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

Guest: Derek VanRiper

Strategy Section

• Auction Strategy
  • How Snake Drafts & Auctions differ in preparation.
  • Constructing Auction Values
    • Should you strictly hold to values?
    • What to use as a Hitter/Pitcher % split?
  • Generating Market Values
  • Nomination Strategies
    • General – It has to have a purpose.
    • Should you nominate players you want to buy, or players that you believe are overvalued?
    • The Economic Box
  • Bidding
    • Starting Bids
    • Jump Bids
    • Price Enforcing
    • The ‘9’s
  • Draft Inflation

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

Guest: Nick Pollack

Strategy Section

• Simple analytics vs. advanced analytics.
• Offseason information – what is noise, what is real?
• Blind spots of projections for pitchers.
• 2021 Season
  • 6-man roations
  • Starting pitcher inning limits
  • The Tampa Bay Rays
  • What if the season is delayed?
  • Ramp-up from 2020 short season

Starting Pitcher Strategy

• General strategy
• Pitchers that we would more likely roster in auctions vs. snake drafts (& vice versa).

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The 2021 ATC Projections have arrived at FanGraphs!

The Average Total Cost projection system (ATC) gets its name from the fact that it “averages” many other projection systems together. ATC also happens to be my initials.

ATC is a “smart” projection aggregation model. While most other aggregation systems typically apply equal weight to all underlying data sources, ATC assigns weights based on historical performance. The method is similar to what Nate Silver does with his political forecasting at www.fivethirtyeight.com. Read more about how ATC works in last year’s introductory ATC article.

ATC’s advanced methods have paid off. Last year, FantasyPros ranked ATC as the most accurate baseball projections, even more accurate than their own. Annually, I conduct my own projections review using a game theory method, which has consistently shown that ATC has outperformed other projections. You can read the results of last year’s study here.

Starting this year, ATC will include three new volatility metrics to be described later in this article. Aside from introducing the concepts behind these new metrics, we will also discuss how a fantasy manager might use them in practice.

First, let’s quickly remind everyone on where to find the ATC projections at FanGraphs.

Viewing ATC

There are currently three ways to view and utilize the ATC projections on the site.

• Full Projections
• Individual Player Pages
• Auction Calculator

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At last, it’s finally time to unmask xHR/FB v4.0! If you want a refresher on how we got here, review my xHR/FB history and v4.0 research and then check out the correlations of a variety of metrics that may or may not predict HR/FB rate.

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Yesterday, I shared the history of my xHR/FB rate equation and the first pieces of research on my journey toward developing Version 4.0. Today, I’ll discuss a myriad of correlations for a myriad of metrics and how those calculations helped me determine which would win a spot in my final equation. Fun!

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If it’s really true that Chicks Dig the Long Ball, then how do they feel about the nerds trying to figure out who will hit those long balls and how many of them they will hit? As fantasy owners, the home run is the ultimate result of a hitter’s plate appearance. It counts for a homer, obviously, but also a run scored, at least one run batted in, and a 1.000 batting average. Unfortunately, a hitter can’t also steal a base while rounding the bags on his trot home, but contributions in four of five categories in just one plate appearance seems good enough. Because of the value of a home run, accurately projecting them is one of the keys to a fantasy championship. Luckily, I’ve spent six years trying to do just that.

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

Guest: Rick Wolf

Strategy Section

• Fantasy Baseball Partners
  • Advantages & Disadvantages
  • What makes a good partnership?
  • How to divide up tasks & responsibilities.

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In 2019, I participated in AL LABR and struggled to stay out of the cellar. Coming out of the auction, I thought I would accumulate too many stolen bases but could trade one of Mallex Smith or Dee Strange-Gordon. I ran into the simple problem, they played themselves out of their jobs. From that point forward, I told myself “I will no longer rely on sh##ty baseball players”. Talent declines during a draft, but I don’t want a core piece of any team demoted to the bench or the minors. I’m going to examine a few hitters drafted in the first 10 rounds and fall into this playing time trap.

Looking back at Smith and Gordon, I should have had an inkling that they’d disappoint. Going into the season, Steamer projected Smith for a .695 OPS and Gordon for a .664. For the 2020 edition of The Process (after the fact research), I researched the production level needed to keep a hitter in a lineup. Depending on the player’s defensive ability and position, the average production level that gets a hitter demoted is between .600 OPS and .650 OPS with the average being around .635 OPS. The following chart shows the chances a player’s in-season OPS may drop to knowing their projected OPS.
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The Starting Pitcher Episode (Part I) of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Paul Sporer

Strategy Section

• How many pitchers will throw 200 innings in 2021?
• Pitcher ramp up from the 2020 short season.
• Pitchers returning from injury (Chris Sale / Noah Syndergaard / Luis Severino)
  • How do you project innings for 2021?
  • How do you assess their fantasy value?
  • What leagues are these players more (or less) valuable?
• Super Elite Pitchers (Jacob deGrom / Gerrit Cole / Shane Bieber)
  • How far should the trio be pushed up in drafts?
  • Which hitters should be drafted ahead of the super elite starters?
    • Does the format make a difference?
• Pitching Strategy in 2021 – Snake Drafts vs. Auctions

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1/15/21

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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• @sporer – Host/Producer

2021 STEAMER GEMS

• Franmil Reyes (2:43)
• Jesse Winker (7:22)
• Brandon Nimmo (13:36)
• Alejandro Kirk (18:35)

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