2016 Retrospective: Successes and Failures

In what has become an annual tradition, today I will hold myself accountable to you the reader by publishing the results of my 2016 fantasy season.

In the 2015 version of this post, I decided I did too many leagues to give any the proper attention they deserved. Even though I whittled down my total commitments, an increase in dynasty-type formats meant I had needier children.

Experimental Leagues

Utility Wars

Late last February, I unveiled a couple experimental leagues. The first was called Utility Wars. It’s a linear weights scored league with six active hitters (UTIL) and six bench. The goal behind these leagues was to build a low commitment, quirky format. Utility Wars was a modest success, but the ban on waiver moves left a few lucky owners holding the torch. Meanwhile, players like Jose Ramirez, Aledmys Diaz, and Wilson Ramos festered on the waiver wire because they weren’t drafted.

Waiver moves were banned because I didn’t want this to be a streaming league. Utility Wars will be back next season, this time with slightly smaller rosters and somewhere around 20 to 30 waiver moves for the season.

Congratulations are in order for the BoxScore Dragons. Jose Altuve, Charlie Blackmon, Brian Dozier, and others dragged the Dragons to victory. I finished 13 of 20. Discovering Jake Lamb was offset by flops for Yasiel Puig and others.

Fire and Forget

In this league, we all drafted rosters, set our positions, and locked things down until the end of the season. Fire and Forget was scored using WAR – including the defensive components. The tricky part was building in some flexibility for injuries. That actually worked. We rostered more players than we scored. For example, we had five outfielders of which the top three were scored.

Unfortunately, I found the league a little too forgettable. Since there was no management component and the standings were difficult to track, there was no real engagement during the season. The Luddites Online won (we think), with the help of some studly defenders, Corey Seager, Anthony Rizzo, and Freddie Freeman. I finished somewhere in the middle.

Dynasties

The Devil’s Rejects

For the sake of brevity, I’ll direct you to this article reviewing the trades made by Chad Young and me in our co-managed dynasty league. We finished fifth of 20 – the last paid spot. It was something of a let down since we expected to snag third place. Pitching, especially Chris Archer and Gerrit Cole, really failed us.

Our first order of business this offseason is to decide if we want to rebuild the pitching staff or write off our 2016 woes as a one year blip. It would be nice to find a nice discount Rick Porcello type. Perhaps that’s what we’ll focus on rather than trying to acquire a Clayton Kershaw with valuable components.

Ottoneu – FanGraphs Staff Two

This was my feel good win of the year. It was also my only truly unqualified success. And it almost didn’t happen. After winning in 2015, I attempted to trade pricey assets like Mike Trout, Kershaw, and Paul Goldschmidt so I’d have some financial flexibility. In ottoneu, we get 40-man rosters with a budget of $400. You can acquire more budget via trade during the season, but we have to prune back to $400 in the offseason.

I received terrible valuations on my stars. I was left with only one choice – keep them. Kershaw, Trout, and Goldschimdt fueled a repeat victory. When I was trying to sell them, I often referenced the importance of elite talent in ottoneu FGpts leagues. It’s easy to score 17,000 points in an ottoneu league. If you want to shoot for 19,000 and a chance at the win, you’ll need multiple top 15 talents. My runaway success this season only reinforced that point.

Gruntleball

Gruntleball is a simulation league I joined over the winter. The draft kicked off in January and the simulated season ended in June. We were playing in 2005. The roster I inherited was kind of junky so I’ve targeted 2008 as my year with 2006 as a practice run.

I spent most of the 2005 campaign making sure my players all played enough to be kept. A wrinkle to our format – players have to be used at least 80 percent of their real world playing time to be kept. When a player can be kept, they’re said to be gruntled.

Keepers and Redrafts

Macalester League

This is a league I share with my former college teammates. Like many casual leagues, there are some very competitive owners and others who don’t have the necessary attention span to succeed in fantasy baseball. I finished second in the playoffs for a second consecutive year, but I fell from first to fourth in the regular season.

I generally take the long view in H2H leagues. I want to win the regular season, and if I happen to get bounced from the playoffs, I simply shrug. This year was a little different. Injuries to my pitchers and the disastrous choices to cut Ian Desmond and Brian Dozier in early May left me comfortably in fourth of 12 during the regular season. The top six go to the playoffs.

At the trade deadline, I pivoted my strategy by loading up on stolen bases. The biggest move was acquiring a $8-to-keep Jonathan Villar in exchange for a $35 Max Scherzer. The focus on stolen bases was specifically intended to improve my competitiveness in the postseason. I rode the wave into the final day of the season when my opponent overcame a narrow deficit in batting average with a couple late-Sunday hits. I lost the final 5-6. Incidentally, we tied in stolen bases.

MLBTR League

I really enjoy this league. It’s a 6×6 redraft with standard deep rosters (2 C, MI, CI, 5 OF), extra categories of OPS and Holds, and only three bench spots. To succeed, you must stream, but you also need a deep and reliable core. Even with unlimited waiver moves, it’s necessary to punt some component of the roster. I usually spend long swaths of the season with only one catcher. Other owners punt saves or holds.

My team finished in fifth where it spent almost the entire season. There was a point in late September when a miraculous pitching day could have netted me 14 points and a chance at first place. I was also one A.J. Pollock short of matching pace with the four teams ahead of me. As it turns out, I used an early draft pick on Pollock and another one on Michael Brantley (he was trending towards an early return at the time). If only I could have traded both picks for Jonathan Villar.

My Home League

After five years of first or second finishes, I placed dead last in 2015. The roster I built was deep in keepers but light in upside. I had plenty of players who justified a spot on my 2016 team, but none of them were stars-to-be. It was a good learning experience for me – rebuild with studs or don’t even bother.

This time around, I rebuilt the right way. I can keep any of 22 viable keepers for $8 including 10 of the most eligible young hitters of 2016. That’s a good start for a 29-man roster. I can also hang onto one of Austin Hedges, Roman Quinn, Raimel Tapia, or Bradley Zimmer for $1. We’ll see what the Rockies and Phillies do this offseason. On the pricier side of things, Jose Altuve ($36), Gregory Polanco ($24), and Jung-ho Kang ($16) look like easy keepers.

As for my actual performance, you can probably guess the cost of rostering a swarm of minor leaguers for two-thirds of the season. I spent the entire campaign in the basement before clambering up to ninth place in the final week of the season. We’ll explore this roster in more depth later in the offseason.