The 2023 Bold Predictions episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Michael Govier

NFBC & Tout Wars experience

Strategy Section

• First few weeks strategy
  • How to use FAAB in the first few weeks of the season
  • How to know who to drop/cut a player from your roster?
• What to do with demoted or injured players?
  • Vaughn Grissom
  • Luis Severino

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ZiPs 2024 gives us some insight as to how prospects will perform if and when they make it to the big leagues. If we can get a general sense of how a player will perform with projections, we can get a general sense of how much they should be valued. To call this process an oversimplification is to look up at the sun and say, “Bright!” Yes, it is an oversimplification, that’s a given. First, we’re trying to predict not only the future performance of a player who hasn’t actually done it yet. Next, we’re trying to determine how much that performance will be worth without any real context. Where will they play? Who will be on their team? Are they as mentally strong as they are physically strong? Finally, we’re assuming they’ll be healthy.

This oversimplified process can only give us a sense of who might perform like a big leaguer in 2024 and since I’m writing from a FanGraphs points scoring system viewpoint, we can make comparisons with other, more established pitchers. Here’s a reminder of my process. First, I find prospect pitchers yet to debut using The Board. Next, I bring in the ZiPs 2024 projections for the players on that list. Not all of them have projections. After that, I convert their projected stats into FanGraphs Ottoneu points. Finally, I throw the prospects and their projected points into Justin Vibber’s Surplus Calculator output for 2023 and make comparisons. The result tells me how these pitchers will perform in 2024 if they are in a pool of 2023 projected players. The dollar value given assumes that next year’s player pool will be much like this year’s player pool. Here’s an example:

Pfaadt is already grabbing the attention of Ottoneu players as his current FanGraphs points average salary is $4, or $3 Median. Will he increase in value by the end of 2024? ZiPs likes his chances and you can compare his projected points total for 2024 with this year’s Jordan Montgomery. If you pay over the average now, let’s say $6, and this projection comes to fruition, you’ll have a good chance of generating value in 2024. There is, however, another scenario where ZiPs is off the mark and he only brings in $4 in 2024. In that case, you’ll be overpaying. Here are the rest of the 2024 ZiPs projected prospect pitchers and what their value could be at the end of the 2024 season:

Let’s compare these estimated 2024 values with some current (2023) average/median Ottoneu salaries:

Current FanGraphs Points Leagues Avg./Med.:

Kodai Senga – Average: $15 / Median: $15
Grayson Rodriguez – Average: $4 / Median: $6
Taj Bradley – Average: $3 / Median: $3
Kyle Harrison – Average: $3 / Median: $3
Ricky Tiedemann – Average: $3 / Median: $3
Robert Gasser – Average: $2 / Median: $3
Tanner Bibee – Average: $2 / Median: $1
Gavin Stone – Average: $2 / Median: $2

This is just one way of trying to look into an uncertain future; mashing a bunch of different spreadsheets together and then estimating a value. Is it worth doing, or would you rather just pay a few dollars now to see what happens later? I think this analysis helps us do both. Remember that the goal is to identify future value and not current value. It allows us to prospect on players because we like them or we believe in them or we saw them at a AA game and were impressed. But, it also allows us to put some kind of filter on how we are rostering and for how much. Are you rostering Taj Bradley for $7 because he was bumped up during arbitration, or you got him in a rebuild trade deal when someone else realized his salary was too high? It may be time to re-examine that hold because, by this analysis at least, he won’t reach that value in 2024. Everyone has a strategy and this is just one approach, but it’s utilizing analytical tools and projections from smarter people than myself to provide insight and that can’t be a bad thing.

The 2023 Draft Recap episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Steve Cozzolino

The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational (TGFBI)

• Steve’s TGFBI Draft Board – Team 9
• Reuven’s TGFBI Draft Board – Team 8
• Ariel’s TGFBI Draft Board – Team 8
• General snake draft strategy
• KDS Strategy
• First five rounds strategy
• Saves strategy
• Steals strategy
• Catcher strategy
• Easiest draft decisions
• Toughest draft decisions

LABR Mixed Auction

• Ariel’s LABR Draft Board
• Altering strategy based on knowing how the other competitors draft
• General auction strategy for a 12 team mixed league
• Shohei Ohtani at $26 as Ariel’s most expensive player
• Saves strategy in a 12 team mixed league
• How to pull off obtaining so many value bargains in an auction

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Yesterday, I compared starting pitcher projected dollar value as part of the 2023 projection showdown, pitting THE BAT/THE BAT X forecasts against Steamer projections in the various fantasy categories, identifying the pitchers THE BAT was more bullish on. Today, we finish this series by identifying and discussing which pitchers Steamer is a bigger fan of compared to THE BAT.

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I’m going to finish up the 2023 projection showdown, pitting THE BAT/THE BAT X forecasts against Steamer projections in the various fantasy categories, with starting pitcher dollar values. This sums up the forecasts in one tidy number and makes it easy to identify which pitchers each system likes better. Today, we’ll start with the starting pitchers that THE BAT is valuing significantly higher than Steamer.

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Rostering minor leaguers in any Ottoneu format is super fun. It’s fun because you get to take a chance on a player. Build your roster now in order to plan for the future. Isn’t that what so many real-world teams are doing? Yet, it can be cumbersome to hold onto a player for a few years while paying them a $1 or more in salary when you really don’t know when and even if they will pan out.

A few months ago, I was up against this very challenge. Rostering Jack Leiter was exciting. He was a college pitcher with a lot of hype and talent and now a minor leaguer who has held onto both of those traits. But, I needed to try and quantify how much he would be worth in a few years. His MLB ETA isn’t until this season and likely the end of this season. Looking for a range of reasonable salary expectations, I used ZiPs’ 2024 and 2025 projections to get a sense of how to value Leiter in a few years. My analysis concluded that Leiter would likely only return somewhere around $4 in 2023 and that’s if he meets the higher end of likely outcomes. I was paying $6, too much for this year, so I cut him.

Rostering Leiter at $6 doesn’t make sense for 2023. But now that he is back on the waiver wire, should I attempt to re-roster him for $1? In order for that to make sense, two things need to happen. First, he needs to return over $1 of value in 2023. Second, he needs to return over $1 of value in 2024 and pass through arbitration untouched at the end of the 2023 season. Only then is he worth selecting for a $1. In this analysis, I’ll look at the players who are most likely to pass through those qualifiers. Choo! Choo! All aboard the hypothetical train! Here’s a map of our journey:

Step 1: Take a deep breath. A lot of assumptions are going to be made here. This is not an exact science. Please, do not rush to your player page and start auctioning off these players at these exact prices. Use these values as a jumping-off point.

Step 2: Grab a pool of minor league players who have not yet debuted from “The Board” with a Future FV value greater than or equal to 30 and subset it down to players with a “Current Level” not equal to “MLB”.

Step 3: Download ZiPs 2024 projections for the players in Step 2 and calculate their Ottoneu FanGraphs points totals based on those projections.

Step 4: Add those players into the auction calculator’s outputs, sort by rPTS, and see what the value is for players in that same rPTS area. Keep in mind, player value is altered by positional adjustments.

This process ultimately tells us what these players’ auction value could be if they play to their full zips projections in 2024 and the league looks identical to this season’s (2023) player pool. It tells us how much they should be valued for next year.

Out of the 271 prospects I downloaded from the board, 242 had a “Current Level” other than MLB. Of those 242, only 60 have been projected by ZiPs for 2024. Of those 60, only 15 (but number 1 on the list kind of doesn’t count) end up with a positive projected value in 2024. Here they are:

Now, it’s very, very possible that this process excluded some highly touted prospects. Hopefully, I was clear enough with my process that you can hypothesize as to why they were left out or replicate a version of this for yourself. This is not a top draftable prospects list. I repeat; This is not a top draftable prospects list. For example, where is Jordan Walker? Well, ZiPs doesn’t necessarily project Walker to be roster-able in 2024. Here’s where the Cardinals prospect stands in this process:

Now, to see why Walker falls out of a roster-able projected salary, let’s look at his 2024 ZiPs projections compared to a couple players high on this list, Colton Cowser and Christian Encarnacion-Strand:

You can see why Cowser has more projected value in 2024, but you can also see how this system has some flaws. Walker has already been creating a lot of buzz in Spring Training and many might look at that 2024 projection and scoff. Projecting players who haven’t appeared in the MLB yet is hard. Time is money and if I had more of it, I would go about the valuation a little more scientifically. Rather than comparing rPTS and suggesting a value range, it would be interesting to iterate through runs of the auction calculator, each time removing the player the minor leaguer would be replacing and determining value from a more believable player pool. I think I’ve gotten close enough for now. Roster any of the players listed above for $1, make it through the end of the 2023 season arbitration without their salaries increasing, and you have a good chance at value in 2024.

Yesterday, I continued my 2023 projection showdown, pitting THE BAT/THE BAT X forecasts against Steamer projections in the various fantasy categories, by comparing fantasy value projections and identifying the hitters THE BAT X valued more highly. Let’s now turn to the hitters that Steamer values significantly more than THE BAT X.

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Over the last couple of weeks, I debuted and published the 2023 projection showdown, pitting THE BAT/THE BAT X forecasts against Steamer projections in the various fantasy categories. Now let’s combine everything we have reviewed and compare projected dollar value. Really, that’s all we care about as fantasy leaguers! Does THE BAT X think the player is more valuable than Steamer, or not?! So let’s now find out which hitters THE BAT X is projecting to earn a higher value than Steamer. These are the hitters THE BAT X believes to be undervalued, at least compared to someone using Steamer forecasts to draft.

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We finish up our starting pitcher ERA projection comparison, as part of the 2023 projection showdown, pitting THE BAT against Steamer. Today, I’ll discuss the next six names down on the list of Steamer ERA favorites compared with THE BAT. This is the list of the six pitchers Steamer was most bullish on compared to THE BAT.

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The 2023 Pre-Draft Injury episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Strategy Section

• Injury Overview / Ortho 101
• Injury reoccurrences
• World Baseball Classic injury concerns

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