The Starting Pitcher (Part I) Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Alex Chamberlain

Alex’s pitch tool

• Comparing players with similar pitches
• Finding undervalued players

Strategy Section

• Pitchers most likely to throw 200 innings in 2022
• Starting pitcher strategy
  • General – Auction vs. Snake Draft
  • Riskiness in the elite starting pitchers this season
  • Two 1As vs. an ace strategy for 2022
• Effect of the Universal DH
  • Pick the AL pitcher over the NL pitcher?
  • Draft a pitcher in a particular division?
• Undervalued prospects & sleeper pitchers
  • Peyton Battenfield
  • Patrick Sandoval

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

Guest: Brian Bannister – Director of Pitching, San Francisco Giants (& former major league player with NYM/KCR)

Interview

• Highlight of career
  • Coaching highlight
  • Major league pitching highlight
  • Mets highlight
• Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
• Impact on college team
• Analytics
  • Some of the current analytics being used
  • Having a hunch and then researching it when the analytics tools are available
  • Impact on current team
  • Using all of the tools at your disposal
  • Studying the outliers & great players to find success for current players
  • Organizations differ in analytics use
  • What are some analytics used by teams that aren’t available publically?
  • VAA, Seam Shifted Wake, etc.
  • Learning from the uniqueness of players
  • Using analytics to play to a player’s strengths vs. exploiting an opponent’s weaknesses

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The Outfield Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Jeff Erickson

Strategy Section

• Playing in multiple leagues
  • How does the draft preparation differ between leagues?
  • Knowing the market of each individual league and creating specific game plans.
  • Does strategy alter by playing in multiple leagues?
    • To what extent should you diversify the players taken in each league?
  • Keeping track of multiple leagues in season
  • Waiver wire in season
    • Start with the shallow leagues
    • Using information from leagues with an earlier FAAB time slot for leagues with later ones
  • How to prioritze leagues in late summer
    • Learning from leagues that are lost
• The impact of the current lockout on drafting
  • Closer prices
  • FAAB early season
  • Mono leagues
    • Actuarial goodness for Ariel

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The Closer Rebuttal for 2022 Drafts Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Strategy Section

• Closer rebuttal for 2022 drafts
  • Historical earnings for top closers
  • Early closers may bake in a certain value loss
  • Low historical hit rates for closers
  • Drafting top closers means passing up on valuable players
  • Drafting a starting pitcher instead of a top closer – one less starter to find on the waiver wire
  • Too much uncertainty in bullpens
  • Too much draft capital invested in a one-category player
  • Use a combination of absolute value and relative value

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The Auction Strategy Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Glenn Colton

Strategy Section

• Auction Strategy
  • Online auctions vs. live auctions
  • Having a partner in an auction
  • Auction preparation vs. snake draft preparation
  • Scouting prior to an auction
  • Constructing auction values
  • How strict should you be to your values?
    • When should you bid over your values?
  • Hitter vs. Pitcher % split in auctions
  • Closer market premiums in 2022
  • Auction values for unsigned free agents in mono leagues
    • Playing in multiple leagues – hedging bets
  • Constructing market value dollars
    • Converting ADP to dollars
  • Constructing an auction plan
    • Finding the hotspots
• Nomination Strategy
  • Nominating players you want vs. players you don’t want
    • Pacing yourself through the auction
  • Plan A / Plan B nomination
  • Economic Box nomination
  • Blocking a position nomination
• Bidding Tactics
  • Freeze bidding
  • Starting bids for players
  • Incremental bidding vs. jump bidding
  • Bidding on the 9’s, bidding on the 0’s
  • Price enforcing

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The Potential Profit Sources & Middle Infield Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Nando Di Fino

Strategy Section

• Potential Profit Sources
  • Rookies/Prospects
    • Bobby Witt Jr.
    • Oneil Cruz
    • Riley Greene
    • Spencer Torkelson
  • Aging Veterans
    • Charlie Morton
    • Zack Greinke
    • Joey Votto
    • Yadier Molina
    • Adam Wainwright
    • Nelson Cruz
    • Yuli Gurriel
    • Josh Donaldson
    • Charlie Blackmon
  • Down Season
    • Mike Trout
    • Francisco Lindor
    • DJ LeMahieu
    • Gleyber Torres
  • Injury Bounceback
    • Adalberto Mondesi
    • Jack Flaherty
    • Lance McCullers Jr.
    • Luke Voit
    • Ronald Acuna Jr.

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The Closer Thoughts for 2022 Drafts Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Strategy Section

• Closer thoughts for 2022 drafts
  • Don’t play the waiver wire for 2 closers
  • ‘Safe’ closers
  • Economics of closers in drafts
  • Paying up for closers
  • Relative market pricing vs. absolute market pricing
  • The exaggerated case of zigging and zagging
  • Spreading your closer picks throughout the draft
  • Market premium

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The Projections & Corner Infield Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Dan Szymborski

Strategy Section

• Projections
  • What goes into creating a projection system?
  • ZiPS
    • How does ZiPS set itself apart from other projections?
    • How does ZiPS handle multi-year projections?
    • How does ZiPS deal with free agents?
    • How does ZiPS handle rookies?
    • How does ZiPS handle the possible NL Designated Hitter for 2022?
    • How does ZiPS handle uncertain items (nature of the ball, run environment, sticky substances, etc.)?
    • How does ZiPS take into account positions [Question asked in mailbag]?
    • What is new for 2022?
  • Projecting playing time – Should projection systems attempt to do this?
    • ZiPS DC
    • FanGraphs Depth Charts

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The Player Pool & Catcher Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Todd Zola

Todd’s Mastersball Projections

• What’s new?
• Assuming a DH in the National League
• Adjusting for the Camden Yards’ new dimensions
• Adjusting for the Blue Jays irregular home park in 2021

Strategy Section

• Player Pool
  • Starting Pitchers
    • Is there more risk at the very top?
    • Is this the year to wait and grab pitchers in the early middle rounds?
  • Closers
    • Where is the value?
    • How many saves do you really need to be competitive?
  • Corner infielders
    • Bargains in the first base position
      • Pass on top talent?
    • The drop in talent at third base
      • How to attack/address the 3B position
  • Middle infielders
    • Do you need to obtain steals from the middle infield position?
    • Setting hotspot values and budgeting for the middle infield
  • Outfielders
    • At what price points should one purchase outfielders?
      • Early, middle, late, or spread them out?
      • The $1 outfielder conundrum
      • The effect of multiple position eligilibity on the OF pool

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Introduction

In 2018, I introduced a game theory approach for comparing baseball projection systems. Proudly, the original article was nominated for Baseball Article of the Year by the Fantasy Sports Writers Association (FSWA). Now, just days ahead of the release of the 2022 ATC Projections, the projections comparison article is back for its fourth consecutive year!

The approach used in this article is not the standard projections comparison analysis that most others use. The standard analysis involves calculating least square errors, performing chi-squared tests, or perhaps even hypothesis testing. Some type of statistical measure is used to determine the most accurate projections.

For example, late last year – my fellow RotoGraphs colleague Jeff Zimmerman put out a series of in-depth projection comparison accuracy articles. His study centered around the root mean squared error test applied to all projection sets surveyed. The first installment of this excellent series can be found here.

My methodology does not incorporate a statistical model. Instead, it looks to determine the profitability potential of each projection system by simulating what would have happened in a fantasy auction draft. Instead, it games the projections.

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