Justin Mason’s 2026 Apology Tour: Gladiator 2

Since the 2022 season, I have done deep dives on all my teams to see what I did wrong or right in order to diagnose what I need to fix in my process. This season wasn’t a very good season for me. A few cashes, but no wins and while I cut back on leagues in 2026, I never want to leave a season without a championship or two. This is my 2026 Apology Tour. 

With Gladiator season coming here in the next few weeks, it is time to look at how my Gladiator teams did and how we can better approach them. I drafted five total Gladiator leagues including two Gladiator Light leagues which were a limited set of leagues right before the season and an All-Star Break Gladiator. 

This article will cover the second of my two regular Gladiator leagues (first one was covered earlier) which is a 15 team roto league with no bench. This is a format that typically drafts in November and December only and because there is no bench, you aren’t making in-season FAAB pickups or lineup changes. If you have a player that gets hurt, you are taking a zero until he is back. If you have a player that is terrible, you are eating that all season. I’m looking at you Corey Seager.  

Here was my draft:

In spite of my pitching suffering two major losses in Schwellenbach and Lopez and only drafting one closer in Jansen, I actually had the second best overall pitching staff, collecting 57 points in the standings.

My biggest issue on this team was my hitting. I did not have a category on the offensive where I got more than nine standings points. Part of it was injuries to guys like Jorge Polanco and Daulton Varsho, but the bigger issue was the lack of production from the back half of my roster. Victor Robles got hurt but even if he hadn’t, he would not have made a massive difference after falling out of favor in Seattle. Andrew Vaughn was great when he started, but he was relegated to a short side platoon role with Jake Bauers emerging. Corey Seager and Teoscar Hernández both showed their age and didn’t return value.

On the pitching side, investing again in Schwellenbach was a mistake. I passed on Jesús Luzardo and a pitcher I loved in Nolan McLean, in spite of the risk. I also passed on a second closer or more accurately, I passed on getting a RP1 because the prices were pretty insane. I am not a fan of doing this normally, but if you are going to go for the one closer strategy, then it needs to be an elite one that you feel confident you will get 40+ saves from or you need to take a gamble somewhere towards the end and hope to get lucky. I didn’t do either and that meant I ended the season with just 23 saves which was only good for five standings points. Six more saves and I would have gained three standings points. 42 saves would have been worth 10 total points in the standings. That wouldn’t have moved me up the league standings, but that in conjunction with a couple different offensive picks and I like to finish in the money or win.

Conclusion
This feels like a player analysis issue more than a strategic one. That is an issue I am ok with. Sometimes a player is going to get hurt or age faster than expected. If I had ended up with a few different players or a healthy season from Polanco, all of a sudden the offense would be that much stronger and this is a team that cashes or compete for a title. This team had promise, but a few small mistakes was the difference.