To say the least, the 2020 fantasy baseball season will go down as a one-of-kind. A late start led to a 60 game sprint. Seven-inning double-headers. Weeks of rescheduled games because of COVID-19 positive tests. The National League DH. Twenty-eight-man rosters in September. Each of these on its own would fill the headlines. With the changes coming all at once, they felt overwhelming. I’m hoping to calm everyone if any and hopefully not all of the changes happen again. Here is some advice on how to handle the changes.

The help divided up into league setting and individual manager focus. While I inserted plenty of my own advice, I wanted to make sure as many people as possible contributed so Tweeted out and asked during my chat for input.
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One issue I’ve had with pick up articles in the past is that so few ever recommend anyone to cut so which is arguably tougher than recommending who to pick. Sure, a player in question should probably be on a roster, but should it be your roster? I have a group of interesting free agents but also a player at each of those positions who you can consider cutting as well.

This article is designed mostly for 10- and 12-team leagues as a lot of these guys aren’t available in 15+ teamers and the recommended cuts are likely worth giving a bit more time to in deeper formats as well. I’m using ESPN’s roster rate for guidance.

Here are the picks for volume 3:

Available Under 40% | Cuttable at 60%+

• C Pedro Severino – 30% | Mitch Garver – 77% (the cut recommendations at this position are for 1-C formats)

I’m still trying to come to terms with the fact that the Orioles offense is 2nd in wRC+, but in the meantime I’m considering Severino a pickup. He had a mini breakthrough last year with 13 HR and 3 SB in 341 PA with his best work coming against lefties (.273 AVG, 8 HR, 109 wRC+) and he’s amped it up a level this year. Strong work against righties is driving his fast start as he’s hitting .350 with 2 of his 4 HR against them in 40 PA.

I bought in on Garver’s 2019 breakout. Obviously, I didn’t think he’d hit 31 HR per 359 PA, but I saw him remaining a stud hitter as part of that excellent lineup. Instead, he’s off to a nightmarish start with a .167/.280/.238 line that includes just 1 HR and 2 RBI. I’m not completely out on him and of course I’d rather not cut him, but it’s hard to hold a dead weight catcher in 1-C leagues when many viable options sit on the wire. Garver is striking out more, but his swinging strike rate isn’t up much (1 pt to 9%) and his chase rate is actually down 7 points to 13%. He’s swinging and missing more in the zone which is fueling his 36% K rate.

Again, these cut candidates aren’t really “must cuts”, but rather guys who could be let go if you’re offense is really struggling, and you need to cut some of the dead weight.

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As I type this, it’s now July 19, and my 2020 fantasy season auctions and drafts have all officially been completed. That is such a strange sentence to type. I am guessing the majority of you are in the same boat, with some of you auctioning/drafting this week as well. Not only is it hard to be excited about the season, but I still feel like it’s going to be a complete crapshoot between small sample performance randomness and COVID-related injuries and issues galore. Given the smaller sample size, I thought the correct pitching strategy was to discount ratios and buy strikeout rates. That strategy gave me five names to target if executing it.

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There is no argument that if two position players would be guaranteed to produce the exact stats, the one with multi-position eligibility should have more value. The added flexibility would be helpful while drafting or setting lineups. The question of how much value does it add remains unanswered? Todd Zola and I have attempted to answer the question with Todd coming to the conclusion of “adding $3 or $4 to each player in mixed formats, and a couple bucks in single-league formats.” That’s fine in theory but I wanted to see how the market values the flexibility in this short season by matching similar players with and without extra positions. In the end, the results matched up with Todd’s findings.
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I think we all know that this is going to be a truly wacky real and fantasy baseball season. New MLB rules and only 60 games instead of 162 means a chance to adjust our strategies to try to gain an edge. Ratio categories are always volatile, even over a 162 game season, so in just 60 games, there gap between the league leaders and laggards is going to be even wider than usual. And the names of those leaders and laggards could be more surprising than ever before just because randomness and pure luck are going to play a larger role.

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If we do in fact get some sort of 50-ish game season, finding any small edge could be the difference between winning and losing your league. One potential edge is platoons. Let’s take a look at the starting pitching handedness breakdown on the assumed rotations for each division. This assumes they stick to this mega-division plan by combining the East, Central, and West division from both leagues.

We’re also going to grade the pitchers using the FIP from their BAT projection. My arbitrary scale is as such: sub-4.00 is good, 4.01-4.70 is solid, and 4.71+ is bad.

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Note: This article was written in two parts, with the first half being before the draft and the second half after completion.

Prep

Tonight, I’m participating in a 1999 retro with several other industry analysts. The premise is simple: the owner drafts a 5×5 roto team based on the 1999 season’s final player stats. That’s where the simplicity ends.

I knew these drafts were going on but as I was busy with other projects, I hadn’t dived into them. Then Fred Zinkie contacted me to do an idiot check on his valuations for the draft that happened last Wednesday. I’m a fan of using SGP (standings gain points) for my normal evaluations, but none were available for 1999. Instead, I had to break out a copy of The Process and create the player valuations based on the Z-score method. (Z-score looks at how much a player’s real or predicted stats are above or below the league average for the draftable player pool. It takes several passes to get the correct valuations since the final player pool is unknown. The z-score method is helpful when no league history exists.)

After I was done, we noticed two differences. Fred used a modified SGP for the season and was valuing stolen bases a little more. We aren’t sure of the cause, but he gave catcher and middle infield a little more of a bump. I think the difference was from the different stolen base values. Read the rest of this entry »

The following is the second part of my 2020 LABR Mixed Auction recap. You can read Part I of my recap here. This was the inaugural season of the new LABR Mixed Auction league, and my very first expert auction league.

In my Tout Wars recap series, I talked about how to adjust projections for a particular league format, the proper hitter/pitcher splits to use, and how to create a market pricing curve. I also discussed at length about how to scout your opponents, and to use it to your advantage.

In Part I of my LABR recap, I talked about how to create an initial plan, and how to set an auction budget.

Today’s article will focus on a topic that is barely discussed in the fantasy community. However, I believe it to be a large key in managing your auctions, and crucial in the quest to accumulate the most fantasy value at the draft table. I am referring to player nominations.

“Tactics is to know what to do when there is something to do and strategy is to know what to do when there is nothing to do”. – Gary Kasparov

If fantasy baseball drafts are akin to a game of checkers, auctions are in many ways a multi-player game of chess.

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For the next few weeks or until any real news starts becoming available, I’m going to run a 14-team snake draft using today’s Average Draft Position (ADP) at FantasyPros. The ADP is available from six websites and their average. Simply enough, I gave each ranking two mirrored picks in a 14-team draft. Whichever site picked first got the 14th pick. When it came to each pick, I just took the highest-ranked player without regard to team construction. And here is the draft order:

Before I begin the process, I’m not sure at all what I hope to find. Maybe a site that values pitching more. Should owners go with the average or just go with NFBC where owners have more skin in the game? Are the drafters on some sites just drunk? Here are the results of first four rounds.
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I do not believe in authoring the typical expert draft recap article. I do not believe in writing a recap simply to illustrate one’s favorite players, or as a means to boast about one specific draft outcome. I do not believe in only going through a few undervalued players for the given year which happen to appear on that particular fantasy squad. I do not believe in writing recaps just for the heck of it.

I believe in imparting important lessons that one can take to their own drafts. More importantly, I prefer to communicate wisdom by talking through my process and preparation. I like to discuss various elements of strategy that can be of help to the astute fantasy player – which can be used in any given year.

I hope that in my draft recap series of articles, but especially in this 2020 season in limbo – you will be able to adapt and add many of my strategy components to your arsenal of fantasy baseball tricks.

For the TGFBI draft recap this year, I related the time-specific hitting and pitching landscapes of 2020. In my recap of the 2020 Tout Wars Head-to-Head auction, I provided insights into the process of preparing your own valuations and how to assemble comparative market pricing. I also discussed (at length) how to use your opponents’ tendencies to your advantage.

For my recap of the LABR Mixed auction, I will focus on a few critical strategy aspects:

• Setting an auction budget
• Developing a plan
• Auction nominations

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