Justin Mason’s Apology Tour: BARF

October 11, 2022

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.

Team two in my apology tour is one of the easier ones to figure out what went wrong, but not any less frustrating. Every year a group of us get together at the Wreck Room in San Francisco to draft the Bay Area Roto Fantasy league. It is a 15-team standard roto league on NFBC. Last year we added an overall with other area leagues and this year we decided that a portion of the entry fees would go to the charity of choice of the best ranking league as opposed to the individual overall champion. I finished 10th in the league though as you will see, I had to work hard to even do that.

2022 Bay Area Roto Fantasy League Standings

Rk	Team	Points	R	HR	RBI	SB	AVG	K	W	S	ERA	WHIP
1	Reid BARF	117	984	258	999	143	0.2513	1250	101	63	3.593	1.185
2	gregsauce	110	987	295	1024	62	0.2628	1331	85	36	3.417	1.152
3	BatFlip Crazy BARF	106.5	966	246	916	101	0.242	1324	87	75	3.228	1.092
4	mattywood	104	918	271	914	112	0.2475	1357	87	54	3.613	1.141
5	Entrekin	96.5	859	239	947	121	0.2439	1263	77	92	3.315	1.13
6	Sarris	96	926	233	855	147	0.2472	1211	99	44	3.415	1.176
7	@StevePaulo BARF	88.5	1047	278	947	123	0.2691	1090	74	34	3.756	1.217
8	Manbearpig	84	930	249	893	85	0.2449	1221	83	68	3.571	1.191
9	Del Don	68.5	824	199	727	94	0.2393	1369	79	71	3.582	1.16
10	BARF Mason	66.5	938	250	951	100	0.247	1142	78	37	4.011	1.256
11	Thorburn	61.5	910	229	799	109	0.2523	1343	77	32	4.172	1.222
12	Two Jawns	60	875	255	825	121	0.2441	1096	78	9	3.75	1.232
13	KDo BARF	53.5	855	186	804	112	0.2513	1186	65	40	3.798	1.21
14	The Family Madrigal	45	852	214	806	83	0.2509	1083	72	57	3.692	1.248
15	Bender	42.5	824	190	808	99	0.2488	1118	73	38	3.786	1.237

We conducted the draft on March 12, 2022. That piece of information is the key piece of information. One of my strategies this year was to stay as injury free as possible in the draft. Injuries are going to happen, but in the past I have loaded my teams up with upside and not worried so much about injury with disastrous results. So I did not draft a single injured player in this draft…

My Draft

Justin Mason’s 2022 BARF Draft

Round	Pick	Player	Position
1	12	Albies, Ozzie	2B
2	19	Betts, Mookie	OF
3	42	Mullins, Cedric	OF
4	49	Sale, Chris	P
5	72	Lynn, Lance	P
6	79	Smith, Will	P
7	102	Jimenez, Eloy	OF
8	109	Snell, Blake	P
9	132	Adames, Willy	SS
10	139	Cronenworth, Jake	1B
11	162	Turner, Justin	3B
12	169	Urias, Luis	MI
13	192	Renfroe, Hunter	OF
14	199	Floro, Dylan	P
15	222	Bauer, Trevor	P
16	229	Patino, Luis	P
17	252	Murphy, Sean	C
18	259	Gimenez, Andres	MI
19	282	Thomas, Lane	OF
20	289	Rasmussen, Drew	P
21	312	Finnegan, Kyle	P
22	319	Marsh, Brandon	UT
23	342	Torrens, Luis	C
24	349	Hernandez, Carlos	P
25	372	Corbin, Patrick	P
26	379	Bradley, Bobby	1B
27	402	Stratton, Chris	P
28	409	Duran, Jarren	OF
29	432	Warren, Art	P
30	439	Wade, Tyler	3B

Blue = Finished on my roster
Red = Injured

So, as you can see my team was decimated by injuries, but not only that, the five guys I thought were going to be my potential closers all ended up not closing. Just for fun, let’s look at the timeline:

Justin’s Series of Unfortunate Events

Date	Event	Effect
3/12/2022	BARF Draft Day	Justin is happy.
3/16/2022	Chris Sale breaks rib.	Justin loses first starter
3/19/2022	Kenley Jansen signs with Braves	Justin loses first closer
3/27/2022	Jarren Duran optioned	Justin loses first hitter
3/28/2022	Luis Urias pulls quad muscle	Justin loses second hitter
3/30/2022	Chris Stratton named co-closer	Justin feels hopeful
4/4/2022	Lance Lynn out with knee injury.	Justin loses second starter
4/7/2022	Dylan Floro put on IL with shoulder issue	Justin loses second closer
4/12/2022	Luis Patino strains oblique	Justin loses third starter
4/14/2022	Blake Snell injures adductor	Justin loses fourth starter
4/23/2022	Eloy Jimenez hurt leg	Justin laughs so he doesn’t cry
5/1/2022	Chris Stratton loses closer role	Justin feels like Charlie Brown kicking a football
5/18/2022	Willy Adames injures ankle	Justin is tired.
5/23/2022	Hunter Renfroe injures hamstring	Justin loses his paitence
6/13/2022	Ozzie Albies fractures foot	Justin loses faith in his team
6/15/2022	Drew Rasmussen injures Hamstring	Justin loses faith in humanity
6/19/2022	Mookie Betts cracks rib	Justin loses all hope.
8/3/2022	Justin Turner injures abdominal muscle	Justin loses his sanity.

To be quite honest, I am pretty proud of my tenth place finish. Considering how many guys I lost early in the season. So how did I try and keep my team competitive?

The first thing I did was get very aggressive on closer specs.

BARF Closer Specs

Date	Player	Bid
4/3/2022	Emilio Pagan	$5
4/10/2022	Jorge Lopez	$13
4/17/2022	Hansel Robles	$78
4/17/2022	Chad Green	$78
4/24/2022	Wil Crowe	$7
5/1/2022	Tyler Duffey	$1
5/15/2022	Felix Bautista	$27
6/12/2022	Daniel Hudson	$3
6/12/2022	Matt Strahm	$3
6/12/2022	Jason Adam	$3

Not all of these worked and there was some wasted money, but I was able to get enough saves to not finish last in the category.

The next thing I did was make sure I was fielding a full lineup even if it meant dropping star players. In NFBC leagues you don’t have IL spots, so holding guys that are going to clog up your bench is a huge mistake. I dropped Albies as soon as he got hurt. I dropped Hunter Renfroe as soon as he got hurt. I held onto Snell, Lynn, Urias, Eloy, and Sale, but eventually had to drop Sale once he had a setback. I played about as well as I could have.

The last thing I did was stream pitchers constantly. I made a decision pretty early on that the injuries to my pitching staff meant I needed to either punt ratios or punt wins and strikeouts. I made the decision to just punt ratios and stream as much as I could. It allowed me to not focus on who might have a good outing, but on guys that I thought could win games because of the team they were on or were playing. It left me in the middle of the pack in wins and strikeouts.

Conclusion
This was a disaster from the start. Sometimes you just have a team like that. The fact I was able to rally and not finish last is a nice reminder that you shouldn’t give up even when you struggle out of the gate. In spite of all the injuries, I still had a top five offense in the league. Had I had half the injuries that I did, I probably could have cashed in this league. It is a reminder to never give up, especially not early.

BAL	CHW	ATH
BOS	CLE	HOU
NYY	DET	LAA
TBR	KCR	SEA
TOR	MIN	TEX

ATL	CHC	ARI
MIA	CIN	COL
NYM	MIL	LAD
PHI	PIT	SDP
WSN	STL	SFG