Beat the Shift Podcast – Catcher Episode w/ Ron Shandler

by
January 16, 2026

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

Guest: Ron Shandler

Fantasy Reconstructed

Strategy Section

  • How do you prepare for fantasy baseball drafts?
    • Broad Assessment Balance Sheet (BABS)
      • BABS Risk Budget
    • Should you make a “do not draft” list?
  • Risk
    • Precision vs. imprecision of fantasy baseball pricing
    • Evaluating player uncertainty
  • Auction tactics – Ariel vs. Ron
    • DEBATE !
    • Pricing methods
    • Nomination strategy
  • Drafting
    • “ADP Chicken”
    • How closely do you look at other teams’ rosters during drafts?
  • Catchers
    • The catcher “bump” in pricing
    • This year’s catcher player pool and value distribution
    • Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
    • Where should you take Cal Raleigh in drafts?
    • Strategy differences between 2 catcher and 1 catcher leagues

BREAKING NEWS

ATC Undervalued Catchers

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.

Injury Update

 

Follow us on Twitter

Podcast (beat-the-shift): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS





 

Ariel is the 2019 FSWA Baseball Writer of the Year. Ariel is also the winner of the 2020 FSWA Baseball Article of the Year award. He is the creator of the ATC (Average Total Cost) Projection System. Ariel was ranked by FantasyPros as the #1 fantasy baseball expert in 2019. His ATC Projections were ranked as the #1 most accurate projection system over the past three years (2019-2021). Ariel also writes for CBS Sports, SportsLine, RotoBaller, and is the host of the Beat the Shift Podcast (@Beat_Shift_Pod). Ariel is a member of the inaugural Tout Wars Draft & Hold league, a member of the inaugural Mixed LABR Auction league and plays high stakes contests in the NFBC. Ariel is the 2020 Tout Wars Head to Head League Champion. Ariel Cohen is a fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) and the Society of Actuaries (SOA). He is a Vice President of Risk Management for a large international insurance and reinsurance company. Follow Ariel on Twitter at @ATCNY.

2 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
JT LancerMember since 2018
1 hour ago

Great show!

1
Ariel CohenFanGraphs Staff
1 hour ago
Reply to  JT Lancer

Thank you so much for listening !

0