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

Guest: Howard Bender

Strategy Section

• Early drafting (January/February) vs. Late drafting (March)
  • Pros & cons, advantages & disadvantages, differences
  • Average draft position (ADP)
• Our player shares in the 2025 draft season
  • Players we drafted early but not late
  • Players we drafted late but not early
  • Our most drafted players
  • Players we didn’t plan to draft, but did
  • Players we planned to draft, but didn’t
• FAAB
  • What are you looking to accomplish in the first FAAB period?
  • How do you evaluate players for the first FAAB period, and early on in the season?
  • How much does a player’s hot performance in the opening week influence your FAAB bidding?

Predictions

• Bold Predictions
  • Player predictions
  • Team predictions
  • Baseball event predictions
• Awards Predictions
  • MVP
  • Cy Young
  • Rookie of the Year
    • Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
• Playoff Predictions
  • A team unlikely to make the playoffs that will
  • A team likely to make the playoffs that won’t
  • The worst team in baseball
    • Board bet !!!
  • Pennant winners
  • World series winner

Injury Update

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast (beat-the-shift): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

American League

Angels

• Jack Kochanowicz made the Angels rotation, and the only place he’s rosterable right now is probably in AL-only leagues. There will be times he’ll be streamable, but for now, he’s a poor man’s Marcus Stroman. Both create a decent number of ground balls but can’t strike anyone out. At least Stroman had a 6.6 K/9 last season, while Kochanowicz’s was half that (3.4 K/9). Read the rest of this entry »

I examined why the following players were added in 30 or more NFBC Online Championships. I picked this format because some leagues were drafted in January. Most of the players are in order of most leagues added, except when I grouped some guys. The entire list is at the article’s end.

Landon Knack, Jon Berti, Alex Vesia, and Enrique Hernández

These four were added because their stats from the two games in Japan will count for the first week. Read the rest of this entry »

7:33	Jeff Zimmerman:

Read the rest of this entry »

In the article, I cover the players using CBS’s (about 40% or less initial roster rate) and Yahoo’s ADD/DROP rates. Both hosting sites have the option for daily and weekly waiver wire adds. CBS uses a weekly change while Yahoo looks at the last 24 hours. Yahoo is a great snapshot of right now while CBS ensures hot targets from early in the week aren’t missed. The players are ordered for redraft leagues by my rest-of-season preference grouped by starters, relievers, and hitters. Read the rest of this entry »

I have once again been called up from Triple-A for the spot start with Jeff away, as I have minor league options remaining. This article approximately follows his methodology, focusing on players widely available at the start of this week (I use a <75% owned in the Main Event threshold). The players are ordered for redraft leagues roughly by my rest-of-season preference–only two weeks to go (!)–grouped by starters, relievers, and hitters. I tend to put a lot of weight on recent playing time trends and popular weekly (e.g., Razzball) and rest-of-season projections, including the various systems published at FanGraphs, and my own system. I play in a lot of NFBC 15-teamers, so that’s the context I have in mind when writing this. Happy bidding!

Read the rest of this entry »

This weekend, I have to travel a decent distance for my aunt’s funeral, so I’m off not going to be available for a few days. For the weekend, Jordan Rosenblum will have a waiver wire article article but I went ahead and looked into some players who could be or not be options.

Batters

Note on hitters. If in a Roto league, roster who you need. If power, Matt Wallner. If speed, Otto Lopez. If all around, Tommy Pham. I haven’t spotted any major value movers since MLB teams made waiver wire claims before September 1st. Check out my Big Kid Adds where the managers in these competitive leagues added Trevor Story (a drop for me), Grant McCray (power and speed, batting average sink), or Jonny DeLuca (regular starts).

Spencer Horwitz: He’s been on fire over the last month hitting .317/.386/.633 with 6 HR. His stats are up because he’s being benched against most lefties (.916 OPS vs RHP, .511 OPS vs LHP). Next week, Toronto has only four righties on the schedule so the volume might not be there. Read the rest of this entry »

While the NFBC Main Event garners most of the attention, there are a handful of leagues with even a larger entry fee ($2.5K to $15K). They were originally named “High Stakes Leagues” and there are ten of them. With so much money on the line, these fantasy managers try to gain any advantage. Most of the time, these managers will be a week or two ahead of everyone else on their adds. Here are the players and some information on the ones added in five or more leagues. Read the rest of this entry »

7:33	Jeff Zimmerman:

Read the rest of this entry »

In the article, I cover the players using CBS’s (about 40% or less initial roster rate) and Yahoo’s ADD/DROP rates. Both hosting sites have the option for daily and weekly waiver wire adds. CBS uses a weekly change while Yahoo looks at the last 24 hours. Yahoo is a great snapshot of right now while CBS ensures hot targets from early in the week aren’t missed. The players are ordered for redraft leagues by my rest-of-season preference grouped by starters, relievers, and hitters. Read the rest of this entry »