The Starting Pitcher episode (Part 2) of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Eno Sarris

Pitching+, Stuff+, Command+

Strategy Section

• Effects of new MLB rule changes on pitchers
• Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
• Risk
  • Valuing pitchers returning from injury
    • Chris Sale
    • Jacob deGrom
    • Tyler Glasnow
  • Valuing older pitchers with lots of mileage on their arms
• Shohei Othani
  • Is there extra risk asscociated with rostering the two-way player?
• Starting pitcher strategy
  • General landscape
  • Do you need to draft an ace pitcher in fantasy?
  • Should we avoid the waiver wire for starting pitchers?
    • Should we avoid streaming SPs?
  • Should we tilt the Hitter/Pitcher % split more towards pitching?
  • Should we use more bench slots for starting pitchers this year?
  • Should we be chasing any of the following?
    • Wins
    • Innings
    • High IP / GS
    • Pitchers on good teams

ATC Undervalued Players

• Starting Pitchers
  • Aaron Nola
  • Shane Bieber
  • Kevin Gausman

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A few years ago, a guy named Jabari Blash streaked across the Fantasy Baseball firmament like a doomed comet. He had tremendous raw power, but was a three-true-outcomes guy with a vengeance, and most of those outcomes were strikeouts. His plate discipline, his glove, and his baserunning skills were such that he had to hit a lot of home runs to keep a major league job, and when he didn’t, first the Padres and then the Angels kicked him to the curb. We ourselves didn’t expect Blash to succeed, but we nonetheless took him in various deep drafts out of our sentimental recollection of a story we heard in our youths.

The tale goes like this: A young man’s fantastically wealthy grandfather dies. He leaves his entire estate to charity. To the young man, he leaves only some words of wisdom and advice. The key to success and happiness, says Grandpa, can be stated in a single word: BLASH. But to find out what the word means, the young man must do as the grandfather did in his own youth and seek out a certain guru who lives as a hermit at the top of a remote Tibetan mountain.  After much travail, distress, danger, and expense, the young man scales the mountain and finds the guru. “Guru,” he says. “I have come from far across the sea to acquire the wisdom that you alone possess. What is the meaning of BLASH?” And the guru says, “Buy Low And Sell High.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Starting Pitcher episode (Part 1) of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Nick Pollack

Pitch Level Value (PLV)

Strategy Section

• Role changes
• New pitches
• Pitch mix changes
• Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
• What can we learn about pitchers from spring training?
• Valuation of foreign pitchers
  • Kodai Senga

ATC Undervalued Players

• Starting Pitchers
  • Luis Severino
  • George Kirby
  • Jeffrey Springs
  • Drew Rasmussen
  • Chris Bassitt
  • Pablo Lopez
  • Alex Cobb
  • Alex Wood
  • Steven Matz

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

Guest: Steve Gardner

2023 LABR Auctions

Strategy Section

• General Auction Preparation
  • How does it differ from snake drafts?
• Position scarcity in auctions & punting
• Live auctions vs. online auctions
• Mono league auctions
• How does auction strategy and future FAAB spending tie in together?
• How should you prepare yourself mentally for the auction?
• What should you do during auction breaks?
• Scouting other league members
  • How does this affect the way that you should auction?
• How to create auction values & strike prices
  • When should you bid over your values?
• How much should you spend on hitting vs. pitching?
• Stars & Scrubs vs. Spread the Risk
• In-draft adjustments
  • In-draft inflation
• Nominations
  • How do you determine who you should nominate next?
  • Controlling a room with nominations
• Money Management
  • Pacing yourself throughout the auction
  • Having the hammer at the end
• Bidding
  • How often should you bid on players?
  • Price enforcing
  • Starting bids
  • Freeze bids
  • Bid on the ‘9’s?
  • Timing of bids
  • $2 bids
  • Sneaking $1 players in early

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The Outfield episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Sara Sanchez

Strategy Section

• Blind spots of projections
  • When can the human eye do better than projections?
• Masataka Yoshida
• Outfiled Player Pool
  • General layout
  • Platoon players strategy
• Juan Soto vs. Freddie Freeman

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

ATC Undervalued Players

• Outfielders
  • Nick Castellanos
  • Taylor Ward
  • Jake McCarthy
  • Lourdes Gurriel Jr.
  • Alex Verdugo
  • Mitch Haniger
  • Randal Grichuk
  • Austin Hays
  • Manuel Margot
  • TJ Friedl
  • Tyrone Taylor
  • Garrett Mitchell
  • Ian Happ

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Last night was the auction for the FanGraphs Staff League, going into year 13 and still going strong. My recap will focus on how things went for me and my co-manager, Niv Shah, who built and runs Ottoneu. The goal is to share a lesson you can learn from us so you don’t the mistake we did. But if you want to see the full draft, you can! Eli Ben-Porat streamed the auction, so you can see how this played out live.

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Now that you’ve gone through the keep or cut process, are you ready to draft? Do you have a big board on your wall with your targets? Do you know how much you’ll pay and how much you won’t? The FanGraphs auction calculator will tell you what a player is worth based on your league and whichever projection system you prefer, but which players do you need to get to fill out your roster? In this post I’ll detail my process for targeting players in an Ottoneu FanGraphs points league re-draft auction.
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So, you’ve made the difficult decision to start rebuilding in your dynasty fantasy baseball league. Maybe you’re coming off a competitive window but salary inflation and arbitration have conspired to prevent you from running the same roster back again this year or you had a really unlucky season and need to tear everything down. Whatever the case may be, you’re here now and need to start somewhere. Last week, I walked through that decision-making process and how to start evaluating your roster, now you need to start making things happen.

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

Guest: Mike Gianella

Strategy Section

• Kentucky Derby Style (KDS) Draft Order
  • Which draft slot is most similar to an auction?
  • General preferences for slot selection
  • 2023 preferences for slot selection
• Middle Infielders
  • The shortstop and second base player pools
    • SS – Deep
    • 2B – Wide Bottom
  • Do you need to draft stolen bases from the middle infield position?
  • Jon Berti
  • Adalberto Mondesi
  • Bounceback middle infield candidates

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

ATC Undervalued Players

• Middle Infielders
  • Amed Rosario
  • Gleyber Torres
  • Jorge Polanco
  • Vaughn Grissom
  • Ketel Marte
  • Brendan Rodgers
  • Ezequiel Tovar
  • Luis Garcia
  • Nick Gordon

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The Corner Infield episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Frank Stampfl

Strategy Section

• Personal goals for 2023
• How the projections are handling the new rule changes
• Stolen bases increase for 2023
• Starting pitcher strategy for 2023
  • The 3 1A Strategy
• Justin Verlander
• Tyler Glasnow
• Corner Infielders
  • Players who will gain value from switching teams / change of scenery
  • Definition of a “shallow” position
  • Third Base strategy for 2023
  • The corner infield conundrum

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

ATC Undervalued Players

• Corner Infielders
  • Christian Walker
  • Rowdy Tellez
  • Alec Bohm
  • Ryan McMahon
  • Josh Naylor
  • Yandy Diaz
  • Wil Myers
  • Jared Walsh

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