Justin Mason’s 2022 Apology Tour: Battle of the Podcasts
2022 was the worst year I have ever had as a fantasy player. I played in 16 leagues and did not cash in a single one. The hard part is that I don’t even know what went wrong. I had teams I really liked coming out of the draft and some that were doing very well throughout the season. Over the next few weeks I will deep dive into each team in a series of articles to examine what went wrong and what the common threads were. This is my 2022 Apology Tour.
The ninth team I am covering in my apology tour was my seventh draft of the year. The draft was a slow draft that began on January 23, 2022. This was a 50 round draft and hold league. It is 5×5 roto with 15 teams with a small (two league) overall. The league was packed with great fantasy analysts. I finished sixth.
| Rank | Owner | Overall Rank | Hitting | Pitching | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Robert DiPietro | 1 | 62 | 63.5 | 125.5 |
| 2 | Toby Guevin | 4 | 41.5 | 59 | 100.5 |
| 3 | Drew Morris | 3 | 53.5 | 46.5 | 100 |
| 4 | Eric Cross | 5 | 38 | 57 | 95 |
| 5 | MICHAEL GOVIER | 8 | 68.5 | 25.5 | 94 |
| 6 | Zachary Waxman | 6 | 55.5 | 38 | 93.5 |
| 6 | Justin Mason | 9 | 57.5 | 36 | 93.5 |
| 8 | Matthew Williams | 12 | 48 | 43 | 91 |
| 9 | David McDonald | 10 | 55 | 33 | 88 |
| 10 | Matthew Davis | 14 | 25 | 53 | 78 |
| 11 | Brian Entrekin | 20 | 11 | 50 | 61 |
| 12 | Chris Maher | 22 | 31 | 22 | 53 |
| 13 | JORGE MONTANEZ | 25 | 16.5 | 30.5 | 47 |
| 14 | Mike Simione | 29 | 15 | 25.5 | 40.5 |
| 15 | John L | 30 | 22 | 17.5 | 39.5 |
The Draft
Once again I had a nice start with Trea Turner and Freddie Freeman with my first two picks, but that quickly fell apart.
| Round | Pick | Player | Pos |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Turner, Trea | 2B |
| 2 | 30 | Freeman, Freddie | 1B |
| 3 | 31 | deGrom, Jacob | P |
| 4 | 60 | Castellanos, Nick | OF |
| 5 | 61 | Smith, Will | P |
| 6 | 90 | Chisholm Jr., Jazz | MI |
| 7 | 91 | Springer, George | OF |
| 8 | 120 | Bassitt, Chris | P |
| 9 | 121 | Garcia, Luis | P |
| 10 | 150 | Turner, Justin | 3B |
| 11 | 151 | Valdez, Framber | P |
| 12 | 180 | Anderson, Ian | P |
| 13 | 181 | Cruz, Oneil | MI |
| 14 | 210 | Santander, Anthony | OF |
| 15 | 211 | DeSclafani, Anthony | P |
| 16 | 240 | Kirk, Alejandro | C |
| 17 | 241 | Gallo, Joey | OF |
| 18 | 270 | Matz, Steven | P |
| 19 | 271 | Rasmussen, Drew | P |
| 20 | 300 | Bart, Joey | C |
| 21 | 301 | Voit, Luke | CI |
| 22 | 330 | Finnegan, Kyle | P |
| 23 | 331 | Grichuk, Randal | OF |
| 24 | 360 | Zimmer, Bradley | UT |
| 25 | 361 | Melendez, MJ | C |
| 26 | 390 | Robles, Victor | OF |
| 27 | 391 | Bauer, Trevor | P |
| 28 | 420 | Isbel, Kyle | OF |
| 29 | 421 | Kieboom, Carter | 3B |
| 30 | 450 | Garcia, Leury | 2B |
| 31 | 451 | Gorman, Nolan | 2B |
| 32 | 480 | Pearson, Nate | P |
| 33 | 481 | Tucker, Cole | SS |
| 34 | 510 | Martinez, Nick | P |
| 35 | 511 | Burger, Jake | 3B |
| 36 | 540 | Heuer, Codi | P |
| 37 | 541 | Davis, Brennen | OF |
| 38 | 570 | Gutierrez, Vladimir | P |
| 39 | 571 | Thaiss, Matt | 1B |
| 40 | 600 | Rodriguez, Richard | P |
| 41 | 601 | Bradley Jr., Jackie | OF |
| 42 | 630 | Vilade, Ryan | OF |
| 43 | 631 | Duffey, Tyler | P |
| 44 | 660 | Gore, MacKenzie | P |
| 45 | 661 | Lorenzen, Michael | P |
| 46 | 690 | Chafin, Andrew | P |
| 47 | 691 | Murphy, Patrick | P |
| 48 | 720 | Baty, Brett | 3B |
| 49 | 721 | Boyd, Matthew | P |
| 50 | 750 | Astudillo, Willians | 1B |
So, what went wrong?
Let’s start with rounds 3-6. deGrom fell to me on the 2-3 turn and I just couldn’t pass up the upside. I should have. deGrom had huge injury red flags and in the draft and hold format, you have to keep yourself as injury free as possible because there are no in-season pick-ups. Nick Castellanos was on a number of my early drafts. I ended up fading him more as we got into March, but while he was definitely a bust, he didn’t hurt me in this league much as I won the home run category and finished second in RBIs. I will get to Will Smith later in the article. Jazz Chisholm was an injury risk guy as well and while my offense was pretty strong without him, losing him meant losing 10-15 stolen bases which was the difference between sixth and fourth place for my team.
One strategic mistake I made that didn’t hurt me a ton was drafting too many stashes. Drafting O’Neil Cruz, MJ Melendez, Nate Pearson, Nolan Gorman, Jake Burger, Brennan Davis, Brett Baty, Matthew Boyd, MacKenzie, Ryan Vilade, Trevor Bauer, and Matt Thaiss. Gorman, Cruz, and Melendez contributed a lot to my team, but when you add on inevitable injuries, you risk not being able to field a full roster early on in the season and there is the risk that these stashes never make it to their Major League roster as a few did. You want to take a few calculated gambles in a format like this, but I took too many which hurt my depth.
A minor issue on this team was my starting pitching depth. On top of losing deGrom for the majority of the season, I only had three starters go over 150 innings for my team. Ian Anderson struggled and then was demoted. Michael Lorenzen got hurt. Steven Matz got hurt. Anthony DeSclafani got hurt. Nate Pearson got hurt. MacKenzie Gore got hurt. This limited my options for starters which was a problem for my ratios as you will see.
The biggest issue on this team was saves. I finished 14th in the category and the only reason I did is because Nick Martinez and Kyle Finnegan got their jobs late. I had drafted Will Smith in the fifth round prior to the Kenley Jansen pick up by Atlanta which crushed me. I had also believed that Finnegan would be the guy in Washington and Codi Heuer could be the guy for the Cubs prior to him having Tommy John. Once the season started and I saw this shaping up, I made the decision to really try and go starter heavy with my lineups in order to try and win wins and strikeouts to offset the lack of production in saves. I ended up finishing second in wins and sixth in strikeouts, but this hurt me in the ratios and I finished eighth in ERA and eleventh in WHIP. If I had taken Kenley, who went with the next pick, that would have made me tied with fourth in the saves category, which would have vaulted me into second place.
Conclusion
This was one of my more competitive teams. There was a clear weakness with saves, but I can chalk some of that up to just being unlucky that Kenley ended up in Atlanta. That being said, I still made other mistakes with drafting injury risk players and too many stashes even if that didn’t crush me. If I had drafted more closing specs instead of these stashes, maybe I could have gained back some of these points in saves and not damaged my ratios in the process.
Justin is the co-host on The Sleeper and The Bust Podcast and writes for Rotographs covering the Roto Riteup as well as other periodic articles. In addition to his work at Rotographs, Justin is the lead fantasy writer/analyst and co-owner for FriendswithFantasyBenefits.com, and the owner of The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational. He is also a certified addiction treatment counselor. Follow Justin on Twitter @JustinMasonFWFB.
Yeah, upon first look I could have sworn that Will Smith pick was the catcher given how early it is… but the pitcher? Over Jazz Chisholm and George Springer? Lots of love to Will Smith there, so that really must have stung. It’s too bad that you had such faith in Smith so as to not reach for a second tier person earlier (even if, as this season went, those second tier people may not have worked out anyway).
Still had some great picks in there, but just like some of those other drafts, people just got injured for you. Really rough year, sorry Justin. For you to finish in 6th in this league is an accomplishment for sure.