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

Guest: Frank Stampfl

Strategy Section

• General auction strategy
• Auction rules to live by
• Auction preparation
• The most important items to keep track of in an auction
• How to construct market values
  • What time frame should market values be drawn from?
• How to construct strike prices
  • How strict are you to your prices?
• What should you set as your Hitter % vs Pitcher % split?
• Nomination Strategies
  • When should you nominate “hype” players?
  • Breaking up tiers
• Stars & Scrubs vs. Spread the Risk
• Bidding
  • General
  • Frequency
  • Fast vs. slow
  • Starting bids
  • Price enforcing
  • +2 bids

Mailbag

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Subscribe: RSS

With the Ottoneu keeper deadline on January 31, it is possible for auctions for established leagues to start as soon as February 1. In practice, they rarely do, but there are a few auctions either underway (slow auctions taking some time to finish up) or completed, and that gives us a chance to learn quite a bit.

Earlier in the offseason, there were some mock auctions and some first-year auctions for new leagues, but those don’t behave like keeper auctions. Now that we have a few keeper auctions, we can start to get a sense of how your keeper drafts – whether they are Ottoneu auctions or drafts in another format – might behave.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

• Kyle Tucker signs with the Los Angeles Dodgers

ATC Undervalued Catchers

• Salvador Perez
• Will Smith
• Alejandro Kirk
• Ryan Jeffers
• Bo Naylor

Injury Update

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Subscribe: RSS

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

Guest: Mike Mager

Strategy Section

• NFBC Strategy
  • What sets the NFBC apart from others?
  • Key components to winning
  • Evaluating players BEFORE looking at projections
  • Which is more important – the draft or in-season play?
  • What goes into lineup setting?
  • How do you prevent overthinking decisions?
  • Are there certain category statistics that you need to solidify early in the year?
  • Are there certain category statistics that you can wait on and pick up in-season?
  • How does strategy change year to year?
  • Auction planning
  • Today’s game
    • Pitching strategy in today’s game
    • Are there sleepers anymore?
• Waiver Wire / FAAB
  • Interaction with the current week’s lineup setting
  • Putting in the time
• Fantasy partnership
  • What makes a successful fantasy partnership?
  • Splitting up tasks

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Buy/Sell/Hold

• Hot Players
  • Nathan Lukes
  • Dominic Smith
  • Miguel Andujar
  • Luke Keaschall

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Subscribe: RSS

Tonight, I will be drafting my second $1600 NFBC Auction Championship team. This is a 15-team, 5×5 Roto league with an overall prize pool. You can see the live draft board here. 

Read the rest of this entry »

When preparing for a draft or auction, it is pretty typical to determine what positions you feel best about the deep options and therefore don’t have to spend big resources upfront. Love a bunch of shortstops you can get after pick 200/for less than $5? Then you don’t need to break the bank for Francisco Lindor.

In keeper auctions, that depth can shift unexpectedly (as we discussed earlier this week), so you need to now only know what positions are deep but what positions are deep among players actually available. But there is another factor that impacts position depth: what other teams need.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Mixed LABR Auction Recap episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Justin Mason

TGFBI

• What is TGFBI?
• How did TGFBI get started?
• First few rounds of TGFBI 2025

Mixed LABR Auction

• General Auction Strategy
• Incoming plan
• Observations
  • Positional Observations
  • Categorical Observations
  • Auction Temperature
• What we liked / disaliked about our auction
• Live vs. online auctions
• Auction Board:
  • https://www.rtsports.com/labr-mixed-auction

Injury Update

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Subscribe: RSS

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

Guest: Frank Stampfl

Strategy Section

• 1st & 2nd Rounds
  • What should you accomplish in the 1st two rounds?
  • Do you need to draft a starting pitcher in the first few rounds of drafts?
  • Overvalued players
    • Should you draft catchers in the first two rounds?
    • Ohtani at 1.1 ?
  • Undervalued players
    • Freddie Freeman’s consistency
  • Players drafted outside the first two rounds, but should be drafted earlier.
  • The Top 3
    • Why Elly De La Cruz should and shouldn’t be considered to be drafted just outside the top 3.
• The ATC Volatility Metrics
• Corner Infield strategy
  • Player pool

ATC Undervalued Players

• Corner Infielders
  • • Vinnie Pasquantino 1B
    • Alec Bohm 3B
    • Yandy Díaz 1B
    • Luis Rengifo 2B/3B
    • Nolan Arenado 3B
    • Andrew Vaughn 1B
    • Michael Busch 1B
    • Ryan McMahon 3B

Injury Update

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Subscribe: RSS

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

Guest: Erik Halterman

Strategy Section

• Snake Drafts
  • How to generally prepare
  • How has preparation changed over the past five years?
  • Drafting “naked”
  • Drafting early in the season (January) vs. drafting late in the season (March)
  • Create a do not draft list?
  • Draft risky pitchers?
  • Proactive vs. Relative approach
    • ADP Chicken
  • How to use ADP
  • How to handle risk?
    • In the aggregate
    • Per player
      • Risk-adjusted pricing
    • Power drafters (playing in multiple leagues)
    • Binary risks
      • Free agents in mono leagues
• Catcher strategy
  • Player pool
  • The value of catchers
    • Catcher bump

ATC Undervalued Players

• Catchers
  • • Salvador Perez
      • Is Perez worthy of the Hall of Fame?
    • Logan O’Hoppe
    • Gabriel Moreno
    • Austin Wells
    • Luis Campusano

Mailbag

Injury Update

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Subscribe: RSS

The Auction Strategy (Part 2) episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Marc Winokur

Auction Strategy Section

• Hitter vs. Pitcher split
  • For valuations
  • For allocations
• Money management in an auction
• In-draft inflation
  • Calculate or feel it?
  • Keeper league inflation
• Endgame
  • How many $1 players should you look to acquire?
  • Is it good to have the hammer?
• Nominations
  • Multi-round plan
  • Nominations are very important
  • Tips
• Bidding
  • Timing, frequency & speed
  • NFBC’s Max Bid button
• Scouting players

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Subscribe: RSS