Beat the Shift Podcast – LIVE from First Pitch Arizona 2025!

by
November 14, 2025

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
  • 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
    • 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?

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.

Comments are closed.