Yesterday, I reviewed the thrilling $14 offense I built with all hitters that averaged just $1 in auction cost in NFBC leagues as of the beginning of March. Today, I review an even tougher challenge — an offense composed solely of hitters who weren’t purchased at all in the seven auctions that occurred in the month of Feb.
One of the more enjoyable exercises I performed before this season was building a $14 NFBC offense, using the contests’ average auction values. The idea was to choose from the 59 hitters that averaged $1 in cost and put together an entire legal offense, filling each required slot. Let’s see how this squad performed, with final FanGraphs calculated auction values included.
The full one hundred and sixty-two major league season has now concluded. After two whole tumultuous years, it is with great joy, that I am able to utter this sentence once again. After just a 60-game short season in 2021, completing the full schedule docket is a sparkling achievement.
It is now time to check back on how we fared during the past season. Here at RotoGraphs, that tradition starts with reviewing our pre-season bold predictions.
As always, I will remind my readers that we will never succeed in perfectly mining all of our bold predictions, nor should we. If this was simply a contest to obtain high precision, then we would have filled our lots with easy guesses. “Gerrit Cole will strike out 180 batters” – is an amazing baseball accomplishment, but it is far from bold. In fact, ATC was the low projection system on Gerrit Cole, and predicted an expected 257 Ks. Forget bold – the statistics may have suggested a probability of circumstance close to 60-75%.
Bold predictions are meant to be a far more remote event. They are meant to be unlikely.
At the other end of the spectrum, bold predictions are also not meant to be impossible. “Albert Pujols will steal 25 bases,” is not within the realm of any reasonable possibility. That is a prediction into the weird or absurd – which is NOT the purpose of these columns.
This author perennially suggests that bold predictions should lie in the 70th to 90th percentiles. In other terms, we should be boldly calling events that are 10-30% likely to occur. In return period speak – an occurrence that should unfold every 1 in 3.3 to 1 in 10 years. It should be a prediction that would happen once, twice or thrice a decade.
The point of the exercise is to highlight certain undervalued (or overvalued) players by choosing a few unlikely, but achievable outcomes. By doing so, the goal is for the reader to pay the player(s) in question a bit more (or less) attention than the market would suggest.
The Engagement Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.
Guest: Patrick Davitt
Strategy Section
FAAB / Waiver Wire / Roster Churn
Category Movement
Engagement
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The Blue Jays Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.
Guest: Rob Silver
LABR Mixed Auction League Update
Ariel’s Softball League Update
Rob’s Personal History in Fantasy Baseball
All-Star Trivia
Strategy Section
Toronto Blue Jays
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Hi. My name is Dave McDonald. Some of you may know me from Twitter (@RunDMcD), others by my team name and Twitter display name (Less than Dave), and maybe even some will be familiar with my work in Michael (@SPStreamer) Simione’s Draft Guide where I wrote a very in-depth strategy section. Many of you won’t know me at all yet – and that’s fine too. I’m a high stakes fantasy baseball player – specifically the 5×5 standard rotisserie (roto) game.
How do you define “high stakes” you ask? No one really knows. My friend John Laghezza (@MLBMovingAvg) attempted to find out the answer to this question awhile back.
How do you define a high stakes fantasy league?
— John Laghezza MLB / NFL Moving Averages (@JohnLaghezza) March 13, 2021
The poll was decidedly undecided on the topic. Also, John’s poll didn’t include higher options above a $1,000 entry fee. I know some people would classify high stakes as $2,500+ (which is actually how NFBC defines it as their “high stakes” leagues are $2,500-$15,000 entry fee leagues). So while I don’t exactly know how to define “high stakes,” I can say with certainty that I am a high stakes player.
This past weekend, the NFBC held their Second Chance Memorial Day leagues that have a season running from yesterday – Memorial Day – through the end of the season. Of course, you do not get the stats accumulated to this point, but the first two months absolutely play a huge role in the draft. Let’s look at some of the biggest moves when comparing these leagues with the Rotowire Online Championship leagues the NFBC also runs. Both are 12-team 5×5 setups so it makes the comparisons easy.
There were 48 guys who moved up at least 120 picks (10 rounds). More than half of those still landed outside the top 10 rounds while the remaining 21 looks like a who’s-who of the hottest players to start the season.
5/28/21
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VLAD SEDLER INTERVIEW
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The NL Central Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.
Guest: Sara Sanchez
Strategy Section
Chicago Cubs
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The FAAB Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.
Guest: Vlad Sedler
Strategy Section
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