Archive for Draft

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 $350 NFBC Online Championship team. This is a 12-team, 5×5 Roto league with an overall prize pool. You can see the live draft board here. I am picking from the 11 spot.

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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 »

Tonight, I will be drafting my $1750 NFBC Main Event team. This is a 15-team, 5×5 Roto league with an overall prize pool. You can see the live draft board here. I am picking from the 8 spot.

You can watch me do the draft live here:

Tonight, I will be drafting my third and final $150 NFBC Online 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 »

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

Guest: Justin Mason

Strategy Section

• TGFBI
  • What is TGFBI?
  • KDS Selections
  • Draft plan & execution
  • Freddie Freeman as a 1st rounder
  • Nico Hoerner as a draft linchpin
  • Relief Pitcher darts at the end of drafts
  • How much risk to take on, and when?
  • TGFBI Average Draft Position trends
• Auctions
  • Differences between snake drafts and auctions
  • What is it like to draft against?
    • Ariel Cohen
    • Justin Mason
  • Adjusting draft strategy based on other owners’ tendencies
  • Coming to auction tables with market values
  • Hitter / Pitcher % Split
  • How to handle Ronald Acuna Jr. in auctions?
  • Online vs. in-person auctions
  • 12-team vs. 15-team auctions
• LABR Mixed Auction Recap
  • Justin
    • Stars & Scrubs hitting
    • Low cost pitching
    • Late game / low valued injury darts
    • 3 Closers
  • Ariel
    • Big catcher spending
    • High value starting pitching
    • How to make up for the loss of Devin Williams
  • Trading leagues vs. non-trading leagues
• Tout Mixed Auction Recap
• Drafting as a proxy for a team’s owner
• Tout Head to Head Recap
  • Do you need to follow the market’s Hitter / Pitcher % split in points leagues?
  • Nominating catchers early on
  • Salvador Perez’s value
  • Factoring in the HTH playoff format into player valuation

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Diversity is good in all places. In the natural world, in the workplace, in your neighborhood, a collection of diverse parts makes the sum stronger. In fantasy baseball, that means your team has power hitters, base stealers, contact hitters, ironmen, rotation horses, flame throwers, and AI robo-mutant zombies that eat pine tar for breakfast and rosin for dinner. Ok, that last one may have taken things too far. The point is, if you’re only drafting for overall value (easy to do), you could end up with a lopsided team. Sure, you’ll win the home run category, but that’s only 12 points. You need to diversify and here’s one way you can do that during your next draft.

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Are you the “keep it quick bud, I gotta two o’clock Zoom meeting and I still need to comb my hair” type of fantasy reader? If so, this post is for you. A real quick hitter that explains how the draft value is spread across draft rounds. Read the rest of this entry »

The LIVE from First Pitch Arizona episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guests: Tristan Cockcroft & Derek Carty

Strategy Section

• Which is more important – the draft or in-season moves?
• Is it more important than ever to bank low-risk players in the early rounds of drafts?
• What makes a risky / consistent player?
  • Is Shohei Ohtani risky for 2024 as a hitter?
  • Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
  • How should we determine what constitutes a consistent player, and how should we value consistency?
• Young players
  • Should we be cautious to roster young players with limited experience?
  • How should we value the playoff experience of young players?
• Stolen base landscape
  • How should we value SBs in 2024 drafts?
• Closers
  • Optimal strategy in retrospect for 2023
  • Prospective strategy heading into 2024
  • Should we be drafting middle relievers?

2024 First Round

• Who is a player that will be drafted in the first round of 2024 that is undervalued?
• Who is a player that will be drafted in the first round of 2024 that is overvalued?
• Who is a player that will not be drafted in the first round of 2024 that should be?

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