The Season Wrap-Up Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Ian Kahn

Most memorable moments of the baseball season

Strategy Section

• Which is more important at the draft – Having better knowledge of the players, or better valuation & auction/drafting skills?
• Which is more true?
  • Leagues are won on draft day vs.
  • Leagues are won with great in-season moves & pickups
• Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
• Do you have to walk away with speed in the first few rounds?
  • 1st Round Pick – Bo Bichette vs. Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
• The Case for An Ace – Do you need to walk away with an ace (or two aces) in the first few rounds?
• Is it worth paying up for a super elite catcher (Salvador Perez / J.T. Realmuto)?
• Is it worth paying up for closers?
• Can you wait on corner infielders?
  • Should you disregard positions in the first few rounds?

Our successes and failures in 2021

Sandy Alcantara – Is he a top 10 pitcher for 2022?

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The full one hundred and sixty-two major league season has now concluded. After two whole tumultuous years, it is with great joy, that I am able to utter this sentence once again. After just a 60-game short season in 2021, completing the full schedule docket is a sparkling achievement.

It is now time to check back on how we fared during the past season. Here at RotoGraphs, that tradition starts with reviewing our pre-season bold predictions.

As always, I will remind my readers that we will never succeed in perfectly mining all of our bold predictions, nor should we. If this was simply a contest to obtain high precision, then we would have filled our lots with easy guesses. “Gerrit Cole will strike out 180 batters” – is an amazing baseball accomplishment, but it is far from bold. In fact, ATC was the low projection system on Gerrit Cole, and predicted an expected 257 Ks. Forget bold – the statistics may have suggested a probability of circumstance close to 60-75%.

Bold predictions are meant to be a far more remote event. They are meant to be unlikely.

At the other end of the spectrum, bold predictions are also not meant to be impossible. “Albert Pujols will steal 25 bases,” is not within the realm of any reasonable possibility. That is a prediction into the weird or absurd – which is NOT the purpose of these columns.

This author perennially suggests that bold predictions should lie in the 70^th to 90^th percentiles. In other terms, we should be boldly calling events that are 10-30% likely to occur. In return period speak – an occurrence that should unfold every 1 in 3.3 to 1 in 10 years. It should be a prediction that would happen once, twice or thrice a decade.

The point of the exercise is to highlight certain undervalued (or overvalued) players by choosing a few unlikely, but achievable outcomes. By doing so, the goal is for the reader to pay the player(s) in question a bit more (or less) attention than the market would suggest.

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Introduction

Well, we are down to the final week of fantasy baseball. After a short 60 game season in 2020, we are blessed to be approaching game 162 here in 2021!

We here at RotoGraphs, are hoping that you are right in the thick of the competition for your league’s fantasy championship title. For me – I am right in the middle of an intense battle with one of the legends of rotisserie baseball, Ron Shandler, as well as our own Jeff Zimmerman.

The league that I am referring to is the Mixed Auction LABR league. I was one this division of LABR’s inaugural members back in 2020.

Above is a photograph of some of the participants of the live 2020 auction draft from Tampa, Florida. Due to COVID, this year’s draft was held online. LABR is one of the longest running (if not THE longest currently running) expert leagues of rotisserie baseball. It is an honor simply to be invited to compete.

The Mixed auction LABR league is a very standard 12-team 5×5 rotisserie league. We use the standard scoring categories (R, RBI, HR, SB, BA, W, K, SV, ERA, WHIP), and standard rosters (14 B, 9 P). Scoring periods are weekly, trading is allowed, and the initial draft is of the auction variety. Last year, I went into great detail recapping my draft – a two-part article that can be found here and here.

As many of you might already know, as a risk management actuary – my day job consists of running simulation models to recommend purchasing decisions to the upper management of my company. I simulate possible fires, hurricanes, medical malpractice claims, and other liabilities that we may be on the hook for.

Borrowing several actuarial methods, I adapted some of these models in order to develop a proprietary in-season fantasy baseball tool. It is a probabilistic final standings simulator. Using the current league accumulated standings, a source of projected ROS statistics, a volatility and a correlation model – I run 4000 iterations of what might happen for the remainder of the season.

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The Final Week Decisions Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

League Updates

Strategy Section

• Final Week Strategies & Decisions
  • No fear of droping players
  • Categories categories categories
  • Players in a pennant race
  • Younger players
  • Hot hand
  • Projections vs. final month stats
  • Roster flexibility in the final week
  • Go with your gut
  • Rotation schedules revamped for playoff bound teams

Injry Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update – Reuven gives us the injury updates.

Housekeeping

• Upcoming Episode Schedule
• Thank you for listening !!!

Follow us on Twitter

• Ariel Cohen (@ATCNY)
• Reuven Guy (@mlbinjuryguru)
• Beat the Shift Podcast (@Beat_Shift_Pod)

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

Strategy Section

• Last 2 weeks of the season
  • No more fear of droping players
  • Specific team schedules in the penultimate week, and lineup decisions
  • Contending teams and playing time

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update – Reuven gives us the injury updates.

Live show announcement!

Follow us on Twitter

• Ariel Cohen (@ATCNY)
• Reuven Guy (@mlbinjuryguru)
• Beat the Shift Podcast (@Beat_Shift_Pod)

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

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update – Reuven gives us the injury updates.

League Updates

Strategy Section

• Frequency of success vs. Magnitude of success
• Avoid same team stacking in fantasy baseball?

9/11

Follow us on Twitter

• Ariel Cohen (@ATCNY)
• Reuven Guy (@mlbinjuryguru)
• Beat the Shift Podcast (@Beat_Shift_Pod)

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

Guest: Greg Jewett

Strategy Section

Closers

• How to form a closer hierarchy
  • Pre-season
  • Mid-season
  • Closer by committee
• Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
• What is the optimal closer strategy for drafts?
  • Bank an elite closer?
  • Is drafting two top closers a viable strategy?
• Using FAAB resources on closers
  • How much is too much?
• Non-elite closers that may experience a saves surge in September
• What to observe in September to assist us in prep for the 2022 season
• Kenley Jansen
• Organizational & manegerial philosophy

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

Guest: James Anderson

Strategy Section

Prospects

• Guaging which teams will showcase prospects
• Positions and service time manipulation
• The affect of COVID in 2020 on prospects in 2021
• Will there be another Randy Arozarena in 2021?
• Impact prospects for 2022

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Prospect Discussion

• Bobby Witt Jr.
  • How will the KC Royals allign their defense in future years?
• Julio Rodriguez
• Jarred Kelenic
• Adley Rutschman
  • Catchers – High prospect failure rates
• Keibert Ruiz
• Jo Adell
• Jarren Duran
• Alex Kirilloff
• Max Meyer
• Nolan Gorman

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

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update – Reuven gives us the injury updates.

Follow us on Twitter

• Ariel Cohen (@ATCNY)
• Reuven Guy (@mlbinjuryguru)
• Beat the Shift Podcast (@Beat_Shift_Pod)

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The Self-Evaluation Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Nicklaus Gaut

Field of Dreams

Strategy Section

Self-Evaluation

• For teams in contention
  • Looking at categories to make gains
• For teams not in contention
  • Evaluating what went wrong
  • Following player hot streaks in August/September
  • Trying different strategies

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

• Most innings pitched in 2021

Starting Pitchers who could be limited

• Chris Bassitt
• Julio Urias
• Casey Mize
• Alek Manoah
• Trevor Rogers
  • FIP vs. xFIP

Final Month Fades

• Hitters to Fade
  • Is Nelson Cruz a Hall of Famer?
  • Francisco Lindor vs. Jose Iglesias vs. Amed Rosario
• Pitchers to Fade

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