League Champions Celebrate Here!
The 2022 regular season has concluded, which means it’s time to celebrate if you earned a sweet championship crown! Did you win your league? Did you finish in a prize spot thanks to the research, analysis, and advice from the RotoGraphs crew or a FanGraphs author? Perhaps FanGraphs data assisted on your path to a Yoo-hoo shower. Whatever bucket applies to you, share your winning story, boast, and celebrate your win or prize money finish in the comments!
The 2022 season was…unexpected. Going all the way back to 2000, the league posted the lowest (or second lowest, either just below or above the 2014 season) wOBA, driven by its lowest BABIP since 1992. HR/FB rate also fell to its lowest since 2015. So a combination of fewer balls in play falling for hits and a lower rate of fly balls flying over the fence really reduced offense. Essentially, draft Aaron Judge and hope for the best was the correct strategy.
So how’d I do? Well, I’m typing this late afternoon, at which point the majority of games have just started. So I’ll provide a quick rundown on my teams at this very moment and will update this, if necessary, when the standings become final.
AL-Only Tout Wars – 2nd place with no chance at 1st, as Doug Dennis executed the LIMA plan to absolute perfection, winning every single category, except for WHIP (he finished second), wins and strikeouts, the latter two of which he finished last in, as expected.
Mixed LABR – 3rd place, and yet still 28 1/2 points out of 1st! Though it’s no win, and I could easily fall a couple of spots during this last day, this was still quite the accomplishment given my apparently shocking draft.
Local 12-team Mixed – 4th place and no shot of reaching 3rd, the final prize spot. I’m amazed I finished that strongly given the rash of injuries I had to deal with and number of offensive disappointments (which seem to hit me every. single. year., no matter how much I spend on offense).
AL-Only Keeper – 1st! I have a 5 point lead as I type this and that lead should be enough to lock up my first championship five years after several prize finishes, but never on top.
Mike Podhorzer is the founder of ProjectingX IQ, an advanced fantasy baseball analytics platform that transforms projection data and in-season performance signals into actionable intelligence. He is the 2015 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Baseball Writer of the Year and three-time Tout Wars champion. He is the author of the eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance, which teaches you how to project players yourself. Follow Mike on X@MikePodhorzer and contact him via email.
I won the only NFBC $150 DC I entered and actually finished 60th overall. There is so much great content out there, you could spend all day on podcasts and research.
Spent a lot of time listening to The Athletic pods, CBS Fantasy Pods, and Rotowire Pods. Spent a lot of time on RotoGraphs as well as RotoWire. Shoutouts to Eno Sarris, Justin Mason, Jeff Erickson, DVR, Paul Sporer…honestly, if you spend the time you can find so much good stuff out there by some really good people.
Also, drafting Ryan Helsley in the 45th round didn’t hurt either!
I won my home cash dynasty league that uses FGpts. I was rebuilding in 2021 and finished last, but pivoted when I saw prospects being overvalued at the start of 2022. I turned a bunch of top prospects into Trea Turner, Yordan Alvarez, Max Fried, and Jose Abreu. When coupled with guys like Ohtani (both hitter and pitcher), Zac Gallen, and Corbin Burnes my team took off. As Casey Stern once said, “Prospects are cool, but parades are cooler.” I couldn’t have done it without the great analysis that I read on Fangraphs everyday.
Won my 12-team NL-only roto home league for the second year in a row. The prize for 1st place this year was 3k! Sleeper and the bust was my main podcast. Paul definitely put me on the Rowdy train and I ended up with him for a great price as the other owners didn’t anticipate the power breakout. Also, the prospect articles played a huge part in this team’s construction. Over the past few years in our minor league draft, I grabbed key contributors to my team in Gonsolin, Ryne Nelson, and Drey Jameson just to name a few. Thank you for the quality content!
I finally won my 20-team dynasty league after 15 years, i was previously 0-2 in championship games. Judge and J-Ram were major factors, but Suarez walk off homerun on a late Sunday actually propelled me into the finals.
I started the year planning on Grandal as my catcher, Muncy, Tatis, and Chris Taylor as my 2B, SS, and MI, and I rostered Joey Gallo for at least a couple months. I won the league. That’s baseball, Suzyn.
Wooo!
This was a rebuilding year for me after losing good keepers (Seager, Baez, Rizzo) in a NL-only league.
5×5, ten teams, 29 on each roster, six keepers. It’s a deep, deep league. I went into the season with Luis Castillo, Buehler, Freddy Peralta, Adames, Varsho, and Grisham – thoroughly mediocre hitting. I traded Buehler for Tatis before the draft. Rebuilding!
But I won by 12 points.
Highlights include drafting Bard with my 28th roster spot and some great adds like Harris II, Wright, and McCarthy. My first two picks were Pablo Lopez and Suzuki. My fourth pick was Oneil Cruz. Rebuilding!
I wound up with a solid roster, except for Manny Pina. But mid-year, I traded Gibson and Wade for Cobb and Elias Diaz. I bailed early on Floro and traded him (3 BB and 1K) for JD Davis, who hit .270 for me.
My biggest asset was eight good to great SP for six slots, so I could avoid every Denver and Dodgers start. I could do that with Quintana in a RP slot too.
My biggest mistake was not keeping Gallen instead of Castillo or Peralta, but Gallen had ominous shoulder issues in the preseason.
Next year, I have a choice of keepers from Tatis, Harris II, Oneil Cruz, Varsho, Adames, McCarthy, Suzuki, Peralta, Lodolo, Wright, Lopez, and Clevinger. Rebuilt!
In 5 ottoneu (the BEST!) points leagues and came in 1st in all 5. One I took over during the offseason and took the last place team to first place. (One team I took over in August so I can’t take too much credit for that one.) In one league, it was my 7th season and won after 3 second place finishes.
I won my 12-team mixed draft league with 110 points (20 points ahead of 2nd place)
The key moves that I made this past season:
I made a bunch of bad picks in the draft (Miguel Sano, Corey Knebel, Eduardo Rodriguez to name a few) but my keepers were generally very good and I was very lucky that I had comparatively fewer injuries. Luck always plays a big role.
Won my 10 team RT Sports League by 7 points. Weekly waiver reports were incredibly valuable! Spent way to much time looking at the great Roster Resources pages.
10.5k in total cashes. We will not be counting entries at this time.
I finished third (in the money) in an “off cycle” year in my keeper league against a bunch of teams that were stacked. Key pickups I have analysts to thank for: A. Kirk, Oneil Cruz, Jhoan Duran. Got lucky when someone dropped Zac Gallen after his meh June, which was a huge boon to my pitching staff in the second half.
Won my Fantrax250 12-team mixed Roto league by 31 points (113 to 82; and would have finished around 117 if I hadn’t stopped picking up players with a month to go in the season) thanks in large part to Fangraphs, Razzball, Baseball HQ, Baseball Prospectus and various pods, especially Sleeper and the Bust, Batflipcrazy, Pullhitter, Rotowire and The Athletic. Key draft picks were Goldschmidt in Round 6 (made up for O’Neill in the 4th and Bryant in the 5th), Rasmussen in the 24th and Cortes in the 25th. Berti and Tyler Anderson were key in-season pickups.
Won the league playoffs in a 10 team ESPN league after finishing with the third best regular season record thanks to the many rotographs articles read over the year, great advice from coworkers who played in different leagues than I, IL stashes working out well (DeGrom, Jansen when he wasn’t getting injured) and some excellent luck in acquiring Ketel Marte, Shane McClanahan late in the season off waivers. Julio Rodriguez early season drop was rather regrettable.
I won my 10 team, AL-Only, Roto-league for the first time in six years. (I won it twice a few years back.) This is a pride of winning league that I’ve been playing in since the late 1980’s. Still, it’s always a great feeling to win.
Won my H2H league for the 2nd year in a row. Didn’t lose a game from July on. Notable moves include trading Liam Hendriks for Alonso early in the year, Kirk for Fried before Kirk lost his mojo, and a key pick ups in Julio Rodriguez, Christian Walker, and Felix Bautista
I also picked up Walker and Bautista and was undefeated from July on! Maybe there’s something magical about those two guys…
Wow I had never heard of the LIMA Plan until this article, but was able to execute it perfectly mid-season in my 10-team H2H League. I was in dead last in early July, but traded all my SPs for top hitters and RPs and ran a 9 game win streak to make the playoffs and win my league.
I won my 32-year-old 4×4 NL-only Roto league for the 4th time in the last 7 seasons due to Fangraphs!
Thanks to everyone @ Fangraphs for your exceptional data, metrics, and analysis!
Won my 12-team auction, keeper league and finished tied for 2nd in draft league. Last year was 1st and 2nd in the opposite order. FG is huge as a resource, and shout out for Jeff Zimmerman’s Process as a great way to prep and strategize!
Got in the last of Justin Mason’s TGFBI play-in leagues and finished with 134.5 out of 150 :-). Was also leading my AL home dynasty league, but Giolitto and injuries to pretty much everyone I traded for in season killed me.
In TGFBI: Lots of draft wins: First four rounds of Bichette, Woodroof, Alonso, and Will Smith. Kenley Jansen in Round 7 and then 2nd through 4th SPs all hit: (Kershaw (9th Round), Severino (sort of hit – 11th), and Gilbert (12th), then later Lauer (22nd) and Wacha (27th). And late round league-winners for many – J-Rod (15th), and Andres Jimenez (18th). FAAB: Picked up Bard early, then later a waived Eloy Jimenez, Luzardo, and Singer.