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 a previous post, we looked at Ottoneu head-to-head (H2H) leagues and how starting pitching values shift due to different rules. Because season-long points leagues use an innings-pitched cap, innings pitched are the scarce resource you expend (and need to maximize) during the season, putting a premium on SP who post high points per IP. But because H2H leagues use a games-started-per-week cap instead of IP, IP are no longer a scarce resource and the premium is on pitchers who score a high number of points per start, regardless of their points per IP. Today, we’ll see if we can identify pitchers to target or avoid based on that.
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The standard pitching metric of production in Ottoneu points leagues is points per inning pitched. With a 1500 IP cap, innings are currency and you need to maximize the return for every inning pitched. But in head-to-head leagues, innings are no longer the scarce resource managers have to manage. Instead, each team can throw an unlimited number of innings, but there’s a limit on games started per week. For Ottoneu head-to-head, or any other league with a games-started cap for pitchers, the pitching metric that matters for SP is not points per inning pitched, but points per game started. And that can swing values. The question is, how much does it matter?
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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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The Corner Infield episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Derek Carty

Strategy Section

• The key components of what goes into a credible set of player projections.
• Incorporating the 2020 short season into 2021 projections.
• THE BAT vs. THE BAT X

ATC Projections

• Overview of ATC
• New for ATC – Inter-Projection Volatility

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

Guest: Todd Zola of Mastersball, ESPN & RotoWire

Park Factors

• What are park factors, and how they are calculated? What do they capture?
• The effect of the humidor.
• Park factors for unknown situations.
• Park factors for free agents.

Projections

• How projections are treating the uncertainty surrounding the DH (for the National League) in the upcoming season.

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

Guest: Wayne Randazzo – The Voice of the New York Mets

• Broadcasting in 2020
• Lindor/Carrasco trade
• Pete Alonso/Dom Smith and the Designated Hitter
• J.D. Davis/Brandon Nimmo as starters
• Trade for George Springer?
• Edwin Diaz, Seth Lugo & the bullpen
• Minor League prospect impact for 2021
• Steven Matz
• Most underrated player on the ball club
• Most exciting moments of Wayne’s broadcasting career

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

Guest: Randy Dobnak, Starting Pitcher on the Minnesota Twins

Interview

• The current offseason
• The affect of COVID on minor league players
• Innings limits in 2021
• Innings per start trends
• Players & Social Media
• The impact of fans
• Pitching coaches

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

Guest: Tristan Cockcroft of ESPN

Strategy Section

• How to use and adjust projections
  • What are the key adjustments that are most often made?
  • When should you diverge from projections?
  • How to adjust player rankings.
  • How to stress test playing time.

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With news of the Blake Snell trade to San Diego (covered here and here by our fine folks at FG and Podhorzer will have a fantasy piece out Tuesday), there is a lot of chatter about his workload now that he’s out of Tampa Bay. This isn’t a particularly new issue – he didn’t complete six innings once in the regular season – but it all came to a head in Game 6 of the World Series when Snell was removed after 5 1/3 brilliant innings, allowing just a run on two hits with nine strikeouts and zero walks in 73 pitches.

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