You have no doubt heard the phrase “playing time is currency” at some point in the last couple of years. I didn’t make it up and I don’t know who did, but it was probably Todd Zola or Ron Shandler because they have all the best catchphrases for fantasy baseball. I use it all the time, though, because it’s true and good to remember. It’s particularly pertinent in this era when PED use is less rampant (not eradicated, but certainly down).

To my mind, staying on the field was biggest advantage to be had by using. Consider that from 1996-2008, we saw an average of about six guys per year play all 162 games, but in the seven years since, that average has plummeted to just two per year with a high of four (2012, 2013, and 2014). Teams aren’t shy about using the disabled list these days, either, so just being in the lineup is a boon for a player, especially in deep leagues.

I think we’ve long known how important it is to roster guys who bat high in the order, but the DFS era has put a fine point on that factor. Combined with the drop in guys logging 162 games, it’s more beneficial than ever to get guys who regularly slot in those top four spots of a lineup – even a modest-to-bad lineup. Of course, those are usually the best guys in the lineup and as such they go in the first several rounds. However, you can still find guys going late in drafts who are slated to bat high in their order. These can be draft day gems just by virtue of that abundant playing time high in an order even if they don’t show any tangible skills growth to justify their slotting. Here are 15 American Leaguers projected (by Roster Resource) to bat in the top four of lineups while going after pick 200 in NFBC drafts:

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Successfully “rebuilding” your fantasy team into a contender is an epic challenge that requires vision, skill, patience, and a little bit of luck.  Since there is no perfect blueprint that ensures success (some people say never rebuild), it’s not surprising that owners take a lot of different routes to the same ultimate goal.

I recently polled a group of savvy, successful fantasy owners to get their advice for rebuilding in Ottoneu, asking five key questions that are related to the idea of effective rebuilding.  Regardless of whether you play Ottoneu, much of the (anonymous) feedback below should be relevant to a wide variety of fantasy baseball leagues and may be helpful if you find yourself in a rebuild this season.

What is the best advice you would offer an Ottoneu owner who is rebuilding their roster for the future?

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How’s that for a clickbait headline? (Not so good). Yesterday’s post on the interaction between keeper values and inflation generated a lot of great discussion. If you’re interested in that sort of thing, I recommend wading into the comments.

As one commenter noted, when calculating inflation, the industry standard is to use pre-inflation price times the sum of one plus the inflation rate. Or written another way: Post-inflation price = Pre-inflation price * (1 + inflation %). Said commenter thought I preferred: Post-inflation price = Pre-inflation price ^ (1 + inflation %).

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This is a topic I probably should have brought up earlier in the draft season when more owners could use the concepts to select their keepers. I’ve decided there’s still a reason to talk about keeper value and inflation as it could inform your trade talks or how you think about the game in general.

A couple of my auction keeper leagues included hefty inflation this year. We’re talking prices over $10 above retail. As I’ve said in previous posts, the best way to handle the craze is to join the fray for a few big names then position yourself to be the king of dollar days. But let’s take a further step back. How should we prepare for rampant inflation before the draft even begins?

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Each year, before the season, I try to run a set of projected standings for my leagues. It’s not super difficult, though you do have to set aside probably about one hour per league to set it up. But once you have these projections, they can be extremely useful in figuring out your strengths and weaknesses, and giving yourself a realistic outlook for your team.

The specifics below are based on ottoneu, but the theory can be applied to any format.
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I’m always torn when setting a draft date for a fantasy league, particularly a redraft one. Most people I play with generally want the draft to be as close to the start of the regular season as possible, which makes sense – the longer you wait, the more information becomes available, and the more certainty players have, especially when it comes to playing-time estimates.

Depending on your level of risk-seeking, the depth of the league, and your confidence in finding early-season waiver-wire sleepers, an earlier draft might be your preference. It’s certainly mine. In those cases, I’m comfortable using picks in the later rounds on sleepers who may or may not make a team, trusting that if they wind up optioned to the minor leagues (or designated for assignment, as it were), I’ll be able to plug someone in out of the free-agent bin comparable to a “floor” pick I could have otherwise used that selection on.

The longer you wait to do your draft, the less opportunity there is to take those playing-time-uncertain fliers. Either those players will be deemed to be without a job, or others will have grown wise to their hold on a job, bidding the price up.

My favorite example to illustrate the impact of draft timing this year is Trea Turner, the No. 2 prospect of the potential NL East-champion Washington Nationals.
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Co-ownership. In my 10 years of fantasy experience, it was something I’d never tried before, nor had I given it much thought. It always seemed like a chore, and (given that I tend to have strong opinions) I assumed that if I ever did co-own a team I would end up “running” the squad, while my counterpart would be left to sit on his hands. It just didn’t seem like much fun – for me or my counterpart – or like an experience that would be any different from Ottoneu leagues I had already participated in.

Until recently.

Fellow Rotographs contributor Trey Baughn and myself were paired up in a newly formed Ottoneu league. Neither of us are experts on the topic of co-ownership, but I wanted to talk through several observations we have quickly realized in our month long trial run.

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Another AL-LABR draft is the books, and after finishing top half in 2014, and then at the very bottom in 2015, I figured I should change my strategy a bit going into this year’s draft. In some ways, I built the same team I always do for the League of Alternate Baseball Reality — I hate dollar players, and hate spending for the most expensive players, and I dive for the middle — but my preparation was different. You can’t completely change your stripes, in the end. You can only hope to tweak em.

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Over the years, I have written a lot about the concept of position scarcity. In fact, a quick Google search yields four such articles just on the front page (I wonder how many, if any, are hiding on page 2 and beyond!):

The Position Scarcity Post To End All Position Scarcity Posts, March 2011 (oops, guess this article didn’t actually end all position scarcity posts!)
What is Position Scarcity, Really?, January 2012
What is Position Scarcity, Continued, January 2012
On Best Player Available vs. Position Scarcity, January 2015

This time I’ll take a different avenue to discuss the concept. My inspiration was an article posted last week by our friend Rudy Gamble over at Razzball.com. It was titled Debunking Position Scarcity In Mixed League Fantasy Baseball, and in it, Rudy shared his reasons why he believed that position scarcity was essentially a myth in mixed leagues.

Rudy and I have discussed position scarcity a lot over the years and the wonderful thing is that although it appears that we disagree, we both use math and data to support our positions. So it’s a constructive back and forth that allows both us and our readers to learn. After all, we still don’t have a 100% perfect valuation system, so we don’t know for sure who’s even right!

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Over the weekend, I had my first normal(ish) keeper deadline. The roster was packed with useful players who could be kept right around cost. It made for quite the challenge deciding on cuts and auction strategy.

Here’s the background – 12-team 5×5 roto (OPS), standard deep rosters (2 C, 5 OF, MI, CI), $310 auction budget, unlimited keepers at previous auction price +$7. And here are my various keep/cuts.

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