Our esteemed RotoGraphs editor recently passed along a question to the team that came to him from a reader:
“If a player runs a high k-rate upon debut for a significant amount of time, how likely is it that they’ll ever be a viable fantasy hitter?”
“You don’t know how to play first base value assets, Scott?”
“That’s right.”
“It’s not that hard, Scott. Tell him, Wash.”
“It’s incredibly hard.”
“Hey, anything worth doing is. And we’re going to teach you.”
By now, 25 years hence, Moneyball concepts are likely old hat to your average RotoGraphs reader. With the suite of technical tools available to the modern fan, it can be easy to forget just how powerful those insights can still be. Read the rest of this entry »
The Pallazzo episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.
Guests: Sam Wirsching & Britton Allen
Draft Season Recap
Strategy Section
Bold Predictions
Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
Buy/Sell/Hold
Injury Update
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Every year many of the best minds in the fantasy industry are invited to leagues that draft in New York City in the middle of March for Tout Wars. I was also invited.
This year I participated in the Tout Wars Mixed Auction. This is a 5×5 roto league using OBP instead of average. The other wrinkle in Tout Wars is unlimited IL slots, which definitely changes auction strategy compared to NFBC or other formats.
After pulling a Labadini in my LABR auction, I wanted to go back to my traditional balanced approach to try and take advantage of what is often an over aggressive room. At least a few people expected for me to do something crazy or just go for the Labadini again, so by sticking with my normal strategy, I was hoping it would still throw some people.
John E. Sokolowski-Imagn Images
This past weekend, I participated in the Tout Wars mixed auction. I’ve been in the league for about a decade and have won the league a couple of times. Previously, when I won the league, I used a value approach, but over the last few years, the league winners have leaned stars and scrubs. After some middling performances, I needed to find a way to get back to the top. I decided to lean into the league’s tendencies and rules to get ahead.
The Tout Wars Recap episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.
Guest: Joe Gallina
Tout Wars Head to Head Auction
Aaron Judge record Tout Wars bids
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The Starting Pitcher episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.
Guest: Nick Pollack
Strategy Section
Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
ATC Undervalued Starting Pitchers
Deep league starting pitchers
Injury Update
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The Auction Strategy episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.
Guest: Frank Stampfl
Strategy Section
Mailbag
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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.
The Catcher episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.
Guest: Ron Shandler
Fantasy Reconstructed
Strategy Section
BREAKING NEWS
ATC Undervalued Catchers
Injury Update
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