After extending my stay at Prospect Station, I have arrived at the next leg of my travels: Aging Curve Junction. I acknowledge that this metaphor is somewhat tortured, but I do think it gestures toward something genuine. A junction is a place where two paths of travel meet, and a dynasty ranking system requires merging the hypothetical of prospects and the real-life production of current big-leaguers over a period of future years. For our purposes, the bridge between those links is the aging curve.

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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?”

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“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.”

Introduction:

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

• Tout Wars
• GDD
• Auctioning against Ariel Cohen
• “Mets Fireballer”
• Using AAV in auctions for non-standard leagues

Strategy Section

• How was this draft season different from all other draft seasons?
  • Rookies
  • Closers
  • Pocket Aces
• Lessons learned
• Draft regrets
• How long into the season should you use pre-season projections?

Bold Predictions

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Buy/Sell/Hold

• Hot
  • Hitters
    • Andy Pages
    • Shea Langeliers
    • Sal Stewart
    • Liam Hicks
  • Pitchers
    • Cam Schlittler
    • Kevin Gausman
    • Joe Boyle
    • Bryce Elder
• Cold
  • Hitters
    • Josh Naylor
    • Spencer Torkelson
    • Marcell Ozuna
    • Caleb Durbin
  • Pitchers
    • Eury Pérez
    • Tanner Bibee
    • Nathan Eovaldi
    • Emmet Sheehan

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. 

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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.

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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

• Link to Auction Board
• Strategy & preparation
• What we noticed in the auction
  • Auction temperature
• How we pivoted during the auction
• Our best buys of the auction
• Our worst buys of the auction
• Player analysis
  • Tatsuya Imai
  • Jacob Misiorowski
  • Cody Ponce 폰세
• Relief Pitcher strategy
• Team Recaps
• Reserve round strategy
• Key takeaways

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

• Which pitcher types should be emphasized on your fantasy rosters?
• What statistics are most helpful in evaluating pitchers?
• Which pitchers are worth watching this year in spring training?
• How will the World Baseball Classic affect pitchers this season?
• Which pitchers are throwing new pitches or changing pitch mixes this year?
• Who are some potential breakout pitchers for 2026?
• Expectations for Tatsuya Imai
• Starting Pitchers
  • General player pool observations
  • Better to have an ace, or 2-3 1A starting pitchers?

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

ATC Undervalued Starting Pitchers

• Bryan Woo
• Logan Webb
• Nathan Eovaldi
• Zack Wheeler
• Sonny Gray
• Luis Castillo
• Ranger Suárez
• Matthew Boyd
• Kris Bubic
• José Soriano
• Cody Ponce 폰세

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

• 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

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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.

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