Beat the Shift Podcast – Relief Pitcher Episode w/ Doug Dennis

by
May 17, 2024

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

Guest: Doug Dennis

Strategy Section

  • The value of rostering a closer handcuff
  • The value of middle relievers who won’t close games
  • Key Middle Relievers
  • Timing of when to pick up closer handcuffs off of the wire
  • Looking at overall skills vs. recent performance
  • How much FAAB to spend on new in-season closers?
  • How to deal with closers potentially being traded mid-season?
  • When to drop a struggling or demoted closer?
  • Decisions are context dependent
  • Closers on bad teams

The Doug Dennis Strategy

  • Tout Wars expert league strategy

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Bullpen Situations

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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.

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samsonMember since 2025
1 year ago

Ariel, heard the pod and heard you on HQ today. I think the reason that Larry does not offer values for mixed leagues is tied directly to the way he plays and his methodology. As he stated, in mixed leagues – everyone pays for the top players and the middle to low end are much cheaper; it’s a sharp bell curve. There are many decent $1-2 end game options. Yet those same players in NL (or AL) only leagues are $8-$15 players. Larry’s methodology in redraft leagues is to make just a little profit, perhaps $1-5 profit (or more), on every player. The margins for that strategy don’t work in mixed leagues.

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Ariel CohenFanGraphs Staff
1 year ago
Reply to  samson

Thanks for that. Its a different profit scheme. A different curve for mixed. The profit needed at each value slot is different.

I’m just not sure why he says you can’t calculate it or it doesn’t make sense. Its just different.

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