It has become fashionable to complain about two catcher leagues. In the last week alone, four people have made offhand comments to me, assuming I agreed with them. I’m sure more people will find the time to reach out and gripe now that I’ve written this article. And if it’s not clear, I’m very much a fan of the two catcher setting.

The classic argument against two catchers is that the position is too shallow. Even in a 12-team format, some fugly players will be rostered. That… is the point. One catcher leagues are boring – everybody has a good catcher? What’s the fun in that?

The double catcher opens considerable strategic variance. Here are a few of your options.

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This article has happened before, and it will happen again. Every year, fantasy owners pour their resources into players on good teams. It makes perfect sense too. A “good team” scores a lot of runs, prevents runs, or both. That correlates nicely with most of the categories we track in the standard 5×5.

However, good teams also don’t take many risks on unproven talents. They start the season with extra depth, and they acquire more at the trade deadline as needed. Ryan Schimpf and Alex Dickerson wouldn’t have emerged as fringe-roto names if they had been in the Red Sox system. Today, let’s talk about some bad teams.

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Necessity is the mother of invention. –Plato

I wanted to know how owners were valuing Michael Brantley’s playing time. Currently, at NFBC, he is going 233rd overall in NFBC drafts. Over a full season, he is projected to be more productive than the two outfielders going right before him, Carlos Beltran and Randal Grichuk. Owners, via calculations or their gut, are significantly downgrading a full season Brantley. But by how much? I needed to find the league replacement value.

I could go through all the whole league setting and final the values like I did for my Tout Wars league. While I recommend this detailed procedure for any league an owner takes seriously. I was just looking for a quick answer and stumbled upon one while looking over my Fantrax league.

Our friends at FanTrax.com have their players listed with projected stats and ADP. Having both downloadable made a projection sheet quickly come together.

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Champions League B, an Ottoneu league in which all owners must have previously won an Ottoneu league, had its inaugural auction draft last weekend. First-year auction drafts are compelling and informative, especially when the league is made up of skilled and experienced owners. Theoretically, in first-year auctions, all players should be purchased at or near their actual value. There shouldn’t be too much obvious surplus or too many colossal overpays.

Bargain hunting is a delicate endeavor in a first-year auction. Owners can hunt for potential bargains by targeting players coming off down seasons. Andrew McCutchen comes to mind. So does Yasiel Puig. Buying such players can be risky, because their recent poor play may be indicative of future performance. However, it can also be rewarding, because if the player bounces back he may return more value than his price warrants. Having so-called surplus assets is one of several keys to success in Ottoneu.

McCutchen and Puig saw their value decline because of uncharacteristically poor performance on the field. Another type of player to target when searching for surplus is players coming off injuries. Two specific examples are among the most compelling and potentially undervalued fantasy assets in the game. They’re the same age (29), and they play on the same team. They have remarkably similar career numbers and both had season-ending injuries in 2016. Below are the career totals for underrated co-stars A.J. Pollock and David Peralta: Read the rest of this entry »

A few moments ago, I read a tweet from an old high school nemesis – Sean Doolittle. The topic of the tweet didn’t have anything to do with this post. His comment sent me down a mental rabbit hole, wondering what I’d say to him if we were to meet again. Sean was always an approachable rival, and there were a few occasions when we trained together at an indoor facility (it’s bothering me that I can’t remember the name of it). However, I was awkward, shy, and probably not very memorable. I don’t foresee a budding bromance in our future, even if we were to be re-introduced.

That got me thinking about who I was as a player back in my prime, and what I wish I knew then. I played competitive baseball through college. I attended a D-III school in St. Paul, Minnesota not known for sporting prowess. My recruiting class consisted of me, a lazy catcher, and two walk ons. The others all quit after freshman year. The best I can say about myself is that I contributed. For the first half of my junior season, I was actually quite good. I spent most of my college career pitching through arm injuries. I’m still pitching through those same, slowly worsening injuries.

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Over my many years of fantasy experience, I’ve come to recognize two methods of building a roster. Method 1: an owner targets very specific players and fills around those as needed. Usually, the owner aggressively shops those filler players. Method 2: Every player is treated as a generic asset, sorted into classes. Today, we’ll talk about the pros and cons of both approaches.

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Yesterday, I participated in a 12-team NL-only auction league hosted by CBS (full analysis available soon from CBS). To add a wrinkle to the experience, I decided to try to construct an average team. No studs, but especially no scrubs. Just spend as close to $11.3 per player as possible. The main reason for this approach is that I wanted to stay away from the bottom feeders common in “Only” auctions. I was looking for regulars across the board. The strategy fell apart as my fortitude and simple rules failed.

First off, I wasn’t able to do much auction planning since I found out about it less than a week ago. Additionally, I didn’t want to use the traditional spread-the-risk approach of a bunch of $20 players. Mine idea was a No Scrubs approach. With $20 players, several $1 players enter the team. I wanted semi-talented players with jobs for every position.

After creating projections using the SGP method, I had to come up with an auction framework. In their book, Simple Rules, Donald Sull and Kathleen Eisenhardt go over how to create and utilize simple rules. Here their basic premise.

You want to make the rules as simple as possible to increase the odds that you will follow them. You can also limit your rules to two or three … to increase the odds that you will remember and follow them.

All right, I decided to go with just two rules.

1. Targets players between $5 and $17 ($11 +/- $6). I would not be able to get every player for exactly $11, so I was going to need some leeway.
2. Don’t overpay or reach for players.

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Many years ago, before I ever dreamed of becoming a fantasy sports analyst, I dreamed of competing in industry leagues. I had no idea how people were chosen and no idea how exclusive they were, but I had a dream that one day I would win Tout Wars, LABR, or CBS. I never thought it would actually happen, but when I joined the industry in 2014, that dream returned. I then learned that there were tons of industry leagues. Many were not exclusive, but those big three were. I figured it would take me the better part of a decade to get in. So, I started my own, the Bay Area Roto Fantasy league (BARF), which drafts its second season in about ten days. However, I still dreamed of being in one of the big three. Read the rest of this entry »

My Tout Wars prep continues. I have already examined the league’s historical aspects which I have used to create initial auction values and a draft outline. With the initial projections out of the way, I am refining them. One step in this process is to find the replacement level player and adjust players who will miss time accordingly.

The concept behind the replacement level player is fairly simple. If a good player is expected to miss significant time, his fantasy value is based on just the games he is expected to play. For the games he misses, some lesser player (replacement level player) will fill. The better player’s total value will be both his and the replacement player’s contribution.

For example, I don’t expect Yoan Moncada to get called any earlier than the Super Two deadline around June 1st. For the months he’s in the minors, a less talent replacement level player will be subbing in for him. The same idea works with pitchers. Tyson Ross is expected to miss at least a couple of months so a replacement is needed until he gets healthy.

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Last week, our own Brad Johnson discussed unpredictable auction values in “Rationality Will Ruin You”. I 100% agree with his premise. Unexpected inflation exists but so does a solution. By charting out the desired and the potential outcomes before an auction, an owner can remove a ton of auction frustration.

Brad examined the elite player section of the draft where the actual auction values are higher than most people’s predicted values. Owners refuse to pay these high values but instead end up spending their resources on near replacement level talent. The following simple chart helps an owner deal with the problem along with uneven hitter/pitcher mix and outlining a personal auction strategy. The process is similar to the one used in Winning Fantasy Baseball by Larry Schechter but with a few more additions. Here’s the procedure.

Step 1. Get auction values

This step could be as simple as using our auction calculator or creating your own projections like our own Mike Podhozer does. To set the pitcher/hitter mix, use the league’s historic mix or just go with standard 70/30 split.

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