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

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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

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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

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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

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The Auction Strategy (Part 1) episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Marc Winokur

Auction Strategy Section

• Differences between auctions and snake drafts
  • Benefits of auctions
  • Difference in preparation
• Advice for new auction players
• The most important items to keep track of during an auction
• Working with a partner
• How online auctions differ from in-person auctions
• How to construct market values
  • What to do for non-standard formats
• How to construct player values
• How to construct strike prices for buying players

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When I wrote about relief pitcher spend last week, I kept looking at the data I was using – Opening Day rosters and end of season results for all OPL-eligible FanGraphs Points leagues – and thinking about all the other questions I could explore. It took a lot to stay focused on bullpens. But with that behind me, I can now turn my attention to a topic I have wrestled with for years: how to split budget between hitters and pitchers.

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The Ottoneu Slack Community is a great source of interesting debates on Ottoneu-specific topics and another was sparked today by this exchange:

Manager 1: What is record for trying to get an RP at auction without success? I am on my 6th nom.

Manager 2: Depends on if you’re trying to get them for $1 or bidding to win.

Manager 1: Nope, bidding market value or higher.

Managers are left anonymous here because a) it doesn’t matter and b) I want to be clear that I am not picking on or attacking anyone. We have all been in manager 1’s shoes, trying to fill a spot and failing, while feeling you are doing what is needed to get an auction win. But it does open up an interesting topic on “market value.”

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

Guest: Larry Schechter

Larry’s new book – The History of Fantasy Sports

Strategy Section

• Auction Draft Strategy
  • General Strategy
  • Bargains & Relative Bargains
  • High priced catchers
  • How to bump up catchers for replacement level
  • Valuing closers
  • Preparing with market values
  • How to incorporate risk in your values
    • Baked into player projections via playing time
    • Aggregating risk
  • Using projections
• Mono vs. Mixed leagues
  • Valuing players in a mixed league
  • FAAB
• In-person vs. online auctions

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

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Tonight, I will be drafting my second $1500 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 »

Tonight, I will be drafting my first $1500 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 »