… but not by much for teams I just owned …

My 2019 fantasy season did not live up to my standards with most of the struggles being self-inflicted. Here are some overarching themes I spotted with each league plus some additional points at the end.

Horrible FAAB management

I ran out of money in almost every league and spent too much FAAB on worthless assets. Looking back over the leagues, the root cause was chasing week-only plays. From my work writing “The Process”, I found out how valuable it is to grind out each week. Additionally, I ran the weekly FAAB projections here so I knew around what it would take to get each. Initially, I got the players and but dropped them a week or two later for better options with little to show for the FAAB spent

I need to set a FAAB limit for chasing week-only plays and just accept it’s fine to miss out on a few players. A week’s advantage is worth the same in week 1 or the final week. The rest of my FAAB can be used for chasing long term improvements. Some players may straddle the long-term and weekly play so the FAAB may come from both the weekly and long term pools. I need to have a plan and stick to it.
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The 2019 MLB regular season has concluded. Two Astros may very well finish 1-2 in the AL Cy Young award. The Brewers went on an unbelievable Yelich-less run to make the playoffs – only to be eliminated in the wildcard game with their best pitcher on the mound. A new record was set for rookie homeruns in a single season. The Yankees hit 306 HRs as a team, and yet that did not set a record; the Twins hit 307! Baseball set a new collective HR record. It was the year of the longball, or as Jeff Zimmerman calls it, “Happy Fun Ball.”

It is now time to check back on how we fared this year in fantasy. Let’s start with a review of this season’s bold predictions.

As I often remind my readers – we will never succeed in getting the entirety of our bold predictions correct, or even realize a majority of them. If I wanted to achieve a high success rate, I could simply have filled up my list of predictions with easy ones such as “Justin Verlander will win 10+ games this season.” That class of prediction would have been too easy.

Rather, the point of the exercise is to highlight certain undervalued (or overvalued) players by choosing a few unlikely, yet achievable outcomes. The idea is to target somewhere between the 70^th and 90^th percentiles of possible outcomes – predictions which are 10-30% likely to occur.

I often use the ATC Projections as a guide for these bold predictions. I look at where the ATC projections generate an outcome which varies significantly from what the general public perceives will happen. Some other times – I just go with my gut and with my own intuition.

Let’s recap!

#1: Matt Barnes will finish as a top 5 saves leader in 2019

There are two elements that need to occur for a relief pitcher to accumulate saves. The pitcher needs to:

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Introduction

Does it make a difference as to a fantasy baseball team’s starting draft position? Are all draft slots created equally? Is it better to be at the ends (wheel/turn), or rather, is it more opportune to make one’s selections from the middle of the order?

To try and help us answer these questions, let’s look at what happened in 2019. Now, of course, the current season isn’t over just yet – there are still a few more weeks of baseball. However, now in mid-September, it is sufficiently late in the season for us to analyze how the draft positions played out over the course of 2019.

Sources Used

For this study, we will observe the standings for three different league types:

• TGFBI – 21 Leagues
• NFBC Main Event – 38 Leagues
• NFBC Draft Champions – 230 Leagues

TGBFI (The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational) is our own Justin Mason’s creation. It is a compilation of 315 fantasy baseball experts, divided into 21 NFBC-Style divisions. The 315 experts are also pitted against each other in a large overall competition. [I am the host of the TGFBI Beat the Shift Podcast, which can be found right here.]

The NFBC (National Fantasy Baseball Championship) Main Event is a set of high money entry leagues, with large financial payouts for the victors. As with TGFBI, the teams are all additionally entered into an overall contest with even larger payouts for the top finishers.

The NFBC Draft Champion leagues are money league contests as well (although their cost and payouts are far less than that of the main event leagues). As I will further describe below, they are 50-round slow drafts.

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8/22/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer
• @RotoGut – Guest Vlad Sedler

2020 Draft – 3 Rounds

Vlad, Justin, and Paul each take control of five “teams” and draft the first three rounds for them and discuss the thought process behind the 45 picks.

Draft Board

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Previously, I looked at the hitter and pitcher auction bargains of 2019 at mid-season. These were the players that have earned the most rotisserie value, net of their cost to roster.

Now let’s turn our attention to the players who have lost the most profit in the first half of 2019, who I will refer to as the value drainers. These are the largest under-performers (to date), relative to their pre-season auction values.

To remind everyone:

• $Value refers to the accumulated 5×5 rotisserie value of each player, scaled to a full-season.
• $AAV refers to the average auction cost to purchase the player pre-season.
• $Bargain is the difference between the $Value and the $AAV.

For this exercise – In order to calculate $Value, I use NFBC roster settings and scoring parameters. Actual $AAV data is used to determine the opportunity cost. For the full methodology of how these player bargains are calculated, please refer to my introductory post. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I looked at the 2019 auction hitter bargains at mid-season. Now let’s dive into the most profitable pitchers of the first half.

To remind everyone, we aren’t looking here for the highest earning pitchers of 2019 – we are looking at pitchers with the largest values net of their opportunity cost to acquire. Gerrit Cole has earned nearly $24 of fantasy auction value – making him the 7^th highest earning pitcher. However, with his $36 average auction value – he technically is in the red as far as profitability goes.

For the methodology employed and the terms used in the ensuing leaderboards, please refer to my previous post on the 2019 Fantasy Baseball Auction Bargains at Mid-Season – Batters edition.

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There are two different and distinct ways to kick off each season in fantasy baseball. I am referring to the two popular ways to fill teams’ rosters pre-season – namely snake drafts and auctions. In either method of commencement, the goal is to accumulate the most player statistics for the forthcoming season.

However, drafts differ from auctions in the value proposition of roster slots – which is static for snake drafts. Unless you are able to trade draft picks, you are cemented with those specific slots that in turn correspond to fixed levels of fantasy value. At an auction, the distribution of acquired values may vary more widely.

The predominant first overall snake draft selection in just about any fantasy format (or depth) this year was Mike Trout. The impetus for that is easy to explain. Trout is the player with a tremendous (dare I say the highest) floor of talent, a high upside of statistics to accumulate, and a proven track record to back everything up. In economic terms, he provided the most potential value with the least amount of risk.

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Today’s data dump is brought to you by Paul Sporer and Justin Mason. In a recent Sleeper and the Bust episode, they were frustrated with not knowing how bidding in a 12-team league compared to a 15-teamer. I decided to go ahead and dive into the bidding in the NFBC’s 12-team Online Championship and the 15-team Main Event.

Note: I worked on this article over the weekend and only had this season’s FAAB data up to week 10. By the time the article publishes, week 11 will be available. The results wouldn’t change much with one additional week.

First, here is some background information on the league types. They are exactly identical in these ways:

• 23 total starters, 9 pitchers, 14 hitters
• $1000 in FAAB to spend with no Vickrey bidding and the results run on Sunday evening.
• No $0 bids.
• Seven bench spots.
• Both have a league and overall prize.

As for the differences, one is obvious, one has 12 teams and the other 15 teams. The less obvious one is that the 12-team leagues, on average, start drafting earlier in the preseason. For this reason, MLB teams have more time to churn their rosters and deal with injuries making the first FAAB period a little more aggressive compared to the 15-team leagues.

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The NFBC kicked off their Memorial Day 2nd Chance leagues last night with three drafts completed and we now have some average draft position (ADP) data to digest. I have my 2CL (is that a cool abbreviation for “2nd Chance League”?) this Friday evening and I’ll be streaming it live on Twitch if you have any interest in watching it. I want to dive in on the biggest fallers here today with some caveats. Or at least one major caveat: my cutoff is the first 15 rounds.

I want to see who is still be taken with some expectation of performance while sustaining a major fall in their cost. The actual biggest droppers without limits are the obvious injury guys. The single biggest fall from the spring Rotowire Online Championship leagues (12-team format to stay consistent with the 2CLs) is Travis Shaw who has the double whammy of injury and severe underperformance. He’s gone from the 95th player chosen on average to the 362nd last night, a colossal 267-pick drop. Miguel Andujar (347th), Jameson Taillon (312th), Luis Severino (280th), and Nathan Eovaldi (390th) are also unsurprisingly amongst the nine players with a 200+ pick dip.

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I’m headed back from a weekend in New York City after participating in the 15-team Tout Wars mixed auction and a NFBC Main Event league. It was great catching up with everyone and meeting some new faces such as our first president. The weekend didn’t completely consisit of bagels and beers. I had work to do and compiled a couple of teams. Here are my thoughts which other fantasy owners may find helpful.

Pre-weekend thoughts (written before either event).

• Historically the Tout Wars hitter/pitcher split has been a steady 70%/30%. With pitchers being taken earlier and earlier this season, I wonder if this split will change. I’m creating my values with the 70/30 split but know I may need to adjust the split on the fly. Read the rest of this entry »