03/23/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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TOUT REVIEW

• AL Tout Wars Review

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In my previous post, I looked at the hitting landscape for The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational (TGFBI) drafts. I also analyzed my own personal team from league #14, which was dubbed as the “league of death.”

Onto the pitching …

General Observations

Starting Pitchers

Let’s first compare starting pitcher ADPs from the past two seasons of TGFBI.

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I know some drafts are still going forward despite the delay to the MLB season so I wanted to get these RP rankings out as I did promise them on the podcast the other day. I’ll probably do an update to every position once more before the season starts, but here’s the initial run of RPs.

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The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational (TGFBI) drafts have now approached their conclusion. Avid readers of this website will already be familiar with the invitational’s format. TGFBI (created by our own Justin Mason) is the compilation of 390 industry experts across 26 leagues. Each division runs as NFBC-style 15-team leagues, with the collection vying for an overall prize – to win industry bragging rights. The only operational difference is that TGFBI drafts are run with a 4-hour clock – i.e., TGFBI is a slow draft. During the season, the format is virtually identical to the NFBC main event.

Check out TGFBI central and follow your favorite fantasy analysts’s teams at TGFBI.com.

As a bonus, I am honored to host the Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational Podcast – Beat the Shift – along with my friend and fantasy partner, Reuven Guy (@mlbinjuryguru). Last season, Reuven managed to win his league while finishing second in the overall TGFBI competition.

Check out the latest episodes of The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational Podcast – Beat the Shift, found here. Follow me on Twitter at @ATCNY.

This is the 3^rd year of the Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational, and I have participated ever since its inception. In 2020, with so many talented fantasy analysists in my division of TFGBI – my league (#14) was tabbed by many as the “League of Death.” Using the ATC projections, as well as my Replacement Level Drafting (RLD) method, I drafted what will hopefully be a championship caliber team.

Today, I will provide a few observations on the TGFBI drafts, review my personal team makeup, and highlight some of my player selections along the way. My goals of this article are to use the TGFBI experience to convey information to you about the drafting landscape of 2020, as well as to illustrate my team construction process. Hopefully, you will be able to take some nuggets of wisdom from my recap to assist you with your draft preparation.

Before we get further into it – draft standings analysis based on projections are generally irrelevant. But just for fun, here is what FantasyPros had to say about my team.

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There’s an old saying, “may you live in interesting times.” These times are certainly interesting. Novel Coronavirus is inundating health systems. The roaring economy has ground to a halt. Unfortunately, our sports-based distractions from bleak reality haven’t escaped the specter of COVID-19. Major League Baseball has announced at least a two-week delay to the 2020 season.

This is a truly terrible situation with life or death implications, and it is not my intention to make light of it. However, you know the saying about the lemons and the lemonade. So, as fantasy baseball junkies, how should we use our spare time?

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03/12/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer

RELIEVER PREVIEW

• Here is the NFBC Average Draft Data, but we didn’t follow it in order for this one.

THE SUPER 3 (6:46)

• Josh Hader
• Aroldis Chapman
• Kirby Yates

THESE GUYS ARE GOOD, TOO (18:05)

• Edwin Diaz
• Roberto Osuna
• Kenley Jansen

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OK, I thought shortstop was the deepest position this year, but I thiiink I’m anointing third base even deeper. Keep in mind that my main league focus is a 15-team mixer so I see someone like Solak down at 39 (11 games at 3B) and get pretty excited about it. For me, when a position is remarkably deep, I don’t necessarily let it sit and just take someone later but rather I’m more apt to dive in and leverage that depth for multiple positions. I could see myself getting 3B, CI, and UT out of this pool.

If you want to check out my list from September with some commentary on the Top 30, you can still find that here.

Let me know what you think in the comments!

UPDATE: Frazier & Camargo added

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03/11/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer

CATCHER PREVIEW

• NFBC Average Draft Data (set to Online leagues and start date of 3/2/20)

THE SUPER 5

• J.T. Realmuto
• Gary Sanchez
• Yasmani Grandal
• Willson Contreras
• Mitch Garver

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03/10/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host/Producer
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host

SECOND BASE PREVIEW

• NFBC Average Draft Data (set to Online leagues and start date of 2/29/20)

The Studs (1:13)

• Gleyber Torres
• Ozzie Albies
• Jonathan Villar
• Ketel Marte
• José Altuve

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We often hear the adage “you can’t win your draft in the first round, but you can lose it.”

No, you can’t.

Even a total flop of a first-round pick doesn’t preclude you from winning your league. It’s just not how baseball drafts work. Leagues are largely won in the middle and late rounds of drafts. We as a fantasy baseball industry probably spend too much time on the first couple rounds when it comes to article and podcast analysis, but then in October we hear stories from champions about how the picks that clicked from the 10th round and later were instrumental in their title runs.

For today’s exercise, I’m going really deep. Let’s take a look at the average draft position (ADP) data from last year’s NFBC Main Event and put together the best team I can using players drafted after pick 300 (21st round or later). Admittedly, this is hardly a perfect exercise. First off, of course having the answer key makes life easier, but there’s also the fact that not all of these guys emerged immediately so even in cases where they were drafted, many were likely cut before they broke out and wound up performing for a different team.

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