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

Guest: James Anderson

Prospects

• The top prospects already in the major leagues
• Has the new incentives for rookies changed the timing of prospect call-ups?
• Prospects to make an impact in 2024
• Prospects to make an impact in 2025

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Strategy Section

• Hit rates for prospects
• What translates to short term success for prospects?
• What translates to long term success for prospects?
• How much FAAB should you bid on prospects when they come up to the majors (NFBC)?
• How early should you pick up prospects off of the waiver wire (home leagues)?
• When should you trade for/away prospects in keeper leagues?
• When should you cut bait on a prospect in redraft leagues?

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Mailbag

Injury Update

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

Guest: Doug Dennis

Strategy Section

• The value of rostering a closer handcuff
• The value of middle relievers who won’t close games
• Key Middle Relievers
  • Reed Garrett
  • Bryan Abreu
  • Yennier Cano
• Timing of when to pick up closer handcuffs off of the wire
• Looking at overall skills vs. recent performance
• How much FAAB to spend on new in-season closers?
• How to deal with closers potentially being traded mid-season?
• When to drop a struggling or demoted closer?
• Decisions are context dependent
• Closers on bad teams

The Doug Dennis Strategy

• Tout Wars expert league strategy

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Bullpen Situations

• Phillies
• Orioles
• Rays
• Twins
• Dodgers
• Nationals

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

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

Guest: Larry Schechter

Larry’s new book – The History of Fantasy Sports

Strategy Section

• Auction Draft Strategy
  • General Strategy
  • Bargains & Relative Bargains
  • High priced catchers
  • How to bump up catchers for replacement level
  • Valuing closers
  • Preparing with market values
  • How to incorporate risk in your values
    • Baked into player projections via playing time
    • Aggregating risk
  • Using projections
• Mono vs. Mixed leagues
  • Valuing players in a mixed league
  • FAAB
• In-person vs. online auctions

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

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

Guest: Sky Dombroske

Introduction

• Tout Wars H2H
• Head to Head format
• Not having an injured list
• Mike Trout injury

Strategy Section

• Hot Starts
  • What metrics should you look at to determine if hot starts are for real?
  • Using pre-season players projections based partially on prior injured seasons
  • Which do you believe more – hot pitcher starts or hot hitter starts?
  • How quickly to act on picking up hot players off of the waiver wire?
    • How much should you pay in FAAB?
  • Trading
    • Trading for a hot player
    • Trading away a hot player
  • How long do you keep rolling with hot players in your active lineup?
    • Hitters vs. pitchers
  • How to know when a player has “cooled off”

Hot Start Hitters – How to handle?

• Elly De La Cruz
  • Process vs. Results
• CJ Abrams
• Marcell Ozuna
• Tyler O’Neill
• Colton Cowser
• Brice Turang
• Alec Bohm
• Taylor Ward
• Starling Marte
  • Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
• Isaac Paredes
• Brandon Marsh

Hot Start Pitchers – How to handle?

• Shota Imanaga
• Ranger Suarez
  • Name Game
• Jose Berrios
• Nick Lodolo
• Reed Garrett
  • What league size / depth should he utilized in?
• Erick Fedde 페디
• Zack Littell
• Jack Flaherty

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

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

Guest: Sara Sanchez

Catching Up

• Las Vegas
• Eclipse
• Red Sox Opening Day
• Softball
• High School Baseball

Strategy Section

• Starting Pitcher injuries
  • Velocity related?
  • Does MLB have a problem on its hands?
  • How should we alter our fantasy strategy?
  • Sholuld we be spedning more or less draft capital on pitching?
• Cold Starts to the season
  • When to bench?
  • When to drop?
  • How to tell injury from a cold start?
  • What stats to look at to determine bounceback?
  • Hitters vs. Pitchers

Underperforming Pitchers – How to handle?

• Griffin Canning
• Josiah Gray
• Louie Varland
• Bailey Ober
• Miles Mikolas
• Kyle Gibson
• Max Fried
• DL Hall
• Jesus Luzardo
• Luis Castillo
• Blake Snell
• Jameson Taillon
• Jordan Montgomery
• Carlos Rodon

Underperforming Hitters – How to handle?

• Nick Castellanos
• Riley Greene
• Jorge Polanco
• Jose Abreu
• Andrew Vaughn
• Francisco Lindor
• Mitch Garver
• Henry Davis
• Andrew Benintendi
• Whit Merrifield
• Victor Scott II

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

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The 2024 Predictions episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Scott Pianowski

Strategy Section

• Draft Recap
  • Drafting early vs. drafting late
  • The influence of projections
  • Helium players
    • What causes them?
  • Closer trends
• Discussion about Average Draft Position (ADP)
• Our most drafted players
• FAAB in the first few weeks of the season
  • Importance
  • Opportunity Cost
  • How much to spend?
  • Tying in draft / roster construction

Bold Predictions

• Hitter predictions
• Pitcher predictions
• Team predictions

Awards Predictions

• MVP
• Cy Young
• Rookie of the Year

World Series Predictions

Injury Update

Softball

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

Guest: Justin Mason

Strategy Section

• TGFBI
  • What is TGFBI?
  • KDS Selections
  • Draft plan & execution
  • Freddie Freeman as a 1st rounder
  • Nico Hoerner as a draft linchpin
  • Relief Pitcher darts at the end of drafts
  • How much risk to take on, and when?
  • TGFBI Average Draft Position trends
• Auctions
  • Differences between snake drafts and auctions
  • What is it like to draft against?
    • Ariel Cohen
    • Justin Mason
  • Adjusting draft strategy based on other owners’ tendencies
  • Coming to auction tables with market values
  • Hitter / Pitcher % Split
  • How to handle Ronald Acuna Jr. in auctions?
  • Online vs. in-person auctions
  • 12-team vs. 15-team auctions
• LABR Mixed Auction Recap
  • Justin
    • Stars & Scrubs hitting
    • Low cost pitching
    • Late game / low valued injury darts
    • 3 Closers
  • Ariel
    • Big catcher spending
    • High value starting pitching
    • How to make up for the loss of Devin Williams
  • Trading leagues vs. non-trading leagues
• Tout Mixed Auction Recap
• Drafting as a proxy for a team’s owner
• Tout Head to Head Recap
  • Do you need to follow the market’s Hitter / Pitcher % split in points leagues?
  • Nominating catchers early on
  • Salvador Perez’s value
  • Factoring in the HTH playoff format into player valuation

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

Guest: Greg Jewett

Strategy Section

• General closer player pool observations
• What price points should you purchase closers at?
  • General strategy
• Is purchasing closers through FAAB a good investment?
• What skills or information should you look at to speculate on closers in waiting?
• Stay away from closers on bad teams?
• When is it worthwhile to roster a closer handcuff?
• Should you worry that a closer will be traded mid-season (enough to affect a buying/rostering decision)?

Closer Situations

• Discussion of all 30 MLB team closer situations

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I commonly hear people praising active managers in fantasy leagues, and there is good reason for this. Active managers make for a fun league. My favorite leagues are the ones with regular transactions, trades, etc., where every manager is engaged. While activity makes for a fun league, the praise for active managers often assumes active managers are “good” or “winning” managers. Fun is hard to measure, but good we can try to validate.

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

Guest: Chris Welsh

Strategy Section

• General snake draft strategy
• Early round pitcher strategy
• Differences between various formats & depths
• Tackling closers
• Tackling catchers
• KDS preferences
• What is the most important statistic to focus on?
• What is a category that you could get on the waiver wire?

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