The other day, I received a fascinating trade proposal in Ottoneu League 32 – Fantasy Field of Dreams: my $42 Bryce Harper for his $48 Corey Seager. If you’ve been following along with this series, I’ve covered my process of rebuilding this team, from the initial decision to rebuild, to the draft, to the breakouts that drove some early success. We’re two months into the season now and the ascent of The Wanderers has slowed a bit and now I’ve got to make a decision about this trade. I thought it would be an interesting exercise to run through my thought process as I consider whether or not to accept this trade, both as a case study for how to come to a decision on a difficult choice and as a way to check in on how my team is doing.

A straight swap of Harper and Seager is pretty interesting for a couple of reasons. First, upon first glimpse, these two players are even on value and production so the swap is simply addressing roster construction rather than a move born out of necessity. It’s also pretty uncommon to see two superstars like this traded straight up. So often, players like Harper are the centerpiece of a win-now move, with prospects or young MLB talent heading the other direction.

First, let’s do a little comparison of how Harper and Seager have performed thus far this season:

Due to injuries, they’ve both missed about the same amount of time this year and have the same number of games played so far. Harper has returned from his Tommy John surgery and has essentially picked up where he left off last year, though that isn’t up to the level of his MVP campaign in 2021. His power output is a little down which probably isn’t surprising considering the nature of his injury and his extremely quick recovery. After undergoing his own Tommy John surgery in late 2018 and exclusively hitting during the 2019 season, Shohei Ohtani’s power was significantly diminished until 2021. I’m assuming the same will hold true for Harper and we won’t see a return to his full, healthy self until next season.

Seager has his own injury concerns, though they clearly haven’t affected his ability to crush the ball. Last year was the first time he had played in a full, 162-game season since 2017. He’s already missed a month with a hamstring injury, though he’s been absolutely dominant when he’s been on the field. His hard hit and barrel rates are up to career highs and it finally seems like he’s settled in Texas after signing his mega contract last year and struggling in his first season as a Ranger.

Using four of the projections hosted on FanGraphs, we can get a rough glimpse of how the computers think these two players are going to perform over the rest of the season.

The projections think that Harper is going to have no trouble continuing to produce at his current pace. It’s certainly possible his power will return sooner rather than later, but that’s not necessarily something I want to bank on. For Seager, the projections are a little more bearish, with ZiPS being particularly pessimistic. I think they’re still weighing his down season last year a little too heavily and it certainly seems like he’s back to producing like he was in his final seasons in Los Angeles.

Without any other context, I think I’d pick Seager over Harper over the remainder of the season. But team and league context matter a great deal, especially in a format like Ottoneu. The Wanderers have fallen to ninth place in League 32, though they’re within 450 points of fourth place. The problem is that the teams in first through third place are an additional 250 points ahead of fourth which makes any dream of a Cinderella run a really long shot this year. Both Harper and Seager are keepable at their current salaries, though the former is likely a big target for arbitration during the offseason. Picking one over the other wouldn’t hamper me financially as I continue my rebuild into next season.

So then it comes down to roster construction. Ottoneu teams have to field a MI and five OF spots in addition to the traditional positions. As you might have guessed from the team name, I’ve already got Wander Franco holding down shortstop so adding Seager would really solidify MI for the future. Finding five consistent producers in the outfield is often a much harder struggle than filling out another infield spot. Here’s what my roster currently looks like at these to positions with each player’s FanGraphs Depth Charts projection listed:

Middle Infield is definitely the stronger position group right now with Muncy, Polanco, Steer, and Lowe all looking like solid contributors. Muncy will likely fill my 3B slot everyday so it’s really down to the latter three to fill two spots, 2B and MI, with Steer acting as my backup SS. My outfield group is a little weaker with just two or three solid options available to me depending on if you think Kelenic’s breakout is for real. There are a bunch of question marks for the remaining options; Hernández has been elite in the past but he’s really struggling in Seattle this year and injuries have derailed Haniger’s and Chisholm’s seasons.

Because a surprise competitive season isn’t looking likely this year, I’m less concerned with how these two position groups are shaping up this season. Looking towards the future, I’d guess I’d keep four players from each position group, though Muncy, Steer, and Chisholm are likely going to lose their MI eligibility next year. Franco is an easy keep as the centerpiece of my roster with Polanco and Tovar on the bubble depending on how they finish the season. That means I’m heading into next year with Franco as really the only guaranteed option in the infield. Happ, Gurriel, Kelenic, and Chisholm look keepable in the outfield which actually gives me a pretty decent foundation to build off of next year.

I let the other owner know that I was going to write up this trade decision so he’s privy to all these thoughts. I honestly didn’t know where I was going to land when I started writing this, but I think I’m leaning more towards Seager at this point. Does anyone have any other thoughts or things to consider that you think I missed?

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

Guest: Scott Pianowski

Strategy Section

• Setting Lineups
  • General advice for setting lineups
  • How many starters vs. relievers should you start each week?
  • Are some statstics a priority to “bank” earlier on in the season?
  • When to play Shohei Ohtani as a hitter vs. as a pitcher
• Waiver Wire
  • Priorities for waiver wire acquisitions

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

What to do with?

• Alek Manoah
• Lance Lynn
• Nick Lodolo
• Chris Sale

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The Is It Too Early episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Glenn Colton

Strategy Section

• Changes in draft strategy for 2023
  • Is it working?

Is It Too Early

• Is it too early to give up hopes of winning in 2023 if you are currently in last place?
• Is it too early to give up on certain specific rotisserie categories if you are in a hole?
• Is it too early to play for extreme volume (despite lower quality of play)?
• Is it too early to disregard pre-season projections and pre-season draft prep?
• Is it too early to make large FAAB bids?
• Is it too early to fully believe in 2023 YTD figures?
• Is it too early to take victory laps?
• Is it too early to sit struggling stars in your lineups?
• Is it too early to cut players that you spent a large amount of draft capital on?

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

Guest: Joe Sheehan

MLB Rule Changes

• Which rule has had the most effect thus far?
• Which new rule are we least happy about?
• How has the ball changed this year?

Strategy Section

• Which is more important – knowing the players, or knowing how to value the players?
  • Pre-season vs. in-season
• FAAB
  • Should the prices you pay in FAAB be driven by obtaning a good return on investment, or is it more market driven?
  • Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
  • Rob Silver’s comments on FAAB
    • Will Tanner Bibee be worth his FAAB bids?
    • How much should one pay for a projected SP60 in FAAB?
    • How much should one pay for a projected top 50 player n FAAB?
    • How much should one pay for a projected top 100 player n FAAB?

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

Guest: Jason Collette

Strategy Section

• Demoted Players
  • Parameter/Projection error, or simply part of the process?
  • Jake McCarthy
  • Jordan Walker
• How to know when hot player starts are for real?
• How to trade for / trade away players with hot starts?
  • Is it easier to trade for / trade away players with cold starts?
• Hitters with hot starts
  • Yandy Diaz
  • Nico Hoerner
  • Patrick Wisdom
  • Jarred Kelenic

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We’re about a month into the season now which means you’re probably getting a good feel for the direction your fantasy teams are headed this year. Maybe your roster has been wracked with injuries or you’ve hit the jackpot on the sleepers you picked up this offseason. This year, I’ve been writing up my experience of rebuilding my Ottoneu team in League 32 – Fantasy Field of Dreams; I’ve covered making the initial decision to rebuild, some general draft strategy for rebuilding clubs, and the dilemma I faced with the draft this year. Now is a pretty good time to check in on how things are progressing for The Wanderers.

The Draft

Before we dive in on what’s going on with the team now that the regular season is underway, I want to take a quick moment to recap what happened in the draft. If you remember, I had a significant amount of cash to spend on relatively few roster spots. I was targeting a starting second baseman and a high-end outfielder while spreading the rest of my cap space out between some depth options.

Folks, let me tell you, I seriously underestimated the amount of inflation present in the league. My top target, Mookie Betts, went for $70 and I drove the price up that high in a bidding war with the eventual winner. I just couldn’t bring myself to bid that one extra dollar after he hit that $70 threshold. There were a number of points in the draft where I had to bow out of the bidding on a target because the eventual price was just getting too high. I felt some particular pressure trying to find an outfielder; I had shifted my eyes towards some of the mid-tier options after some salary cap opened up by missing out on Betts. I let Masataka Yoshida ($35), Christian Yelich ($27), Jesse Winker ($28), Nick Castellanos ($26), and Cedric Mullins ($22) all go to other players after their salaries got too high and eventually settled for Lourdes Gurriel Jr. at $16. I did end up getting a couple of my high priority targets — Bryce Harper ($43), Spencer Steer ($8), Spencer Torkelson ($9), and Reid Detmers ($11) — but I felt like I was on the back foot during the entire draft, continually making contingency plans as players came off the board with values way over what I was comfortable with.

Here are the 10 players I had selected by the end of the draft:

Brandon Lowe turned out to be a pretty good backup pick after missing out on Betts, though most of the other available second basemen in the draft have performed rather well to start this season too. Steer has looked great and Gurriel has been okay. The pitching depth I picked up hasn’t been all that impressive, but all three of them are young and still have the potential to breakout that made them such enticing options. It wasn’t the most successful draft I’ve ever had, but it wasn’t terrible, particularly considering how wayward my plans went.

Breakouts!

On April 26, my team is currently sitting in sixth place, less than 500 points behind first place and right in the middle of a group of seven teams separated by less than 100 points.

I have the third best offense in the league thanks to breakouts from Wander Franco (7.56 Pts/G), Jarred Kelenic (8.56), and Steer (5.24) and solid bounce back seasons from Max Muncy (8.73) and Lowe (5.79). My pitching hasn’t been as great, sitting eighth in the league by points per inning pitched. I’m not as worried about that, but it’s probably the area of the team that could use the most help at this point. All things considered, I’m extremely happy with where my team sits in the standings. Thanks to those handful of breakouts, it’s going a lot better than expected.

The big thing that could potentially have a huge impact on the direction of my team is Bryce Harper’s impending return. The latest reports have him possibly being activated as soon as early May. That might be optimistic, but he’s clearly ahead of schedule and should be contributing much earlier in the season than expected. Getting four months of production from him this year instead of the expected one or two means my team has a significant source of points that will be added to the roster — something very few other teams can claim. There’s no guarantee that he’ll produce up to his usual superstar standards, but if he does, my already great offense will only get better.

Churn Baby, Churn

One of the most important early season tasks for a rebuilding team is to churn through the waiver wire searching for potential undrafted breakouts. Every team does this as they deal with injuries and underperformance, but it’s particularly important for a team like mine since I need to infuse my roster with talent however I can. I’ve added ten players off the waiver wire, kept seven of them and have already completed an early season trade.

Immediately following the draft, I started a couple of auctions for a pair of relievers I thought had some upside to chase. Brock Burke hasn’t been great (5.93 Pts/IP) but Jonathan Hernández (7.71) has been solid in high leverage work for the Rangers. Dylan Dodd looked like a promising pickup after he received an early season callup for the Braves but I ended up cutting him a few weeks later after Atlanta sent him back down to the minors. I like the improvements Luis Garíca has made to his approach at the plate and I believe in his potential to breakout this season so that was a pretty easy waiver claim after another team dropped him. I grabbed Kris Bubic after his two promising starts but his breakout was short lived after undergoing Tommy John surgery a week after adding him. Jonah Heim replaced Eric Haase as my backup catcher which has definitely worked out for the better. Tony Gonsolin was another waiver claim after another team dropped him and hopefully he can provide some upside for my pitching staff.

As for my cuts, Jack Leiter and Marco Luciano were both too expensive as prospects to keep around, especially considering the challenges they’ve faced in their development. I might regret cutting Nolan Jones if the Rockies ever give him a chance to play in the majors since he’s absolutely destroying Triple-A, but that chance might not ever materialize. When they did call him up, he sat on the bench for three games and then was sent back down without a single plate appearance. Kolten Wong’s and Oscar Gonzalez’s frigid cold starts to the season made them both easy cuts. After all that churn, I’ve got a single dollar in available cap space which puts me at a pretty significant disadvantage for the rest of the season. I’ll need to work on finding ways to clear some cap space so I can continue working the waiver wire as new breakouts popup.

The one trade I completed was a complete surprise. I woke up one morning with the offer in my inbox, sleepily considered it for a few moments, and then slammed the accept button. Kyle Manzardo is a good prospect and he’s gotten off to a strong start in Triple-A this year, but his path to the majors is currently blocked. I picked him up in the draft for exactly this reason; he had some helium as a prospect and I knew I could probably gain a pretty solid piece for him in the middle of the season. I just didn’t expect it to come so soon. Jazz Chisholm hasn’t gotten off to a strong start this year — his 37.8% strikeout rate is particularly concerning — but the talent is certainly there and his salary makes him an easy keeper if he finds a way to repeat his breakout from last year. That’s not a guarantee, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take with the added benefit of him possibly impacting my team this year.

With Harper’s return looming, Chisholm and Gonsolin raising the potential ceiling of my roster, and all the breakouts hitting at once, this team is in a much better position than should be expected at this point in the rebuilding cycle. I’m not sure the roster is good enough to challenge for a top-3 spot in the standings yet, but the foundation I’ve built is definitely solid enough to luck my way into contention if things continue going well. I’ll have to fight against the urge to make a series of “win now” moves this summer if I’m still stuck inside the large pack of teams in the middle of the standings. That might give me an edge over those other mid-tier teams, but it would be a big risk and a potential setback for the work I’ve been doing to prepare my team for the future.

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

Guest: Sky Dombroske

Tout Wars experience

Strategy Section

• How to react to players who start the season poorly
  • Ignoring traditional surface stats
  • Underlying component statistics you should look at early on in the season
  • When is it time to bench a player?
  • When is it time to drop a player?
  • When to trade for / trade away players
• Hitters with poor starts
  • Jake McCarthy
  • Christian Walker
  • Juan Soto
  • Manny Machado
  • Tyler O’Neill

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Aaron Judge only has one home run as of this writing in the 2023 MLB season. What the heck!? Shouldn’t fantasy managers rostering Judge have at least three or four home runs by now?! Wait…wait…relax. Ok? It’s been a long offseason, but we made it. We’re here. Now you get to wake up and read real stats! If the anticipation of opening day has clouded your judgment, I’m here to provide some insight into how your category totals should line up throughout the first few months of the season. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2023 Bold Predictions episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Michael Govier

NFBC & Tout Wars experience

Strategy Section

• First few weeks strategy
  • How to use FAAB in the first few weeks of the season
  • How to know who to drop/cut a player from your roster?
• What to do with demoted or injured players?
  • Vaughn Grissom
  • Luis Severino

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The draft for League 32 – Fantasy Field of Dreams is scheduled for this Sunday and I’m facing a dilemma. If you’ve been following along with this series, I’ve been detailing my journey through rebuilding this team that began last season. In my last entry, I wrote about some general draft strategy for rebuilding clubs, but as I sit just a few days away from actually entering the draft room, I’m having trouble deciding which direction to take my team.

Here’s where my roster currently stands:
Hitters:

Pitchers:

I’m spending $249 on 30 players leaving me $151 to spend on my 10 remaining roster spots. I don’t have the highest total available cash in the draft — five other teams have more to spend — but I do have the highest available cash per roster spot by a pretty wide margin, giving me some nice spending power to fill the holes on my roster.

Before we really dive into the available paths forward, I want to take a step back and talk about my approach to draft prep. I’m a big believer in budgeting per position and creating tiered lists of players to give me a pretty easy path towards ensuring I’m wisely allocating my resources across my roster. I really don’t want to head into a draft without some sort of plan in place and a decent idea of how much money I want to spend on each roster spot I need to fill. Here’s what my ideal budget would look like for the roster spots I need to fill:

If I start out the draft by winning, say, Bryce Harper for $40, based on my budget, I know I’ve got an extra $10 to either allocate to another position or bank for the waiver wire during the regular season. And if I end up splurging on, say, Mike Trout for $60, I know I’m going to have to reallocate some resources from another position to account for the overage.

The way I see it, I need two first basemen, a starting outfielder, a second catcher, a couple of starting pitchers, and a couple of relief pitchers. Those last two roster spots can be pretty flexible and that’s potentially the source of my dilemma. Currently, I’ve got Jorge Polanco and Max Muncy penciled in at second base and third base but the ongoing injury issues of the former give me some pause. For the latter, Muncy’s dual eligibility at second and third give me some options with how to proceed, though he’s probably better deployed at second from a value perspective.

Of course, the available talent pool at second is a lot deeper than it is at third which just adds another compilation. The keystone has players like Mookie Betts, Brandon Lowe, Ozzie Albies, Ketel Marte, Gleyber Torres, and Jonathan India all available while the best third baseman in the pool is either Anthony Rendon or Matt Chapman with very few options after that. Spending a bit on a second baseman and playing Muncy at third is probably the best course of action, all things considered.

At first base, I had a solid plan in place until yesterday when Rhys Hoskins tore his ACL. He was clearly the top available option at the position and the rest of the available players are a pretty significant step-down. Spencer Torkelson seems like the best fit for my roster and where it is in the competitive cycle. Beyond him, the options are down to veterans like C.J. Cron and Wil Myers or utility players like Brandon Drury and J.D. Davis. Luckily, most of the money I thought I was going to be spending on Hoskins can now be spent elsewhere because no other first baseman is going to command the kind of salary he would have if he was healthy.

Because I have a lot of cash to spend per roster spot, I can play around in the top tiers of the available outfielders, picking from Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Betts, George Springer or Masataka Yoshida. But the amount of money I spend on this position will have some pretty significant downstream effects on the kinds of players I can afford later on in the draft. I could go big and grab Trout and spend a lot less on my other roster spots or try and pick up Harper for a discount because of his elbow injury.

On the pitching side of things, there are relatively few top-tier options in the player pool right now; Max Scherzer and Blake Snell are the best available starters and I’m definitely not going to pay top dollar for any relievers at this point in my rebuild. I’m perfectly comfortable picking from the wide range of mid-tier starters that are available and then picking the best $1 relievers with upside I can find at the end of the draft.

I have three paths in front of me depending on how I want to allocate my resources, and I’m asking you, dear reader, to help me decide which way to go.

In this scenario, I’d split the majority of my cash between Betts and Harper while picking up a few solid depth pieces elsewhere. I have a lot of money budgeted for Harper, and while his recovery process has been better than expected, I still expect to get a pretty big discount on him since he’s still projected to miss a large chunk of the season. Targeting him is more about trying to acquire him for a reasonable salary so I can keep him next year, a little further into my rebuild. Betts is clearly the top 2B available, and depending on his salary and position eligibility, could be keepable next year too. He’ll also make a really enticing trade chip this summer if I’m looking to continue building my team for the future.

The problem with this plan is the lack of planned salary room at the end of the draft. I’ve budgeted nearly every available dollar, and while I expect some of those players to come in under budget, I probably won’t have much cap space to play on the waiver wire during the season.

If I’m going to budget that much money for an outfielder, I might as well go all the way and spend on the best option available. Like Betts, Trout could be a keeper next year if his salary is reasonable, but he’s almost certainly going to be used as a trade chip at the trade deadline. India is a solid bounce-back target who is still super young, and with the depth at the position, I could spend a little more on someone like Marte or Torres if I had some extra cash available. I also allocated a few more resources for my starting pitchers in this scenario, but I could save money there too by sticking with my mid-tier plan from the first scenario.

This scenario is all about spreading my resources out as widely as possible across my roster. Rather than targeting one of the top options at any given position, I’m looking to pick up solid contributors at every position. The other benefit of this approach would be a larger amount of cash left over to use during the season. I think if I weren’t rebuilding, this would be the way I’d want to go. It gives me a ton of points across the board, lowering my risk in case one of these players doesn’t work out as expected.

If you want to try and craft another approach with other available players, here’s a list of free agents in the league.

So, which approach should I go with?