Introducing a partnership with FanDuel

If you're a regular reader of our work here at Beyond the Box Score, it's pretty safe to say that you're a fan of baseball. Maybe you're also someone who enjoys fantasy baseball -- and if you're plugged into the sport in general, keeping up to date with MLB happenings can't hurt your chances. Part of what we do here, after all, is to separate fact from fiction when comparing true talent levels and past results on the field.

I'm pleased to announce a new partnership between SB Nation and FanDuel, a site that offers many different kinds of daily fantasy baseball events — with the chance to win cash prizes. Most contests work by selecting a handful of players that you think will excel that day based on a points system, all while staying under a salary cap. You can also find some leagues that use only "early" or "late" games, if that's more your speed. Here's a video from FanDuel explaining a bit more about how it works:

As part of the partnership, FanDuel and SB Nation were kind enough to freeroll me some money to play around with some of their events, and I have to say, it was quite a lot of fun. On Tuesday, I tried a few different leagues, getting smoked in a couple of larger leagues (thanks for nothing, Julio Teheran!) and finishing third in a smaller contest on the backs of Phil Hughes, Jose Abreu, and Marcell Ozuna. Wednesday night I was busy watching the Red Sox beat their paler-hosed cousins at Fenway, where I successfully got Enya's "Sail Away" played when Chris Sale was pulled in the eighth (thanks, TJ!), but I'm looking forward to more fun at FanDuel again soon. If you're already set to watch a bunch of games on a given night, joining a league seems like a great way to make things a bit more interesting.

From time to time, we at Beyond the Box Score will highlight some of our content that might be particularly helpful in crafting your fantasy strategy. Sign up and take a shot at our first league. For specific rules, click here (note: residents of AZ, IA, LA, MN, and WA cannot play for money). The entry fee is $2 and the number of players in the league is capped at 10,055, with $18,000 in prizes spread out from 1st place ($2,000) down through 1050th place ($6). If nothing else, you have a good chance of being able to say you beat me ...

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Ryan P. Morrison is an editor and writer at Beyond the Box Score, and co-author of Inside the 'Zona, a site on the Arizona Diamondbacks with a sabermetrics slant. You can follow him on Twitter: @InsidetheZona.