Well… this all feels sort of pointless now. But if you need a distraction from any coronavirus-induced anxieties, let this be a brief respite.

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You can catch up on the first 10 rounds here and middle 10 rounds here. I’ve beaten to death the term “threading the needle” throughout these posts, but it’s an apt description for what I feel like I’ve had to accomplish with my particular strategy. “Walking a tightrope” is another.

The more time I’ve had to sit with my team, the longer I’ve had to disabuse myself of the notion that my team is any good. I still think it is, at least on the hitting side of things, but the pitching is as weak as it has been my last two seasons — or, if not as weak, at least as shallow. Most likely, I’ll be spending most of my FAAB (free agent acquisition budget) chasing pitching replacements, which is what I’ve done most of the last two years, too. Oh well.

Let’s wrap this sucker up, stream-of-consciousness style.

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The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational (TGFBI) drafts have now approached their conclusion. Avid readers of this website will already be familiar with the invitational’s format. TGFBI (created by our own Justin Mason) is the compilation of 390 industry experts across 26 leagues. Each division runs as NFBC-style 15-team leagues, with the collection vying for an overall prize – to win industry bragging rights. The only operational difference is that TGFBI drafts are run with a 4-hour clock – i.e., TGFBI is a slow draft. During the season, the format is virtually identical to the NFBC main event.

Check out TGFBI central and follow your favorite fantasy analysts’s teams at TGFBI.com.

As a bonus, I am honored to host the Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational Podcast – Beat the Shift – along with my friend and fantasy partner, Reuven Guy (@mlbinjuryguru). Last season, Reuven managed to win his league while finishing second in the overall TGFBI competition.

Check out the latest episodes of The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational Podcast – Beat the Shift, found here. Follow me on Twitter at @ATCNY.

This is the 3^rd year of the Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational, and I have participated ever since its inception. In 2020, with so many talented fantasy analysists in my division of TFGBI – my league (#14) was tabbed by many as the “League of Death.” Using the ATC projections, as well as my Replacement Level Drafting (RLD) method, I drafted what will hopefully be a championship caliber team.

Today, I will provide a few observations on the TGFBI drafts, review my personal team makeup, and highlight some of my player selections along the way. My goals of this article are to use the TGFBI experience to convey information to you about the drafting landscape of 2020, as well as to illustrate my team construction process. Hopefully, you will be able to take some nuggets of wisdom from my recap to assist you with your draft preparation.

Before we get further into it – draft standings analysis based on projections are generally irrelevant. But just for fun, here is what FantasyPros had to say about my team.

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Now let’s have a look at the team we drafted in The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational. The background: In 2018, our Fangraphs colleague Justin Mason was divinely inspired to organize a competition for members of what is amusingly called the Fantasy Baseball “industry”—a term that invariably induces in us visions of our fellow stat geeks wearing coveralls and carrying lunch pails as they troop into factories belching smoke (the factories, that is, not the fellow nerds). That first season, which we missed, there were 195 teams. Last year there were 315, and now there are 390, with owners drawn from corners of the internet both proximate and remote. We’re divided into 26 15-team leagues, each of which plays a season using NFBC Main Event rules: 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. The goal isn’t so much to win your own league as to finish at or near the top overall.

Last year—as we lose no opportunity to remind our readers—we did pretty well, winning our league and finishing either 7th or 9th overall, depending on which set of results you’re looking at. So, having come that close to immortality in our first crack at it, this year we have set our sights squarely on Valhalla. Read the rest of this entry »

During this time of year, a lot of emphasis is placed on Average Draft Position (ADP). We want values (i.e. players we can take after their ADP) or else we want to know just how early we need to reach to ensure we get that incorrectly ranked stud. However, the shape of your draft has just as much influence on your ability to accrue value.

Case in point, in The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational (TGFBI), I missed out on two very long closer runs. When the dust cleared, I was left staring at a depressing void between the current pick and the next guy’s ADP. After playing the “we’ll get him next round” game one too many times, I eventually found myself forced to select Mychal Givens at pick 216 – the second highest he went in the 26-league contest. While I’m personally happy enough with this draft slot – he’s better than you think – it’s undeniable that it’s better to grab Givens closer to pick 275 (i.e. two full rounds later).

Today, let’s look at what I’ve observed in Tout Wars, TGFBI, and the TGFBI overall for opportunities to better-shape our rosters.

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Last week, I recapped the first 10 rounds of my the Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational (TGFBI) draft. I’m feeling good about it so far, which is a somewhat predictable feeling to have, since I probably shouldn’t hate my team yet. But it’s more than I can say about last year’s draft, which went poorly. Of course, I’m writing this intro through 14 rounds, and anything can happen in the next six or 16.

If this is your first time hearing about TGFBI, you can click my last post in the first sentence for more information. Ditto, some of my pre-draft planning. Otherwise, here’s my roster through 10 rounds:

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It’s draft season, which means it’s also draft recap season. Last year, I partook and subsequently recapped a few of my drafts. Folks seemed to enjoy them and/or find them beneficial. That’s good!

Incidentally, and unfortunately, all the drafts I recapped turned out terribly, and all my good teams (my league-winning National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) Online Championship team, my 3rd-place Tout Wars team, etc.) I let slumber. One of those terrible teams was my Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational (TGFBI) squad. I’ve returned to fight off my demons.

I will say: I feel much more well-prepared than I did last year. I feel more cogent, more lucid. Last year, I barely prepped. I was overconfident because of my 2018 success, in part, but primarily I was overwhelmed and burned out. I held firm convictions about hardly any player, which goes against every fiber of my fantasy baseball being.

This year, the opposite. I’m eager to correct my flaws from last year, starting, first and foremost, with actually preparing. Doesn’t mean I won’t totally botch this draft. I don’t fancy myself particularly good at 15-team leagues, excelling instead at 12-teamers, especially auctions. But, hey, no excuses. At least this time, someone else, instead of my own damn self, will have beaten me.

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Our undervalued player series continues now with the final offensive scoring category for 2020 – Runs Scored.

For those of you that are new to this series – in each article, we uncover potential undervalued players by comparing the Steamer projections to the current NFBC ADP. So far I have gone through undervalued speedsters, power bats, outstanding batting average players as well as possible RBI Bargains.

In 2019, there were 60 players who scored at least 85 runs. There were 41 players who exceeded the 95 runs threshold, and 20 hitters scored at least 105. Four players managed to eclipse the lofty 120 runs plateau. Leading the majors were a pair of Red Sox – Mookie Betts (135) and Rafael Devers (129). Ronald Acuna Jr. of the Braves followed them with 127 runs.

Once again, just as in runs batted in, prospective projections are far more conservative than the final season long distribution. Steamer only projects one player – Mike Trout – to score more than 120 runs. Only four additional players are projected to score over 110 runs (Francisco Lindor, Mookie Betts, Christian Yelich and George Springer).

Teams that win fantasy leagues are often highly correlated with the runs scored category. Finding a few undervalued players that can help pad your fantasy team’s run totals is a worthwhile exercise. For this year’s analysis, I will focus on all players with a Steamer projection of at least 85 runs. This should give us several helpful players.

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For many Scoresheet owners, keepers have been submitted in their leagues and drafts are about to commence. If you find yourself with a vacancy at a position, and you’re not excited about the players who are available to fill that spot, you may be able to find a suitable arrangement by drafting a platoon.

There are not too many players who get a large enough platoon adjustment against right-handed pitchers to make them desirable as platoon options, and even fewer who are likely to be available for drafting in a keeper league. (All of Scoresheet’s 2020 platoon adjustments are available on their site.) However, the three players below are all good candidates to be used in the larger part of a platoon, and none is likely to have been protected other than in extremely deep leagues or leagues that have an unusually large number of protection slots. All three hitters, for example, are available to be drafted in the 24-team mixed Baseball Prospectus Kings league.

I’ll make the case for each player, pair them up with prospective platoon partners and compare them against a more popular option at their position.
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And now let’s finish our team-by-team plunge among the disregarded and forgotten—the guys who should be available for $1 or in the reserve rounds, the later the better as far as we’re concerned:

Milwaukee. Eric Lauer in Colorado, 2019: 18 IP, No Wins, 38 Hits, 8 Walks, 21 Earned Runs, 11 Strikeouts. Eric Lauer, everywhere but Colorado, 2019: 137 2/3 IP, 8 Wins, 120 Hits, 43 Walks, 53 Earned Runs, 127 Strikeouts. You do the math; Milwaukee manager Craig Counsell, who has a college degree in Accounting, certainly will, and respond accordingly. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s resume our sweep through MLB in search of deep-draft value without our customary throat-clearing. This week, we’ll finish the AL and start the NL, with the remaining NL coming next week.

Angels. The Angels starter who’s being kind of ignored is Dylan Bundy (NFBC Average Draft Position 308), who’s worth a buck, maybe two if that’s what it takes. He gets plenty of strikeouts, and last season became a ground ball pitcher. Unfortunately, he did this while pitching for the Orioles and their ultra-porous infield. Now we get to see him with an infield of Fletcher-Simmons-Rendon behind him, and if we get our wish, Tommy La Stella plays first base. If not, leaving the position vacant would be an improvement over having it occupied by Albert Pujols. Read the rest of this entry »