Archive for NFBC

Justin Mason’s 2024 Main Event Draft Live Stream

Tonight, I will be drafting my $1750 NFBC Main Event team. This is a 15-team, 5×5 Roto league with an overall prize pool. You can see the live draft board here. I am picking from the 8 spot.

You can watch me do the draft live here:


NFBC Online Auction Championship Live Stream

Tonight, I will be drafting my third and final $150 NFBC Online Auction Championship team. This is a 15-team, 5×5 Roto league with an overall prize pool. You can see the live draft board here Read the rest of this entry »


Beat the Shift Podcast – Draft & Auction Recap Episode w/ Justin Mason

The Draft & Auction Recap episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Justin Mason

Strategy Section

  • TGFBI
    • What is TGFBI?
    • KDS Selections
    • Draft plan & execution
    • Freddie Freeman as a 1st rounder
    • Nico Hoerner as a draft linchpin
    • Relief Pitcher darts at the end of drafts
    • How much risk to take on, and when?
    • TGFBI Average Draft Position trends
  • Auctions
    • Differences between snake drafts and auctions
    • What is it like to draft against?
      • Ariel Cohen
      • Justin Mason
    • Adjusting draft strategy based on other owners’ tendencies
    • Coming to auction tables with market values
    • Hitter / Pitcher % Split
    • How to handle Ronald Acuna Jr. in auctions?
    • Online vs. in-person auctions
    • 12-team vs. 15-team auctions
  • LABR Mixed Auction Recap
    • Justin
      • Stars & Scrubs hitting
      • Low cost pitching
      • Late game / low valued injury darts
      • 3 Closers
    • Ariel
      • Big catcher spending
      • High value starting pitching
      • How to make up for the loss of Devin Williams
    • Trading leagues vs. non-trading leagues
  • Tout Mixed Auction Recap
  • Drafting as a proxy for a team’s owner
  • Tout Head to Head Recap
    • Do you need to follow the market’s Hitter / Pitcher % split in points leagues?
    • Nominating catchers early on
    • Salvador Perez’s value
    • Factoring in the HTH playoff format into player valuation

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Beat the Shift Podcast – Starting Pitcher Preview Episode – Part II – w/ Paul Sporer

The Starting Pitcher Preview (Part II) episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Paul Sporer

Strategy Section

  • Relievers moving to the rotation
    • Good source to find fantasy players?
    • Candidates for 2024
  • San Francisco Giants plan for 2024
  • Total Solar Eclipse
  • Spring Training
    • Red Flags
    • Green Flags
    • Injuries in Spring Training
    • Spring training stats on FanGraphs !!!
  • How to value older / aging pitchers
    • Survivor Bias
    • How cost plays in to the risk
  • Supermodels
  • How to value pitchers coming over from a foreign league
    • Foreign pitchers vs hitters
  • 9 Pitcher roto roster – how to split SP/MR/CL?

Starting Pitchers

  • General player pool observations
  • Lower tiered pitchers
    • What to look for?

ATC Undervalued Players

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2023 Projection Systems Comparison – A Game Theory Approach

Introduction

In 2018, I introduced a game theory approach for comparing baseball projection systems. Proudly, the original article was nominated for Baseball Article of the Year by the Fantasy Sports Writers Association (FSWA). Today, I am proud to release the same in-depth research for the sixth consecutive year!

This is not a typical statistical analysis. There won’t be any Chi-squared tests, nor will I calculate Type I or Type II errors. Forget about mean squared errors or any hypothesis testing.

My methodology does not incorporate a statistical model. Instead, it looks to determine the profitability potential of each projection system by simulating what would have happened in a fantasy auction draft. It games the projections.

What do I mean by this?

Let’s think about what happens in a real fantasy [pun intended] baseball draft auction.

Suppose that Jared Cross himself (or anyone exclusively using the Steamer projections) walks into a rotisserie auction prior to the 2023 baseball season. Let’s say that Jared decides to participate in an NFBC auction league. Mr. Cross would take his projections and run a valuation method through them to obtain auction prices. He would generate a list that looked something like this …

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Justin Mason’s 2023 Redemption Tour: NFBC Auction Championship

2022 was the worst year I have ever had as a fantasy player. I played in 16 leagues and did not cash in a single one. The hard part is that I didn’t  even know what went wrong. I had teams I really liked coming out of the draft and some that were doing very well throughout the season. I could have easily brushed it off as a bad season or beaten myself up over it. However, I worked my butt off to get better. 

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Big Kid Adds (Week 26)

While the NFBC Main Event garners most of the attention, there are a handful of leagues with an even larger entry fee ($2.5K to $15K). They were originally named “High Stakes Leagues” and this year there are nine of them. With so much money on the line, these fantasy managers are going to 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 four or more of these leagues. Read the rest of this entry »


Big Kid Adds (Week 25)

While the NFBC Main Event garners most of the attention, there are a handful of leagues with an even larger entry fee ($2.5K to $15K). They were originally named “High Stakes Leagues” and this year there are nine of them. With so much money on the line, these fantasy managers are going to 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 four or more of these leagues. Read the rest of this entry »


Big Kid Adds (Week 22)

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 get originally named “High Stakes Leagues” and this year there are nine of them. With so much money on the line, these fantasy managers are going to 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 four or more of these leagues. Read the rest of this entry »


Big Kid Adds (Week 21)

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 get originally named “High Stakes Leagues” and this year there are nine of them. With so much money on the line, these fantasy managers are going to 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 four or more of these leagues. Read the rest of this entry »