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

Guest: Jenny Butler

First Pitch Arizona mishaps

Strategy Section

• Playing in the NFBC
  • What is the NFBC?
  • How Jenny got into the NFBC and how you can get your start
    • Tools that a first time player should use
  • Differences between home leagues and the NFBC
  • Differences between standalone leagues and leagues with an overall prize
  • The value of multi-positional players in the NFBC
    • Ben Zobrist tribute
  • KDS selection preferences
• Should we pay the market premium for saves and for speed?
• Roster Construction
  • General principles
  • Should you create a “Do Not Draft” list?
• Draft preparation tips
• Incorporating risk into drafting decisions
• Jacob deGrom – What to make of the current Steamer IP projection?
• Power Drafters
  • Should you incorporate a “deGrom share” into your fantasy portfolio?
  • Should you diversify your player selections on your fantasy teams?
• How to find fantasy baseball sleepers

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Subscribe: RSS

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

Guest: Frank Stampfl

Tout Wars Congratulations

Strategy Section

• Drafting Strategy based on fantasy format
  • Rotisserie leagues vs. Head-to-Head Points leagues vs. Head-to-Head Category leagues
    • One win vs. full category score
  • Waiver wire leagues vs. Draft Champion/Draft & Hold Leagues
  • Roto leagues vs. Best ball leagues
  • Trading leagues vs. non-trading leagues
  • Deeper leagues vs. shallow leagues
  • 1-Catcher leagues vs. 2-Catcher leagues
  • Large vs. small bench size
    • Having IL slots vs. no IL slots
  • Daily lineups vs. weekly lineups
    • How to best use Shohei Ohtani
  • Overall competition vs. standalone leagues

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Subscribe: RSS

For this exercise, we will be looking at starting pitchers and their NFBC ADP as of 11/29/21. It’s always interesting to see how the crowd thinks, who they seem to value, and how fantasy managers are shaping their drafts. For instance, how many pitchers are going in the first round? How many fantasy managers are grabbing two starting pitchers in the first three rounds? A lot to unpack and a lot of different aspects to analyze. We will go by round and after each round, we will discuss briefly what we are seeing! To note: this is based on Draft Champions which is a 15 team format with about 14 completed drafts.

Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, I reviewed my imaginary cheapie NFBC pitching rosters, including the $9 staff, and the staff composed of pitchers not even bought in auctions. Today, let’s now review the incredible $244 staff I built.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I reviewed my imaginary cheapie NFBC hitting rosters, including the $14 offense, and the offense composed of hitters not even bought in auctions. Today, let’s now review the incredible $251 offense I built. This exercise was probably even harder, as it’s more difficult to differentiate between top three round values than it is to pick out the best of the worst. Let’s see how this roster ended up performing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I reviewed my $9 NFBC pitching staff. Today, it’s time to review the pitching staff I constructed from only pitchers who failed to be rostered in NFBC auctions during the month of February.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I reviewed two fun exercises using the NFBC average auction values (AAV) from early March to build various imaginary offensive rosters, including a $14 squad composed solely of $1 players, and a team constructed from hitters that weren’t even rostered. Today, let’s flip to my various pitching staffs, beginning with the $9 group composed of all dollar guys.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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 70^th to 90^th 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.

Read the rest of this entry »