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

Guest: Glenn Colton

Strategy Section

• Auction Strategy
  • Online auctions vs. live auctions
  • Having a partner in an auction
  • Auction preparation vs. snake draft preparation
  • Scouting prior to an auction
  • Constructing auction values
  • How strict should you be to your values?
    • When should you bid over your values?
  • Hitter vs. Pitcher % split in auctions
  • Closer market premiums in 2022
  • Auction values for unsigned free agents in mono leagues
    • Playing in multiple leagues – hedging bets
  • Constructing market value dollars
    • Converting ADP to dollars
  • Constructing an auction plan
    • Finding the hotspots
• Nomination Strategy
  • Nominating players you want vs. players you don’t want
    • Pacing yourself through the auction
  • Plan A / Plan B nomination
  • Economic Box nomination
  • Blocking a position nomination
• Bidding Tactics
  • Freeze bidding
  • Starting bids for players
  • Incremental bidding vs. jump bidding
  • Bidding on the 9’s, bidding on the 0’s
  • Price enforcing

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We were going to write about how all the various statistical projection systems that people, including us, use (or, in most cases, including ours, borrow) to project statistics produce pretty much the same result, in terms of suggested draft position or dollar value, because by definition all projection systems base their projections on what the player being projected has done in the past, and everyone has access to the same statistics from seasons past. And then we were going to note that the most important thing about any given projection by any given projector is playing time, so that the projections for established players who are likely to keep their jobs throughout the season are pretty similar, whereas the projections for non-established players vary more widely. And then we were going to explain that we don’t have much to say about established players that other fantasy writers don’t say, and in fact we probably have less to say, because by and large they’ve looked at at least as much data as we have, and often more. And we were going to explain further how our thing isn’t to project our own performance stats but rather to project playing time, in the belief that, as Bill James, the Odin of Sabermetrics, and many others have said, if you get the playing time right, most of the time you’ll get the projection right.

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Alex Bregman is a really good real-life baseball player who should continue to hit well. In 2019, his last full season, he banged out 41 home runs for us. In the following 580 plate appearance, though, he only has 18. This includes an injury-plagued 2021 that we can excuse, but it still begs the question:

Is Alex Bregman a 40-home-run hitter or a 25-home-run hitter?

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In last week’s post, I included a visualization that showed the distribution of projected counting stats by position so that fantasy managers can prepare for drafts. Here’s the example of stolen bases I presented last week:

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A strategy we are hearing more and more about in the fantasy community is paring down your draft board by not just highlighting your targets, but actively removing players you won’t draft. Sure, everyone has a price you would likely pay, but if you won’t even pay the max pick price on someone, you can safely remove them from your sheet. A lot of this comes down to your team building and how different players fit into it.

Do you just take “the value” on someone who fell two rounds past ADP even though it doesn’t fit your team, or do you stick with the plan? And I put value in quotes as it can be a bit of a fugazi because if you aren’t putting together a cohesive squad, what good is this perceived value? In recent years, I have read and listened to fantasy managers discuss this process, so I have started doing it myself. Here are some early round guys that just don’t fit what I am trying to do in 2022:

Salvador Perez | C, KC, 35 ADP

Last year was awesome but I just can’t pay this price. I don’t even think I’d pay his max pick of 55 at this point. He will remain a power force behind the dish, but even as a high-volume catcher, there is no shot he is logging another 665 PA. The projections are very robust, ranging from 34 to 40 HR, but that seems really aggressive. Johnny Bench and Mike Piazza are the only catchers with multiple 40+ HR seasons and I don’t see Perez joining them.

(Edit: 1st version said 30+ HR seasons… pardon the typo. There are several Cs w/2+ 30-HR seasons.)

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

Guest: Nando Di Fino

Strategy Section

• Potential Profit Sources
  • Rookies/Prospects
    • Bobby Witt Jr.
    • Oneil Cruz
    • Riley Greene
    • Spencer Torkelson
  • Aging Veterans
    • Charlie Morton
    • Zack Greinke
    • Joey Votto
    • Yadier Molina
    • Adam Wainwright
    • Nelson Cruz
    • Yuli Gurriel
    • Josh Donaldson
    • Charlie Blackmon
  • Down Season
    • Mike Trout
    • Francisco Lindor
    • DJ LeMahieu
    • Gleyber Torres
  • Injury Bounceback
    • Adalberto Mondesi
    • Jack Flaherty
    • Lance McCullers Jr.
    • Luke Voit
    • Ronald Acuna Jr.

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The Closer Thoughts for 2022 Drafts Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Strategy Section

• Closer thoughts for 2022 drafts
  • Don’t play the waiver wire for 2 closers
  • ‘Safe’ closers
  • Economics of closers in drafts
  • Paying up for closers
  • Relative market pricing vs. absolute market pricing
  • The exaggerated case of zigging and zagging
  • Spreading your closer picks throughout the draft
  • Market premium

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

Guest: Dan Szymborski

Strategy Section

• Projections
  • What goes into creating a projection system?
  • ZiPS
    • How does ZiPS set itself apart from other projections?
    • How does ZiPS handle multi-year projections?
    • How does ZiPS deal with free agents?
    • How does ZiPS handle rookies?
    • How does ZiPS handle the possible NL Designated Hitter for 2022?
    • How does ZiPS handle uncertain items (nature of the ball, run environment, sticky substances, etc.)?
    • How does ZiPS take into account positions [Question asked in mailbag]?
    • What is new for 2022?
  • Projecting playing time – Should projection systems attempt to do this?
    • ZiPS DC
    • FanGraphs Depth Charts

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The Player Pool & Catcher Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Todd Zola

Todd’s Mastersball Projections

• What’s new?
• Assuming a DH in the National League
• Adjusting for the Camden Yards’ new dimensions
• Adjusting for the Blue Jays irregular home park in 2021

Strategy Section

• Player Pool
  • Starting Pitchers
    • Is there more risk at the very top?
    • Is this the year to wait and grab pitchers in the early middle rounds?
  • Closers
    • Where is the value?
    • How many saves do you really need to be competitive?
  • Corner infielders
    • Bargains in the first base position
      • Pass on top talent?
    • The drop in talent at third base
      • How to attack/address the 3B position
  • Middle infielders
    • Do you need to obtain steals from the middle infield position?
    • Setting hotspot values and budgeting for the middle infield
  • Outfielders
    • At what price points should one purchase outfielders?
      • Early, middle, late, or spread them out?
      • The $1 outfielder conundrum
      • The effect of multiple position eligilibity on the OF pool

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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). Now, just days ahead of the release of the 2022 ATC Projections, the projections comparison article is back for its fourth consecutive year!

The approach used in this article is not the standard projections comparison analysis that most others use. The standard analysis involves calculating least square errors, performing chi-squared tests, or perhaps even hypothesis testing. Some type of statistical measure is used to determine the most accurate projections.

For example, late last year – my fellow RotoGraphs colleague Jeff Zimmerman put out a series of in-depth projection comparison accuracy articles. His study centered around the root mean squared error test applied to all projection sets surveyed. The first installment of this excellent series can be found here.

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. Instead, it games the projections.

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