Last week, I built a $14 offense using only $1 players from the NFBC average auction values starting March 15. The following day, I shared my $9 pitching staff. One commenter asked my thoughts on Taijuan Walker, who I realized wasn’t even rostered in any of the 8 leagues, even for a buck. So I completely forgot about him and hadn’t even considered those not purchased in any leagues. Commenter Johnnie T suggested I perform the same exercise, but this time only select from players not rostered in any of the auctions. Another fake draft?! Sure! There are now nine auctions run since March 15, so this 14-player offense will be solely composed of hitters who failed to be bought in any of them.

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It’s a bizarro world we’re living in right now. With no baseball and no set date for baseball to resume at this point, it’s getting more and more difficult to decide what topic tomorrow’s article should be on. Even if I do land on such a topic, I don’t really have any idea if it’s what you actually want to read right now. So help me, and the rest of the RotoGraphs crew, brainstorm content ideas.

What do you want to read from me? Any topic is fair game. In fact, I’m sure no one will mind if we go slightly off-baseball, as long as there is at least some loose connection to the sport.

Feel free to suggest as many players as you want to get a Pod Projections post, so you can learn the details of my forecasting process.

Or perhaps you want a strategy article or even my thoughts on handling a particular situation.

Heck, even if you have keeper or league-specific questions, I could potentially write about it, as long as there’s a way to frame the question so my answer appeals to a broad range of readers, and not just you and your league.

Is there a research project or an xMetric you have been dying to analyze/develop but never had the time or Excel/analytic skills? Now’s the time to tell me!

If you’re not sure whether it’s something I would be willing to write or am capable of writing, publish a comment about it anyway! The worst that could happen is I ignore your suggestion. Even if that happens, I could pass the idea along to another writer.

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On Thursday, I had a bit of fun and shared my dominant, future category-leading $14 offense, assembled using NFBC auction values and selecting 14 $1 hitters. Today, I flip to the pitching side and share with you the pitching staff you fear will earn top points in each category.

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Auction day is one of my favorite days of the year. Luckily, I get to enjoy three of those days annually. Unfortunately, COVID-19 and the delayed season has caused me to postpone the local league auction I commish, while a second AL-Only keeper league was postponed as well. So what to do when you love auctioning, but won’t have the chance to for a while? Fake buy players from auctions that did actually take place! For fun, I decided to check out the NFBC average auction values and build a standard 14-player offense for $14. That’s right, every player I selected had to be a buck. Imagine the pitching staff you could assemble with $246!

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MLB announced the season would be delayed by at last two weeks on March 12. Since, it’s become pretty clear that the season will start much later than previously anticipated. The later start will have a dramatic effect on many players’ values. As I’ve discussed recently, there are a bunch of less obvious players who should see a boost in value, as well as a group of players who should suffer a decline in value. Are NFBC drafters correctly making those adjustments? Let’s compare March 1-11 ADP (pre-delay) to March 18-24 ADP (post-delay) to find out. I chose to start the post-delay period on March 18 somewhat arbitrarily, but wanted it to be more recent to account for the assumption that we won’t have baseball until sometime in May, at the earliest.

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Yesterday, I discussed six 2019 fantasy breakouts and concluded with a verdict as to whether I believed each was for real or would be a 2020 bust. Today, let’s flip to the 2019 busts.

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Two years ago during Fantasy Baseball Week at The Hardball Times, I researched whether last season’s breakouts were solid investments the following year. Spoiler alert: they are actually terrible investments. Of course, that’s as a group. That means that not every breakout from the previous season is going to fall flat the following year. So let’s discuss some of the big breakouts from 2019 and decide whether each turns out to be a poor investment bust or ends up holding onto their gains.

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Yesterday, I discussed five players that aren’t generally thought of as gaining value due to the delayed start to the season. Today, I want to discuss players that stand to lose value because they were originally expected to enjoy a playing time boost replacing an injured player, but might no longer do so.

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The delayed start to the season is going to have a significant impact on player values. If you originally expected a player to miss the first two months of the season, now that player is looking like he’ll be ready for opening day. We all know the big names that gain value with the later start date — Justin Verlander, Aaron Judge, James Paxton, etc. Let’s ignore them and discuss some of the less expensive players expected to have a smaller impact. Though the impact is certainly smaller, that doesn’t mean there isn’t profit to be had.

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Last week, I identified and discussed a smattering of players whose ADPs have jumped from February to March in NFBC league drafts. Let’s now review players whose ADPs have fallen and investigate why that may be the case. I will ignore guys who got injured and focus only on guys who had been selected inside the top 300 in Feb.

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