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

Guest: Trevor May, New York Mets

Interview

• Highlight of Career
• Game planning
  • Is about pitching to your strengths, or exploiting your opponents weaknesses?
  • Game planning team by team
  • Helping other teammates with game planning
  • Having a “default” game plan
  • Using MLB the Show
  • Learning from other teammates
• Health
  • Recovering from TJS
  • Switching from starter to reliever
  • Keeping healthy all season long
  • Extended rest between outings – good or bad?
• Injury Guru Trivia of the Week
• Analytics
  • Trevor’s own stat – Command Quality Ratio (CQR)
  • Trevor’s CQR and Ariel’s wPDI
  • Horizontal movement vs. vertical movement on pitches
  • Pitch velocity, spin rate, spin efficiency
  • Hanging out with the analytics staff
• Mailbag
  • Who do you NOT want to face with the bases loaded?
  • Why #65?
  • Day games vs. night games
  • Favorite inning to pitch in
  • Love of cats
  • Favorite podcast

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The Closer Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Greg Jewett

Strategy Section

Closers

• How to form a closer hierarchy
  • Pre-season
  • Mid-season
  • Closer by committee
• Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
• What is the optimal closer strategy for drafts?
  • Bank an elite closer?
  • Is drafting two top closers a viable strategy?
• Using FAAB resources on closers
  • How much is too much?
• Non-elite closers that may experience a saves surge in September
• What to observe in September to assist us in prep for the 2022 season
• Kenley Jansen
• Organizational & manegerial philosophy

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The Blue Jays Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Rob Silver

LABR Mixed Auction League Update

Ariel’s Softball League Update

Rob’s Personal History in Fantasy Baseball

All-Star Trivia

Strategy Section

• Waiver Wire
  • Was bidding for Alek Manoah too high?
  • Does standing position matter when making bids?
  • Bidding on a dropped top-50 player.
  • Dropping closers late in-season to burn others’ FAAB.
• Middle Relievers
  • Using middle relievers over 6th/7th starting pitchers in fantasy lineups.
  • Streaming middle relievers
• Richard Rodriguez
  • Is there any action that fatnasy owners should take in the next week?
  • What is the probability that he will accumulate meaningful saves for the rest of the season?
• Bench Slots
  • How to balance your roster with injuries vs. potential closer gambles vs. player streaming.

Toronto Blue Jays

• Closer Situation
  • Julian Merryweather update
• Deadline Trades – Team Needs
  • 3B/OF
• Randal Grichuk
  • Rankings Game – versus:
    • Bryan Reynolds
    • Hunter Renfroe
    • Andrew McCutchen
    • Max Kepler
    • Lourdes Gurriel Jr.
• Catcher Situation

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The Returnee Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Jeff Erickson

Strategy Section

• Returning players to active lineups
  • When to return struggling hitters
    • Lourdes Gurriel Jr.
  • When to return struggling pitchers
    • Luis Castillo
  • When to return recovered injured players
  • When to insert prospects
    • Jarred Kelenic
    • Bobby Dalbec
    • Jo Adell
• How to determine when a “hot” waiver wire player is worth a pickup

Cincinnati Reds

• Closer situation
• Nick Castellanos – Where does he rank ROS among outfielders?
• Is Tyler Mahle for real?

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NEW FEATURE ALERT! We have added an upgraded version of RosterResource’s Closer Depth Chart to FanGraphs. Read more about it here.

We will always include a link to the full Closer Depth Chart at the bottom of the Bullpen Report each day. It’s also accessible from the RosterResource drop-down menu and from any RosterResource page. Please let us know what you think.

The 2021 version of Bullpen Report includes five different sections, as well as the closer chart, which can be found at the bottom of the page.

1. Notable Workloads: Primary closers or valuable members of a closer committee who have been deemed unavailable or likely unavailable for the current day due to recent workload.
2. Injury News 
3. Outlier Saves: Explanation for a non-closer earning a save during the previous day.
4. Committee Clarity: Notes on a closer committee that clarify a pitcher’s standing in the group.
5. Losing A Grip: Struggling closers who could be on the hot seat.

The “RosterResource” link will take you to the corresponding team’s RosterResource depth chart, which will give you a better picture of the full bullpen and results of the previous six days (pitch count, save, hold, win, loss, blown save.)
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The FAAB Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Vlad Sedler

Strategy Section

• Waiver Wire
  • Weekly Process
  • Distribution of waiver wire pickups
  • When to drop a player
  • How to look for players to stream
  • Two-start pitchers
• FAAB Bidding
  • How format and league size affects bidding
    • Difference between $1 and $0 minimum bid
    • Difference between $100 and $1000 season budget
  • General approach to a FAAB budget
  • Keeping your ROI high
  • “Keep honest” bids
  • What to be mindful of while bidding during the season

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The Spring Training Injury Update Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Spring Training Injury Updates

Batters

• Alex Bregman
• Xander Bogaerts
• J.T. Realmuto
• Trent Grisham
• Rhys Hoskins
• Nick Madrigal
• Brandon Belt
• Ji-Man Choi
• Adam Haseley
• Lorenzo Cain
• Kole Calhoun
• Evan Longoria
• Miguel Andujar
• Brendan Rodgers
• Jarred Kelenic

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3/11/21

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to our Patreon!!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• Forrest Whitley having TJ
• Spring Standouts:
  • Joey Gallo 5 HR
  • Willi Castro 3 HR
  • Ryan O’Hearn 3 HR
  • Ty France 3 HR; .615 AVG
  • Gregory Polanco 2 HR, 1 SB, 1.545 OPS
  • Victor Robles 3 SB
  • Sam Hilliard 3 SB

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3/9/21

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to our Patreon!!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• Razzslam update (0:00)
• Non-Contact leaders tweet (8:24)
  • Bobby Dalbec
    • Michael Chavis could start in MiLB
  • Luis Robert/ Adalberto Mondesi (17:47)
  • Keston Hiura (19:52)

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Closers are a mess this year. Sure, that was probably last year’s intro (well, I didn’t do this article, but I definitely commented about how 2020’s pool was a mess, too) and 2019’s and perhaps even 2018’s as managers have become smarter with reliever usage meaning they will use their best guys in the highest leverage situations more often as opposed to just saving them for the ninth. This presents an interesting conundrum wherein I appreciate the usage on a baseball level because it is absolutely the right way to manage a bullpen, but I hate it from a fantasy perspective because it adds more uncertainty to an already volatile part of our game.

The Tampa Bay Rays are obviously the gold standard here. Is “gold standard” the right phrase for this? Do you want to be the gold standard for pissing off fantasy managers? Let’s be honest, they don’t care and they definitely shouldn’t, they are just trying to get wins. Anyway, the Rays have set the bar here and other teams are following suit because frankly it works. I don’t subscribe to the idea that literally anyone can close, but I also realize that many more relievers are cut out for it than the consensus believed 5+ years ago when many more teams had a locked in 9th-inning guy.

Nick Anderson has a case as the very best reliever in baseball and yet he notched just six saves in 2020 with Diego Castillo getting four and 10 other relievers getting 1-2. In 11 of his 19 appearances, the Rays deployed Anderson in the 7th or 8th inning with the remaining eight being in the 9th or later (didn’t pitch until the 10th in one game and actually took the loss). No other team is as extreme as Tampa Bay, but there are a few assumed closers heading into 2021 who could get the Anderson treatment and their ranking will reflect that.

Jump to any Tier:

• Tier 1
• Tier 2
• Tier 3
• Tier 4
• Tier 5
• Tier 6

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