Question: What’s the most important thing to remember when drafting in any fantasy baseball league?

Wise-Guy Answer: The type of beer you have on deck.

Wise-Guy’s Friend’s Answer: Making sure you have snacks that don’t grease up your keyboard!

Serious Answer: Your league’s scoring system.

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On Tuesday, just hours before I dove into the auction for league 1199, I laid out the challenge I faced for the brilliant minds that read this site, and promised to return with news of how things played out. This is my foretold return.

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This post won’t be long. And it has more questions than answers. But it’s the most immediately relevant thing I have ever written (at least to me). What do you do in auction where you have a choice between getting a star or building a balanced team and you can’t realistically do both?

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It’s always good to remind yourself of your league’s scoring system before you start a re-draft for the season. If you’re like me and you play in multiple fantasy baseball leagues with multiple scoring systems, things can get a little blended together. Here are some really important points to remember when comparing Ottoneu points and standard roto Read the rest of this entry »

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

Guest: Eno Sarris

Pitching+, Stuff+, Command+

Strategy Section

• Effects of new MLB rule changes on pitchers
• Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
• Risk
  • Valuing pitchers returning from injury
    • Chris Sale
    • Jacob deGrom
    • Tyler Glasnow
  • Valuing older pitchers with lots of mileage on their arms
• Shohei Othani
  • Is there extra risk asscociated with rostering the two-way player?
• Starting pitcher strategy
  • General landscape
  • Do you need to draft an ace pitcher in fantasy?
  • Should we avoid the waiver wire for starting pitchers?
    • Should we avoid streaming SPs?
  • Should we tilt the Hitter/Pitcher % split more towards pitching?
  • Should we use more bench slots for starting pitchers this year?
  • Should we be chasing any of the following?
    • Wins
    • Innings
    • High IP / GS
    • Pitchers on good teams

ATC Undervalued Players

• Starting Pitchers
  • Aaron Nola
  • Shane Bieber
  • Kevin Gausman

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

Guest: Nick Pollack

Pitch Level Value (PLV)

Strategy Section

• Role changes
• New pitches
• Pitch mix changes
• Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
• What can we learn about pitchers from spring training?
• Valuation of foreign pitchers
  • Kodai Senga

ATC Undervalued Players

• Starting Pitchers
  • Luis Severino
  • George Kirby
  • Jeffrey Springs
  • Drew Rasmussen
  • Chris Bassitt
  • Pablo Lopez
  • Alex Cobb
  • Alex Wood
  • Steven Matz

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Last week, after powering through two live auctions and starting a slow one, I wrote about the differences between the two approaches to auctions, focusing on how they are structurally different. I also promised to come back with more about strategy in both formats. And here I am!

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

Guest: Steve Gardner

2023 LABR Auctions

Strategy Section

• General Auction Preparation
  • How does it differ from snake drafts?
• Position scarcity in auctions & punting
• Live auctions vs. online auctions
• Mono league auctions
• How does auction strategy and future FAAB spending tie in together?
• How should you prepare yourself mentally for the auction?
• What should you do during auction breaks?
• Scouting other league members
  • How does this affect the way that you should auction?
• How to create auction values & strike prices
  • When should you bid over your values?
• How much should you spend on hitting vs. pitching?
• Stars & Scrubs vs. Spread the Risk
• In-draft adjustments
  • In-draft inflation
• Nominations
  • How do you determine who you should nominate next?
  • Controlling a room with nominations
• Money Management
  • Pacing yourself throughout the auction
  • Having the hammer at the end
• Bidding
  • How often should you bid on players?
  • Price enforcing
  • Starting bids
  • Freeze bids
  • Bid on the ‘9’s?
  • Timing of bids
  • $2 bids
  • Sneaking $1 players in early

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It’s Ottoneu auction season, and while most auctions won’t happen for a few weeks, there are plenty of leagues auctioning right now. I have already finished one auction and I am in the middle of a second as I sit here writing. How am I writing while mid-auction? Am I the world’s best multi-tasker?

No. I am in the middle of a slow auction. And this has me thinking about something that is important in Ottoneu but not specific to Ottoneu: the differences between slow and fast auctions.
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Last night was the auction for the FanGraphs Staff League, going into year 13 and still going strong. My recap will focus on how things went for me and my co-manager, Niv Shah, who built and runs Ottoneu. The goal is to share a lesson you can learn from us so you don’t the mistake we did. But if you want to see the full draft, you can! Eli Ben-Porat streamed the auction, so you can see how this played out live.

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