Unlike auction drafts, the rest of our Draft Type options can be fully simulated, or you can make your own selections while simulating your opponents'. Of course, if you want, you can also make every single selection.

As mentioned above, before making that first selection, you'll likely want to have the "Rosters" tab or "Draft Picks" tab open. These will be your best options for keeping track of your draft.

To get started, you should see the "Start Mock Draft" tab in green near the top right,

If you don't have the 1st selection, picks will automatically start being selected after pressing the green tab. If you do have the 1st selection, after hitting the green tab, it will turn to a yellow tab that says Auto Draft. You can click that, and it will start making every selection.

If you want to make the pick yourself, just select the player you want to choose, and hit Draft on their player card that pops up.

If you want to continue making your selections while letting the computer mock out the rest, hit Auto Draft after you make your pick, and it will stop when it is your turn again.

If you are not using My Leagues and the Draft Assistant's live sync capabilities when it's time for your live draft, the described instructions above in the "Mock Drafting" section will be the same. You will just manually select each pick, without using the Auto Draft features.

However, if you are using My Leagues and will be live syncing your draft on CBS, Yahoo, Fantrax, or Ottoneu, you will need to take the path mentioned at the beginning under "Getting Started with My Leagues." Once in the draft room, you will need to verify your league settings first and hit the My Settings Are Correct tab in green.

Then the green "Connect" tab.

Our Draft Assistant will immediately start trying to connect with your league, and once it begins, you should be synced up.

As seen below, the teams and picks are coming off in order, in the Assistant

Which matches what can be seen here on Yahoo.

**Please note that you will need to make your team's selections on the host site. Picks made in the Assistant will not transfer over to the host site.

Some notes on things to keep an eye on during your draft.

If you used the Category Targets, this is what it will look like during your draft.

My RBI targets were 931. So far, I have 262 projected RBIs, so I'm 669 away from my target. However, so far, I have the 2nd-best projected RBI rank at this point in my draft, with the top mark being 293.

There are two ways to view projected standings. Either where things stand now, or where things are likely to land.

With "Show Projected Standings" unchecked, it is simply showing my totals in each category.

However, if you click the tab, it will actually project out the standings, based on who has been drafted and who is available. Essentially, simulating the rest of the draft.

This will continue to update throughout the draft after each pick, and was 83% completed again when this photo was snapped.

Once your draft is done, it will state "Draft Complete!" in the top left corner of the Assistant.

This would be a good time to check out how you fared on your Category Targets, now that the draft is done,

Or the final Projected Standings,

If you end up not doing too well, like me, because you were more focused on writing this tutorial than paying attention to your draft, this is also a good time to jump back to My Leagues or dive into any of our content and start figuring out how to bounce back from a less-than-stellar draft.

Your draft should save automatically. However, to ensure it has, or to save work and jump between devices, use the "Home" tab, toward the top right of the Assistant. This will work as a save button.
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What Host Sites Are Supported by Live Sync?

Yahoo, CBS, Fantrax, and Ottoneu are all capable of live syncing with your draft.

​How Do I Rename Teams?

When setting up your draft, you will reach this screen below. If you've used My Leagues for your setup, you will already have the team names filled out here. However, if you're not using My Leagues, you will be able to click on each of these respective boxes and alter the names of the teams from their generic state.

Yes! You can filter to only AL teams, NL teams, or Custom during setup.

Simply click the circle next to National or American League. If your league is more custom, like say, National League-only, but uses the Astros also, you can click National, then put a check mark next to Houston.

Can I Duplicate a League?
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Yes! Don't worry, you do not need to re-input settings and keepers every time you want to redo a draft. After accessing the Draft Assistant, you will see "copy" next to delete.

After clicking "Copy," you will have options for what you want to copy before duplicating the draft.

Once you have clicked on what you want, hit duplicate.

There is an option to export the player table data in the bottom right corner of the table.

However, at this time, there is no option to export a final draft.

Can I Draft Offline?

Once a draft is loaded, you can disconnect from the internet and continue to track your draft. Note that data updates (i.e., player news, injury status, depth chart changes, projection changes) will no longer be performed when offline. Of course, no live sync capability can be supported when offline, either. Please be sure not to navigate away from the page; you may lose your draft progress.

This can be resolved by either manually adjusting the draft settings within the assistant to match your league or by refreshing your league from our My Leagues tool. Under certain circumstances You may need to delete and then re-import your league in order to ensure all of the settings match. Finally, you will need to "Start New Draft" from the Draft Assistant in order to create a new draft with the updated settings.

By default, the draft order for some baseball leagues isn't set until the draft has started. This means that you will need to refresh your league from our My Leagues tool in order for the draft positions to update. Lastly, you will need to "Start New Draft" from the Draft Assistant to create a new draft with the updated draft order.

Yes! Our live draft integration will quickly and accurately sync all draft picks at any point during (or even after) your live draft.

I have more questions. What should I do?

You can send us an email at support@rotowire.com, and we'd be happy to help!