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

Guest: Patrick Davitt

Strategy Section

• Successful fantasy strategies in 2022
  • Spread the risk at auctions
  • Not overpaying for stolen bases
  • Find the hotspots
  • Staying away from higher risk players at the top
  • The aggregation of small value gains
• Kevin Gausman’s high BABIP
• What was the ideal closer strategy in 2022?
• Unsuccessful fantasy strategies in 2022
  • Pocket Aces
  • Taking on too much injury draft capital
• What can we do better in 2023?
  • Not relying on closers from the waiver wire
  • More stars & scrubs in mixed leagues
  • Waiver Wire
    • Not bidding too high
    • Being more patient
• How to handle starting pitchers late in season with poor upcoming matchups
• Activating starting pitchers immediately upon return from injury

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You don’t need machine learning, mathematical models, or even advanced projections to determine which counting stats you should focus on for the rest of the season. For some of our readers, this exercise will be elementary. For others, it may be just what you need to plan out the rest of the season. Start by copying and pasting your league counting stats into an excel spreadsheet so that it looks something like this:

Next, divide each cell by the number of days where at least one MLB game was played. If my math is right, there have been 135 baseball days so far this season (as of August 23rd). If you take your total points for counting stats and divide each by 135, you’ll see how many runs, rbi, home runs, stolen bases, strikeouts, wins, and saves your team has been recording on a daily basis.

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

Guest: Justin Mason

TGFBI Update

• What we can learn from the top teams
• Draft success versus superior in-season play

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The Mets & LABR Update Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Adam Ronis

Softball Team

New York Mets

• Thoughts on deadline acquisitions
• Mets postseason bullpen
• Mets consistency
• Jacob deGrom rest of season
• Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
• How many wins will the Mets accumulate in 2022?

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It’s August 11th. Every team has played at least 110 games leaving just about a third of the season left at most.

That is still plenty of time to make a lot of movement in your standings, but the margin for error has slimmed considerably and for those of you out of the money/in the back half of your standings it is time to start making decisions that directly impact your standings as opposed to simply acquiring the best talent available. Threading the needle and making considerable gains in all 10 categories (assuming a standard 5×5 setup for this discussion) is unlikely in most cases. It’s time to start narrowing the focus and making some tough cuts.

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

Guest: Steve Gardner

MLB Trade Deadline

• Closers / Relievers
  • Braves – Raisel Iglesias / Kenley Jansen
  • Brewers – Devin Williams / Taylor Rogers
  • Phillies – David Robertson / Seranthony Dominguez
  • Orioles – Felix Bautista / Cionel Perez / Dillon Tate
  • Twins – Jorge Lopez
  • Angels – Jose Quijada / Ryan Tepera
• Starting Pitchers
  • Mariners – Luis Castillo
  • Athletics – JP Sears
    • Are traded pitcher prospects good short term fantasy investments in redraft leagues?
  • Yankees – Frankie Montas
    • Where should Montas be drafted amongst starting pitchers in 2023 drafts?
  • Cardinals – Jose Quintana & Jordan Montgomery
    • Dylan Carlson – Are we missing something on him?
  • Twins – Tyler Mahle

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Ever since the opener became a thing in MLB, I have been wondering if I should be aggressively targeting openers among my RP corps in Ottoneu. I typically like to carry 6-8 RP on a roster, and having the option to extend my bullpen by locking in an opener on occasion seems like a nice way to get some extra pen innings. But opener innings aren’t exactly relief innings. Yes, they are pitched by relievers, and they are short-burst outings like relief appearances, but they don’t offer any hope of a save or hold, and they are often not as short-burst as they would be from the pen.

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

Strategy Section

• Should you immediately insert injury returnees into your active fantasy lineups?
  • Hitters vs. Pitchers

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

Guest: Derek Van Riper

All-Star Game Thoughts

Strategy Section

• What are you doing from a fantasy standpoint with your time at the all-star break?
• Using Rest of Season Projections
  • ATC Rest of Season Projections
  • Auction Calculator
  • When do you stop using pre-season projections?
• Looking at recent performance
  • What is the proper time frame to use for a recent player snapshot?
• How to tell the difference between underperformance and injury?

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With the Ottoneu Prestige League about to hit the knockout rounds, there are about 40 teams still scrambling to figure out what to do ahead of the final OPL snap for the season. There are another 200 teams wondering what went wrong this year and thinking about next year. And perhaps there are many other managers looking forward to their first foray into OPL in 2023 and wondering how to prep.

One of the most debated topics among OPL managers is what changes to make ahead of each snapshot – do I bail on this injured player? Do I hold this prospect? Should I drop this underperforming player? I want to look into some of these questions over the next few weeks and into the off-season, but today we’ll start with a quantitative question: how much should my team turn over round-to-round?

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