The Closer Rebuttal for 2022 Drafts Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Strategy Section

• Closer rebuttal for 2022 drafts
  • Historical earnings for top closers
  • Early closers may bake in a certain value loss
  • Low historical hit rates for closers
  • Drafting top closers means passing up on valuable players
  • Drafting a starting pitcher instead of a top closer – one less starter to find on the waiver wire
  • Too much uncertainty in bullpens
  • Too much draft capital invested in a one-category player
  • Use a combination of absolute value and relative value

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Alex Sonty wrote the against case for Alex Bregman that you can find here.

Now I want to be clear that I’m not directly disputing everything Sonty said and making the case that Bregman is definitely going to hit another 40+ HR. I do, however, think he is more than a 25 HR hitter and someone worth targeting this year at a discounted price after his underwhelming 2020-21. One major point of contention that Sonty and others bring up is that Bregman’s 2019 was a luck-fueled home run barrage based on the otherwise mediocre underlying power metrics.

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With drafts beginning to ramp up, it is important to monitor where players are being drafted on a regular basis. Throughout draft season, I will be doing that work for you with regular updates on the Average Draft Position on NFBC up until Opening Day. You can find all the pieces in this series here.

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2/11/22

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to our Patreon!!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer

PATREON

• Join our Patreon for live video feeds of each show
• Watch the video feed replay on YouTube

NL DH CANDIDATES

• Atlanta (3:20)
• New York (10:22)
• Philadelphia (25:30)
• Washington (28:35)
• Miami (32:08)
• St. Louis (39:01)
• Milwaukee (46:05)

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After a couple of articles with several decent deep sleepers, this list is just full of disappointments besides Lodolo’s potential.

Dual role pitcher profiled at RotoWire.

• Alzolay, Quantrill, Suarez (x2), Thompson (x2), C Hernandez ($)
• Javier, Lamet, Rasmussen, Steele, M. Perez, Cortes, Espino, Stripling, Long, Houck ($)

Deep League Starting Pitchers

• Kaprielian, Taillon, Carrasco, and Ober
• Bauer, Plesac, Kikuchi, Gonsolin, and Greinke
• Matz, Megill, Sanchez, and Walker
• Lauer, Hernandez, Heaney, and Flexen
• Pivetta, Strasburg, Paddack, and Singer
• Patino, Cobb, Luzardo, and Gibson
• Kluber, Greene, Dunning, and Pineda
• Germán, Corbin, Pearson, and Houser
• Hill, Hudson, Miley, and Detmers
• Weaver, Bumgarner, Bundy, and Mikolas
• Kelly, Minor, Odorizzi, and Eflin
• Contreras, Wacha, Brubaker, and Lynch
• Rodriguez, Cabrera, Yarbrough, and Gil

Kris Bubic (458 ADP)

In 180 innings over the past two seasons, Bubic doesn’t seem to have what it takes to be anything close to an average major league caliber pitcher. While he has been graded out as a top-100 prospect by some prospect services, he’s not met those expectations.

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Briefly taking the baton from Alex Sonty, the question of whether to draft Justin Verlander certainly isn’t a binary one, as his fantasy life in 2022 will be driven by both the quality and health of his arm. And those are some pretty big questions to answer considering he’s only pitched six innings over the past two seasons. Read the rest of this entry »

The Auction Strategy Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Glenn Colton

Strategy Section

• Auction Strategy
  • Online auctions vs. live auctions
  • Having a partner in an auction
  • Auction preparation vs. snake draft preparation
  • Scouting prior to an auction
  • Constructing auction values
  • How strict should you be to your values?
    • When should you bid over your values?
  • Hitter vs. Pitcher % split in auctions
  • Closer market premiums in 2022
  • Auction values for unsigned free agents in mono leagues
    • Playing in multiple leagues – hedging bets
  • Constructing market value dollars
    • Converting ADP to dollars
  • Constructing an auction plan
    • Finding the hotspots
• Nomination Strategy
  • Nominating players you want vs. players you don’t want
    • Pacing yourself through the auction
  • Plan A / Plan B nomination
  • Economic Box nomination
  • Blocking a position nomination
• Bidding Tactics
  • Freeze bidding
  • Starting bids for players
  • Incremental bidding vs. jump bidding
  • Bidding on the 9’s, bidding on the 0’s
  • Price enforcing

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We were going to write about how all the various statistical projection systems that people, including us, use (or, in most cases, including ours, borrow) to project statistics produce pretty much the same result, in terms of suggested draft position or dollar value, because by definition all projection systems base their projections on what the player being projected has done in the past, and everyone has access to the same statistics from seasons past. And then we were going to note that the most important thing about any given projection by any given projector is playing time, so that the projections for established players who are likely to keep their jobs throughout the season are pretty similar, whereas the projections for non-established players vary more widely. And then we were going to explain that we don’t have much to say about established players that other fantasy writers don’t say, and in fact we probably have less to say, because by and large they’ve looked at at least as much data as we have, and often more. And we were going to explain further how our thing isn’t to project our own performance stats but rather to project playing time, in the belief that, as Bill James, the Odin of Sabermetrics, and many others have said, if you get the playing time right, most of the time you’ll get the projection right.

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2/8/22

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to our Patreon!!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer

PATREON

• Join our Patreon for live video feeds of each show
• Watch the video feed replay on YouTube

OPENING TANGENT

• Is Ozzie Albies a 1st round-viable player? (1:45)

SP LEAPERS

• Logan Gilbert (19:30)
• Ranger Suárez (27:10)
• Patrick Sandoval (33:41)
• Joe Ryan (41:51)

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With drafts beginning to ramp up, it is important to monitor where players are being drafted on a regular basis. Throughout draft season, I will be doing that work for you with regular updates on the Average Draft Position on NFBC up until Opening Day. You can find all the pieces in this series here. Read the rest of this entry »