The LIVE from First Pitch Arizona 2025! episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guests: Derek Carty & Tristan Cockcroft

Strategy Section

• Projections
  • Are projections more accurate in this more steady state of baseball?
  • Are projections more important to use than ever?
    • ADP is getting smarter
  • What are the best reasons to ignore projections?
  • Are postseason stats factored into projections?
• Outstanding rookies/prospects – 2026 outlook & drafts
  • Trey Yesavage
  • Cam Schlittler
• 2025 Postseason
  • World series wrap-up
  • Shohei Ohtani
    • All time game performance
    • 2026 outlook
• Stolen bases
  • Juan Soto & Josh Naylor
    • How many stolen bases will they regress to in 2026?
  • How can you identify players that will suddenly have a jump in stolen bases?
  • Do you have to “pay for steals” anymore in fanatsy baseball drafts?
    • Do you now have to “pay” for power in drafts?
• Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
• Aaron Judge
  • Are the Yankees wasting Judge’s best years?
  • Comparison to Albert Pujols
• Cal Raleigh
  • What round should Raleigh be drafted in?
  • What round will Raleigh be drafted in?
  • What rounds should you be drafting catchers in two catcher leagues?
• Injury Risk
  • Were we too low on the players that overcame injury risk in 2025 (Buxton, deGrom, Story, etc.)?
  • Yordan Alvarez & Spencer Strider – where should we be drafting them in 2026?
  • Expectations for pitchers who had a big innings jump in 2025
    • Yoshinobu Yamamoto
    • Bryan Woo
    • Garrett Crochet
  • How should last year’s innings totals be factored into 2026 innings projections?
  • Other injury risk pitchers for 2026

Audience Questions

2026 First Round

• Who is a player that will be drafted in the first round of 2026 that is undervalued?
• Who is a player that will be drafted in the first round of 2026 that is overvalued?
• Who is a player that will not be drafted in the first round of 2026 that should be?

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The Last Two Weeks episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Lauren Auerbach

Strategy Section

• Head to Head Points Leagues
  • Draft/Auction strategy heading into 2025
  • In-season strategy
  • What is overvalued and undervalued in points leagues?
  • How to prepare for playoffs
• Last two weeks of the season
  • How to know when to drop a player?
  • What to look for on the waiver wire?
  • Should you block other teams from acquiring players?
  • How to manage FAAB dollars in the final two weeks of the season?
  • How to manage ratio categories vs. volume in the final weeks?
  • How to use prospects in the final two weeks

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

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The Dog Days of Summer episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Sara Sanchez

League Updates

Strategy Section

• Dog Days of Summer (late August) Strategy
  • Riding the hot hand
  • How much should you be churning your roster?
  • Which categories should you focus on?
  • How to know when to drop currently injured players?
  • Does current fantasy standing matter for making decisions?
  • Does team MLB standing matter for picking up players?

Chicago Cubs

• Rotation
• Pete Crow-Armstrong
  • Regression
  • 2026 draft season value
• Owen Caissie
• 2025 playoff chances

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

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The Auction Championship episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Mike Mager

Strategy Section

• NFBC Strategy
  • What sets the NFBC apart from others?
  • Key components to winning
  • Evaluating players BEFORE looking at projections
  • Which is more important – the draft or in-season play?
  • What goes into lineup setting?
  • How do you prevent overthinking decisions?
  • Are there certain category statistics that you need to solidify early in the year?
  • Are there certain category statistics that you can wait on and pick up in-season?
  • How does strategy change year to year?
  • Auction planning
  • Today’s game
    • Pitching strategy in today’s game
    • Are there sleepers anymore?
• Waiver Wire / FAAB
  • Interaction with the current week’s lineup setting
  • Putting in the time
• Fantasy partnership
  • What makes a successful fantasy partnership?
  • Splitting up tasks

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Buy/Sell/Hold

• Hot Players
  • Nathan Lukes
  • Dominic Smith
  • Miguel Andujar
  • Luke Keaschall

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

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The Trade Deadline episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Eric Cross

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Trade Deadline Deals

• Players traded
• Prospect return analysis
• Lineup changes
• New closer roles
• Fantasy impact
• Fantasy strategy

Prospects

• Top impact prospects to know for 2025

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

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The Mid-Season episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Ray Murphy

LABR Update

First Pitch Arizona

Strategy Section

• 1st Half Recap
  • 1st Half Studs
    • Pete Crow-Armstrong
      • Regression – Should he / will he be drafted in the 1st round next year?
    • Cal Raleigh
      • Catcher strategy
  • 1st Half Duds
  • All-Star Game
• Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
  • Shortstops
• 1st Half Takes
• 2nd Half Predictions
• Trading Deadline
  • Should you make fantasy trades in advance of the trade deadline?
  • Should you make fantasy waiver pickups in advance of the trade deadline?
    • Closer speculations
  • How do you handle some active roster decisions and waiver decisions post trade deadline?

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

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The Mid-Season Prospect episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Tim McLeod

First Pitch Arizona

• XFL Auction

Strategy Section

• Prospects
  • When do you activate prospects on your roster?
    • Hitter vs. Pitcher prospects
  • What do you do with prospects on your roster that are not performing (redraft leagues)?
  • When should you pick up prospects off of the waiver wire?
    • What statistics shluld you look at for minor league player prospects?
    • Do you construct your roster differently if you are often picking up prospect speculations?

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Buy/Sell/Hold

• Hitter Prospects
  • Agustín Ramírez
  • Chase Meidroth
  • Roman Anthony
  • Jac Caglianone
• Pitcher Prospects
  • Andrew Painter
  • Joe Boyle
  • Brandon Sproat
  • Jonah Tong
  • Michael McGreevy

Board Bet !

Prospects

• Prospects for rest of season 2025
• Prospects for 2026 fantasy drafts

Waiver Wire / Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

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The Vacation episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Pierre Camus

Strategy Section

• FAAB / Waiver Wire
  • How much time do you spend on preparing for FAAB each week?
    • Do you prioritze leagues that you are doing well in over others?
  • Should you make last minute changes in FAAB, or leave alone?
  • How to decide how much to bid on FAAB
    • Should you look at FAAB on a dollar basis, or on a percentage basis?
    • How to decide the exact figure to bid on FAAB for leagues that employ $1000 of FAAB for the season.
  • What to prioritze in researching / perparing / putting in bids for FAAB?
• Vacation
  • How to manage your fantasy teams if you are on vacation?
  • What instructions should you give to a proxy to help with managing your fantasy teams?
  • How to make decisions if you are the proxy?
• Catcher Strategy
  • Should you spend a lot of draft capital on catchers?

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Buy/Sell/Hold

• Hot Players
  • Yusei Kikuchi
  • Ranger Suárez
  • José Berríos
  • José Soriano
• Cold Players
  • Zac Gallen
  • Zach Eflin
  • Bailey Ober

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

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The Overall episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Marc Winokur

League Updates

• GDD
  • Trade!
• NFBC
  • 1st half sucesss

Strategy Section

• NFBC Overall Contests
  • When should you alter your focus from the single league contest to playing for an overall contest title?
    • Does the size of your lead matter?
    • Does format matter – FAAB vs. non-FAAB?
  • Do you alter draft strategy at all due to the overall component of NFBC contests?
• The 2025 fantasy basbeall winning strategy to date
• Are Ohtani/Judge auction bids (i.e. high priced, but high returning players) efficient?

ATC Half Season

• Hits and Misses
  • Luis Arraez value
  • The profitable range of the pre-season auction market for hitters and pitchers

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Buy/Sell/Hold

• Hot Players
  • Andy Pages
    • Who’d you rather?
  • Jesús Sánchez
  • Byron Buxton
• Cold Players
  • Ian Happ
  • Rhys Hoskins
  • Jarren Duran

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

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The NFBC episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Zack Waxman

Draft Champions Podcast

Strategy Section

• NFBC
  • Power players
  • Drafting early vs. drafting late
  • The use of projections
  • ADP
  • Jacob deGrom’s innings for 2025
• Waiver Wire / FAAB
  • General Strategy
  • Putting in the time
  • What to tackle first / how best to use your time?
  • Track remaining FAAB?
  • Allocate FAAB weekly?

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Buy/Sell/Hold

• Hot Players
  • Taylor Ward
  • Miguel Vargas
  • Zach Neto
  • Ranger Suárez
  • Will Vest
• Cold Players
  • Kristian Campbell
  • Matt Mervis
  • Francisco Alvarez
  • Brayan Bello

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

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