Reader beware:

A human wrote this article. Some humans’ caffeine levels can fluctuate in predictable patterns and correlate strongly with “time of day” data points. Yet, there’s no telling how many milligrams were present in the author’s typing fingers at the various stages of writing this article. It was an iterative process that took the author much longer than he had originally expected. While a human wrote this article, a machine wrote and generated many sections, namely ChatGPT’s “gpt-4o” model. From here on out, anything written or output by the very friendly and human-helping artificial intelligence (be careful…they’re listening…) will be italicized.

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Arbitrary (ar·bi·trar·y)

1. based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.

My Ottoneu arbitration strategies have varied over the past few years. I’ve been overly analytical, downloading .csv after .csv, splicing and merging and concatenating until there was more data than I cared to actually do anything with. I wrote last year about measuring salaries against the average and tipping the scales on already overpriced players. Sometimes it can be more fun to simply add a few dollars where it feels right. That’s what I did this year. Here are a few notes and thoughts I recorded as I dished out my dollars Read the rest of this entry »

The Final Two Weeks episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Ray Murphy

First Pitch Arizona

League Updates

Strategy Section

• Final Two Weeks of the Season
  • Is there a limit to who you might sit in the final two weeks of the season?
  • How much should you churn your roster?
  • How much should real life MLB team standings / playoff pushes factor into your roster decisions?
  • Should you take a chance on stashing a returning injured player for the final week?
  • What is the bar for dropping injured or underperforming players?
  • How much should playing decisions be based on year to date stats vs. last 30 days stats vs. projected stats?
  • Gaining points vs. defending points
    • What and when should you emphasize each?
  • FAAB
    • How to allocate your FAAB spending for the final two weeks of the season?
  • Multi-position eligible players
    • How important are they in the final weeks of the season?
    • How to best utilize your roster to take account of them

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Takeaways of the 2024 season

Looking ahead to 2025

• Overall #1 pick choices
• How early should you draft Elly De La Cruz?
• Starting pitching in early rounds

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

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The Elias Sports Bureau episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Matt Martingale

LABR League Update

• Recent trade – Ariel gets Josh Bell & Tommy Pham for Harrison Bader and Ryan O’Hearn from Matt

Elias Sports Bureau

• What does Elias do?
• Elias and fantasy sports
• ATC Projections

Strategy Section

• Spring training statistics
  • Predictive value in spring training stats
  • Players who start slow
• Predictive value of spring training manager tendencies

Who’d You Rather?

• C – William Contreras, Willson Contreras, Salvador Perez, Will Smith
• OF – Jarren Duran, Jazz Chisholm Jr., Corbin Carroll, Luis Robert Jr.
• OF – Anthony Santander, Kyle Schwarber, Teoscar Hernandez, Adolis Garcia
• OF – Taylor Ward, Brandon Nimmo, Ian Happ
• OF – Christopher Morel, Giancarlo Stanton, Jorge Soler, Bryan De La Cruz

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

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

Guest: Pierre Camus

NFBC League Update

Strategy Section

• Fantasy Owner Disappearance
  • General Ethics
  • Money Leagues vs. Home Leagues vs. Expert Leagues
  • Fantasy Re-Emergence
  • Bottom teams trading late in the season
• Commissioner responsibility
  • When should a commissioner step in?
  • How should commissioners handle absent owners?
    • Should a commissioner set an absent owner’s lineup?
• How to account in FAAB for inactive owners

Who’d You Rather?

• 1B – Paul Goldschmidt, Alec Bohm, Vinnie Pasquantino
• 2B – Jonathan India, Bryson Stott, Ryan McMahon, Luis Arraez
• SS – CJ Abrams, Ezequiel Tovar, Nico Hoerner, Jackson Merrill
• 3B – Ke’Bryan Hayes, Issac Paredes, Jake Burger, Willi Castro

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

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

Guest: Patrick Davitt

Expert League Update

Strategy Section

• Fantasy Trades
  • Reuven trade in GDD – Logan Webb for Josh Hader
  • It is all about the categories!
  • Excess stats
  • When should you look to trade vs. working the waiver wire
  • Is there a cost to NOT making a fantasy trade?

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Trading Deadline Recap

• First impressions / reactions
• Go after Marlins replacements?
• Garrett Crochet controversy
• Closer situations
• Players traded that gained value
• Players traded that lost value
• Players not traded that gained value
• Players not traded that lost value
• How much FAAB should you spend now on replacement players?

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Bonus Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Injury Update

Insurance in Fantasy Baseball

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The Mid-season episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Howard Bender

LABR Update

1st Half Awards

• Biggest stories of the first half
• Fantasy MVP Hitter
• Fantasy MVP Pitcher
• Fantasy MVP Rookie
• Fantasy Biggest Bust

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Strategy Section

• Which roto categories have the highest ability to move in the second half of the season?
• Which roto categories are the hardest to move in the second half of the season?

2nd Half Players

• Which players will tail off / regress in the second half of the season?
• Which players will heat up in the second half of the season?

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

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

Guest: Fred Zinkie

Strategy Section

• Trading
  • General trading philosophy
  • When should you look for a trade vs. getting help off of the waiver wire?
  • How to trade in this high information environment?
  • How does your current league standing matter in trading?
  • Don’t stay complacent in 1st place!
    • Stay active in the trading market!
  • Keeper league trading
    • Picking a lane – buy vs. sell
  • Approach individual owners for trades, or make a trading interest public?
  • Lowball offers?
  • Ian Kahn and trading
  • Should you trade with players close to you in the standings?

Waiver Wire

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

Closers who may lose their roles at the trading deadline

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Sometimes the scouting report on a player is so straightforward that it doesn’t require a full sentence:

Javier Báez: Throw outside zone.

Among players with at least 150 plate appearances in 2024, only Bryce Harper is thrown to in the zone by pitchers less often than Báez. Here’s a top 10 leaderboard: Read the rest of this entry »

The Injured List Debate episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Injured List Debate

• A full in-depth debate about the pros and cons of playing with an injured list in fantasy baseball.

Twitter/X Comments

• Your Twitter/X comments on the pros and cons of playing with an injured list in fantasy baseball.

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