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 »

This past weekend was Tour Wars weekend in New York City. The committee extended me an invitation, likely by mistake, into its head-to-head points league auction. I’ll take a moment to self-indulge and say it’s pretty surreal to finally, like, reach the pinnacle, in a sense. I appreciate and am endlessly grateful for the kind words folks have extended my way in the past few weeks and months and years.

Rudy Gamble, of Razzball fame and a delightful human being whom I finally met in person Friday night, passed along to me positive feedback about my recent draft recaps (NFBC, TGFBI, Rotoballer mock), which seem to have been a helpful prep tool this preseason for some folks. I endeavor to provide a recap that goes beyond a simple list and self-aggrandizement — it would fundamentally misrepresent my rampant self-doubt. Besides, I think it’s helpful to articulate a plan and, when a plan falls apart, how a plan changes mid-draft.

This draft review differs from previous reviews in that the Tout Wars head-to-head points league spawns from an auction draft and not a snake. (A classic auction, each of the 12 teams was allocated $260 to fill 24-man rosters.) Thus, the structure will vary and may be a bit rough around the edges. Still, let’s give this a shot.

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A few years ago I posted an article about designing fantasy league incentives.  While the popularity of customized, add-on incentives is hard to measure across the fantasy community, it’s clear that leagues conceptually understand the potential value of features and rewards that attempt to keep owners engaged over the course of a long baseball season.  In the standard winner-takes-all format of many points leagues, commissioners are often left to mitigate the wreckage of AWOL owners that sell off and check out early, so carrots, even small ones, can help in cross-checking drastic, standings-shaking transactions if designed thoughtfully. But designing the right league incentives is easier said than done because owners are motivated by different values.

The purpose of this article is for you, the reader, to help me design the right incentive structure for the very first 20 team Ottoneu league (more on this soon), an exciting experiment that will dramatically alter the traditional economic model that serves as the foundation of standard 12 team Ottoneu leagues. Your feedback will be critical to building a league that lasts, but the discussion will hopefully be a helpful reference for others attempting to structure leagues that are as engaging as possible.

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Time to reflect on our just-completed draft in The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational. The mise-en-scene: 315 Fantasy Baseball writers (including 11 from Fangraphs) from all corners of the Internet, divided into 15-team leagues, each of which plays a season using NFBC Main Event rules, i.e. snake draft, standard 5×5 Rotisserie, 23-man starting lineups, 7-player reserve roster, weekly pitcher substitutions, twice-weekly hitter substitutions, weekly in-season FAABs. Guaranteed immortality to the overall winner.

We’re fairly pleased. According to TGFBI’s projections, we assembled the 19th-best team overall, though only the 3rd best in our own league, inches behind Ariel Cohen of Fangraphs (18th overall) and way behind Brian Creagh of Friends with Fantasy Benefits and Expand The Boxscore (7th overall), whose brilliantly-executed draft strategy (ace starters early, multiple cheap possible closers, punt steals, load up on everything else) has left us awed. Here’s what we did; take whatever you need. Read the rest of this entry »

Allow me to break the fourth wall (more than I normally break the fourth well) and say I’m glad a few of you have enjoyed my recent (mock) draft recaps, especially the format of them. It can be tough to make that kind of content both interesting and informative, so I’m glad it has achieved at least the minimum thresholds in both regards.

(Mock Draft Review: RotoBaller Friends and Family Draft)
(Draft Review: The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational)

I was fortunate enough for the National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) to sponsor a “Beat Alex Chamberlain” high-stakes league. It was my first time competing in this specific contest: the $350 Rotowire Online Championship. With that kind of buy-in, I knew I would likely face some sharp competition despite having no prior exposure to any of the other owners.

The league specifications are as follows:

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In this series, I have previously uncovered potential undervalued speedsters, power bats, batting average and RBI hitters. To round out the standard fantasy offensive categories, let’s tackle the sluggers who are due to wear out the third base line, en route to crossing the plate this season. Let’s look at some potential high runs scored batters going for a discount at the draft table this year.

In 2018, there were 43 players with least 85 Runs. There were 22 players above the 95 mark, and 9 with 105 runs scored. World Series champion Mookie Betts, and Francisco Lindor led all of baseball with 129 R. Finishing in 3^rd in the runs department with 119 was Colorado outfielder Charlie Blackmon.

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The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational (TGFBI) is a league of leagues in which hundreds of fantasy baseball analysts square off against one another in 15-team leagues and overall. Three hundred and fifteen competitors will face off in 21 separate leagues to test their wits and all that jazz.

I wrote about my performance last year here. After bottoming out in April, finishing the month 12th of 15 with only 63.5 points, I had the 3rd-best team from May onward, finishing the season 4th in my league and 51st overall out of 195 analysts. Of the $900 or so I spent on free agent auction budget (FAAB), roughly half was spent on chasing saves — of which I accrued only 22. It was a preposterously bad performance in that regard. Only one other team above me in the overall standings collected fewer saves, and maybe three others had fewer than 40. Otherwise, everyone had 60 or more. It stands to reason a sharper FAAB performance could have vaulted me up the standings.

This year, I’m running down my picks as they happen, almost like a diary, although I won’t publish this until the draft is complete. Still, you can track my train of thought as if it were real time.

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When I recently wrote about players I took in my TGFBI draft whom I was far more bullish on than the consensus, one in particular drew a comment from a reader. Buhners Rocket Arm wanted to know the following.

Is there a write-up where you justify Bauers as the 88th overall player on your board? It’s likely you’re the high-man within the entire industry on him.

Well, now there is.
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In my most recent post, I lamented that I waited too long to take Greg Allen in my TGFBI draft, even though his ADP is well outside the top 300. It was as crushing a blow as one can have in Round 18 of a 15-team draft, as players with the potential to steal 20-plus bases are hard to come by, even in the earlier rounds. THE BAT projects 22 players to steal at least 20 bases this season, and Steamer projects only 19 players to reach that threshold. (ATC is more optimistic, admitting 29 players into the 20-plus projected steals club.)

Worse yet, a number of those players are across-the-board contributors (most notably Mookie Betts, Jose Ramirez, Ronald Acuna Jr., Trea Turner and Francisco Lindor) who will be long gone before the time you realize you need to catch up on steals. The reality is that it’s hard to make up for lost ground in stolen bases in the final rounds of your drafts, but that’s precisely the time you can toss up a Hail Mary. There are a handful of players who not only could give you 15 steals, but some moderate power as well, making it more worth your while to target them.
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