Jeff Zimmerman’s 2024 Lessons Learned

1. I must have the auction/draft order done before traveling.

Every year the Tout Wars auction is held in New York City. I knew I would get to town 24 hours before my auction and planned to create my auction strategy. On my flight, I turned my knee and could barely walk by the time I got to my room. I spent the next 24 hours dealing with the knee.

I barely spent any time prepping my team and it showed. Here are the results:

The adage that a league can’t be won at the draft but could be lost rang true. The team had no balance (zero in home runs) and I left so many deals on the table.

Next time before I travel, I don’t want to plan on doing any work if/when hiccups occur. Once I arrive at my destination, I can adjust my expectations based on the latest news cycle.

2. Continue to focus on Home Runs and Batting Average in roto leagues with Stolen Bases available on the wire.

In last year’s edition of The Process, I noted that of the 51 players with 20 or more stolen bases, 11 weren’t taken in the first 450 picks of NFBC Main Event drafts. Of the 53 hitters with 25 or more home runs, only two weren’t drafted. Substantial stolen base sources were five times more available on the wire.

On to this season. Of the 51 players with 23 or more home runs at the time of this writing, four weren’t drafted (Mark Vientos, Michael Toglia, Jurickson Profar, and Paul DeJong). Now of the 52 guys with 19 or more steals, 12 weren’t drafted in those first 450 picks (David Hamilton, Victor Robles, Jacob Young, Dylan Moore, Dairon Blanco, Xavier Edwards, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Jake McCarthy, Blake Perkins, Michael Siani, Richie Palacios, and Otto Lopez). This season, three times as many stolen base sources popped up.

Even with that information, I’m not going to ignore stolen bases during roto drafts but I’m not going to give stolen bases extra attention, especially if the market is pushing up their value. If given the choice between two similarly valued players, I’ll take my power contributor especially if he provides a positive batting average. It’s a simple decision based on supply and demand.

3. Undecided on leaning groundball pitchers

With the ball constantly changing, I went into this season assuming the Happy Fun Ball was back. If I assume a ton of home runs, I need to focus on groundball pitchers (e.g. Gauman, Valdez, C. Sanchez). The 2022 ball was back this year. Here are the home run to flyball rates since 2017.

It was tough to know coming into the 2024 season if MLB wanted the home run rate to keep going up (see 2018 to 2019) or was the run environment in a new low. It was a new low.

Each season there are fewer home runs to start the year but then they pick up as the summer heated up. That trend did not end this season.

Month: HR/9
Apr: 1.03
May: 1.05
Jun: 1.17
Jul: 1.28
Aug: 1.25
Sep: 1.10

I decided to see which pitcher ERAs under and overperformed their xFIP over the extreme time ranges.

The results showed the low groundball pitchers striving in both time frames. I’m rethinking my plan with MLB using a dead ball the last three seasons. Should I move away from the high groundball guys and possibly focus on flyball pitchers instead. I’m still considering which approach to take and probably need to investigate the situation more before coming to a conclusion.

4. In Holds+Saves leagues, there is no need to include suspect starters in your lineup. Go with four to five relievers instead.

This season was the first, in a while, where I played in a league where one of the categories was Saves+Holds (SH). I love the concept and enjoy not having to fight for Saves when a new closer appears. With few large battles, work still needs to be done.

This season, 63 guys have 20 S+H or more. This group provides stats across the board. On average, they have 4.6 Wins, 3.24 ERA, 1.13 WHIP, and 10.1 K/9. The rate stats are fickle in the small sample but not strikeouts. My key was to aim for guys with a 10 K/9 or higher (26 of them).

Once this group of five is rostered, two items can be achieved. First, if one of the arms has a short week of five games or threw for several of the previous games, a seven-start/rested guy can step in. Second, when my rotation faces a tough week, all the relievers can be started. There is a good chance they’ll provide more value than a one-start guy with a bad matchup.

5. I needed to put more weight into the overall preseason projection with my in-season pitcher valuation.

Simply, I was moving too fast on suspect arms. I have a filter that looks at projections, season stats, recent results, and STUPH changes. I got too excited over a small sample and needed to back off. If I wait to be 100% sure on an arm, I’ll be two weeks too late in rostering him. I made decisions less than 25% sure and I needed to bump up that number to 50%.

On a related note, I remain unsure on how to adjust projections for pitchers who have started and relieved.

6. In leagues with deep benches, an extra catcher could be worth it.

As catchers get hurt and surprises pop up (e.g. Bart, Fry, Wells), I should add an extra one where I have room. Even if I have two solid options, a decent third catcher will help prevent a massive scramble and subpar production when an injury occurs.

7. Too much Strider?

I was in 16 leagues and drafted Spencer Strider in four (25%) of them. Right now, I’m in 7th (of 15), 11th (of 15), 5th (of 12), and 7th (of 12). They are among my worst-performing leagues.

Even before this season, I have a rule to not roster the same first to third-round players on my high-dollar leagues. In my cheaper leagues, I didn’t care, I wanted the best player if they fell to me and in these four instances, Strider was available in the middle of the first round. I added him.

I roster who I project to be the most productive players. In other instances adding multiple shares of the same player (Judge, Ohtani, Ramirez) worked out. It sucks having a quarter of my teams out of contention almost immediately. While I won’t change the high-stakes rule, I might limit myself to the same player in 20% of my leagues. If I were to do this, I feel I might force sub-par talent onto my team to adhere to the rule. I’m unsure of the answer.

8. Try not to make an auction the last event on draft weekend. It about killed me.

I had three drafts on the Saturday and Sunday before the season started. To top it off, I ended the weekend with a Sunday night auction. I was so dragging at that point that I’m unsure how I physically made it through the whole thing. In the future, I will be more deliberate when I schedule an auction.