2024 Bold Takes Thread!
Last year I hit on 11 of 20 of these, added two more this year. ADP is from the
@TheReal_NFC
Main Events since Saturday.
To make sure these takes were bold enough, the min pick of guys I like is a higher number than the max pick of the guys I'm fading.
As many of you know I spent a few days in the hospital last week with appendicitis. Back home now and slowly getting better but unfortunately I've decided to cancel the rest of my "podcast tour"
Thanks to everyone who reached out to check on me over the last week, it means a lot
I still have one last Main Event tonight so I'll likely be posting my player shares and bold takes tomorrow. A couple of early ones of players I have too many shares of and won't be drafting tonight:
D. Cease > L. Giolito
F. Peralta > W. Buehler
T. Edman > S. Marte
I'm not a labor expert but two things that seem positive:
1. We haven't heard anything about CBA negotations, usually when there's no progress, offers get leaked.
2. One of the smartest organizations in baseball just signed a contract that most of us think is too high.
🔥HOT DATA ALERT🔥
There's 25 hitters that were rookie eligible in 2023, under 27 years old and were drafted in at least 5 Main Events. 17 of them (68%) outperformed their Bat X wOBA projection and the median was .016 of wOBA above Bat X.
🚨🔥HOT TAKE ALERT🔥🚨
/THREAD Top prospects, on average, do not meet expectations. Shocking, I know 😲
Harsh reality: most elite prospects struggle to hit initially. For every Corbin Carroll, there are 3 Volpe/Torkelson/Walkers types 🪣🌊🥶
(...cont)
Somewhat disappointing year for me with 3 terrible DCs, no Main Event wins and my bold takes were mostly a disaster. My best league however was the one where I reached for my guys and that really paid off.
Lots of work to do to get better for 2023 but for now Go Jays!
Every time I do a pod it reminds me how passionate I am about this game. Then to wake up and see people debating something we discussed last night and Rob tell us that 300+ people already started to listen to this is amazing.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I had fun recording this
Since 2002 there are 23 SP who over a span of 3 seasons have had:
400+ IP
Sub 3.5 ERA
ERA at least 0.80 below xFIP
100+ IP the next season
Those 23 SP averaged 3.04 ERA & 4.02 xFIP over 12400 IP.
The next season they averaged 3.77 ERA & 4.12 xFIP.
This is a Julio Urias tweet
Here are my 2022 bold takes below. I'll use the same wording as last year for good karma. All the players on the left are ahead of the ones on the right in my actual rankings but sometimes the gap is very small. If I'm right about half of these, it'll be an excellent year.
I'm usually very careful with my FAAB money in the season but I didn't care how much I overpaid for Drew Rasmussen this week. He's my SP23 for the rest of the season and when those guys come up in FAAB, you can't miss.
@RotoGut
100% yes. If I'm 10th but tied with a team at the top of the standings in R and RBI, I owe it to the league to keep trying.
If I don't, then that team gets an edge and it's not fair to the other teams fighting for 1st place.
Friendly reminder that on April 27th 2021, Nick Solak was 15th in MLB with a 16.7% Barrel%. Hitters are inconsistent in small samples, even when you use cool (and mostly descriptive) Statcast metrics.
I know it's now the cool thing to post a bench filled with injuries but 2 rules:
1. Don't post one with players who were hurt coming into the year or are hurt every year (Strasburg)
2. Don't post one with players who you should have dropped as soon as they got hurt (Madrigal)
If deGrom were to be out for the rest of the year (I know he's not) and you replaced him on Sunday with 22 GS of Bruce Zimmermann, according to Steamer you would get from this spot:
33 GS - 177 IP - 12 W - 3.18 ERA - 203 K - 1.08 WHIP.
Basically late 2nd round value already.
De Los Santos, Morgan, Hentges, Stephan, Karinchak and Clase all had the ability to go 2 innings today and combined for a 2.44 ERA and 2.87 xFIP this season. That was the answer today, not Civale and not Bieber on short rest. Guardians got what they deserved.
There is one exception: The first game (Chicago White Sox vs. Boston Red Sox from Fenway Park on May 8 at 11:30 a.m. ET) will be simulcast on the NBC broadcast network, with the remaining 17 games available exclusively on Peacock’s premium service.
@RotoGut
@Prospects365
@ctmbaseball
@RunDMcD
@batflipcrazy
Agreed, the Lindy is impossible to match
What I'm most proud of this year actually isn't so much that I'm in contention for the overall but if the season ended today I'd cash in all 22 leagues (3 Mains, 1 OC, 1 AC, 3 DCs, 2 DR, 3 Cutlines and 9 Bestballs).
Sources: MLB offered to start CBT at $228 million, going to $238 million by end of deal. But rest of proposal not yet known, and league’s increase is said to have major strings attached. Players' last known ask was $238m, finishing at $263m. MLB was at $220m previously.
If we focus on the ones drafted in the top 300 in ADP (11 players), the median was .035 above Bat X.
I like you Derek and your projections are great but Bat X is way too low on rookies and everyone knows it.
Why is everyone in fantasy baseball talking about the 10-15 hitters who might benefit from the NL DH instead of talking about ALL the NL hitters expected to get more PA, more R + RBI and ALL the NL pitchers expected to have fewer K's and a higher ERA and WHIP.
@JAGNY_1987
Everyone can decide for themselves but I'll continue to play on NFBC and I have no reason to doubt them moving forward.
Steps being taken now should have been there before but I believe everything I've heard from Greg.
There's been plenty of discussion about my team in the Ultimate DC on
@DChampionsPod
so I might as well explain it.
In the first 12 rounds I look 2 closers, 3 starters, 2 catchers and 5 extra hitters.
I then took hitters with 18 of my next 19 picks
This is from 2021 NFBC Main Event
1st column: If all 43 teams dropped a player at the start of wk 10, his % is 33.3% (held 9/27 weeks). Then I average that for all players based on ADP.
2nd column: the % of teams that held a player until at least the 1st week of September
I'll be posting my hitter and SP bold takes for 2023 on the Pull Hitter Patreon tomorrow night after my last draft . In the meantime here are my top 5 closers:
1. Ryan Helsley
2. Jordan Romano
3. Emmanuel Clase
4. Clay Holmes
5. Ryan Pressly
Long thread coming but I don't have anywhere else to post this.
Everyone in the fantasy baseball community seems to think that starters are more risky if there's a short season. I don't like guessing so I wanted to test it out.
Unbelievable ending to my fantasy baseball season. Won a DC and a Main by 0.5 pts. In the Main I lost the lead because of a Cesar Valdez save and got it back with the Alex Reyes save. Would have also lost if Iglesias hadn't come in for the last batter in the 9th.
I'll be recording a special
@PullHitterPod
tonight with
@deadpullhitter
and
@batflipcrazy
focusing on Main Event Strategy. Very little player talk but if there's any specific topics you'd like covered, let us know.
It'll be my last podcast appearance before the season starts.
F. Peralta > W. Buehler
D. Cease > L. Giolito
K. Gausman > J. Urias
Z. Gallen > S. Alcantara
T. McKenzie > L. Webb
D. Rasmussen > S. McClanahan
J. Taillon > C. Rodon
N. Pivetta > L. Garcia
A. Heaney > E. Rodriguez
C. Flexen > C. Bassitt
A. Houser > P. Lopez
Does anyone feel like their fantasy baseball teams are actually doing well? My aces have all been disappointing, lost about half of my closers, took a ton of 0's, my hitters seem to hit 0.200 every night yet many teams are doing well in the standings. Such a weird season...
I look forward to reading everyone's opinion on the pitch clock for the rest of the day. I think I might even do a Twitter search for pitch clock to make sure I don't miss anyone.
Draft season is over for me. Here are my player shares for my 8 roto leagues.
It's funny how things work out sometimes, Bo Bichette is my highest owned player in the top 60, he has an ADP of 25.75 in the Main and I have him ranked 25th but I got him at picks 30, 34, 33 and 33
K. Marte > K. Tucker
J. Polanco > M. Betts
B. Reynolds > F. Freeman
T. Edman > S. Marte
A. Rosario > J. Baez
Y. Moncada > N. Castellanos
J. Bell > P. Goldschmidt
I. Happ > J. Chisholm
E. Hernandez > B. Lowe
M. Sano > K. Schwarber
M. Margot > J. India
A. Santander > J. Altuve
I'm going to start tweeting out random highlights of players who were terrible in 2023.
Tim Anderson with an absolute bomb off Logan Allen. It went 429 FEET!!!
That's twice in a week I've selected a Main Event time and multiple names changed date within 24 hours.
I'm back to TBD for now and will sneak attack one when it's up to 14/15.
Thanks to
@rotodoctor
, I had the best seat in the house Saturday night for the Jays game.
I'm no doctor but at some point Gausman started walking around on his sore ankle and we both agreed there's no chance he starts this week, he's on my bench.
Everyone: Acuna is too good, gives the 1st pick an unfair advantage.
Also everyone: this team doesn't have enough hitting.
Not my team but this thread is so silly.
This is NOT my team. It is from my
@TGFBI
league in the
#1
slot.
It is an interesting build.
A little too much pitching to start the draft for me.
Any thoughts?
Now that I finished my last DC, here are a few of my very late targets. All of these guys were drafted in less than 20% of DCs and I think they're as good as some players going 10+ rounds earlier
Disclaimer: I'm not a prospects guy and didn't really know any of them 6 months ago
Main Event Strategy Thread
Now that my Main Events are all done, it's time to explain my "controversial" strategy. In every draft I got 3 regular closers and often quite early in the draft. The way I see it is you need 2.5 closers to be 80th percentile in steals and when you
Hitters who hit in the top 6 of lineups play about 89% of games. In the 7-inning doubleheaders so far they have played both games 73% of the time. Convert that into innings and for top 6 hitters a doubleheader is worth about 1.5 times a normal game.
A note to all fantasy baseball players and podcasters.
The Rockies are 12th in MLB in home wOBA and they lost Bryant, Grichuk and Cron. They're also 25-30 at home. The famously tough at Coors matchup is now an average road matchup.
@jeffwzimmerman
If only there was a weekly off-season pod that discussed new players ranked by ADP every week and never talked about the first 2 rounds...
Hitters:
Wade Meckler
Matt Kroon
Jacob Hurtubise
Blaze Alexander
SP:
Keider Montero
Isaac Coffey
Will Dion
Julian Aguiar
There's different reasons for all of these but most of them revolve around having impressive numbers in AA or AAA.
9 of the 13 worst teams in RS/G were in the Central. The problem is that since they only played each other, we have no way of knowing if it's because the hitting was terrible or the pitching was great.
First 10 rounds of my 3 Main Events side by side.
I'll post my player shares and favorite targets for 2020 tomorrow. My final draft tonight is a $1,500 OC which should have a very different build from all of these.
It's only 1 start but... from 2016 to 2019 there's 25 SP's who went 6+ IP & 12+ K/9 in the 1st turn through rotation. Their end of season avg ERA was 3.29 and 22 of 25 had a sub 4 ERA.
The list for 2021: Berrios, Bieber, Burnes, Kikuchi, Bauer, Wheeler, Matz, Musgrove and May
Sounds like I'm the only one who doesn't hate this deal for the Jays. It depends what else they do but based on the Montero, Suarez and Martinez contracts, RPs will be expensive in the FA market.
I write one article every year and it's for my friend
@RotoGut
. Check it out below ($) along with the rest of the FTN Draft Guide. Subscription includes all their content and most importantly Vlad's weekly FAAB article that is a must for any NFBC player
If I had one piece of advice for fantasy baseball it would be to maximize AB's. 17 of the top 22 in AB's are in the top 100 overall in the Main Event. I realize that it's not a totally independent stat because good hitters get more AB's but I think it still means something.
I signed up for the new
@TheNFBC
Solo Shot contest. It's a single entry, $1,000 entry fee with league prize of $4,000 and overall prize of $20,000.
FAAB is once a month, on the first Thursday of every month, rosters are 32 players to start the year and they expand to 34 in June.
Time to join the Meatball Mafia! Rob is building something amazing here and it will only get better.
We haven't figured out exactly what I'll be contributing but my yearly bold takes will be on Rob's Patreon in a few weeks as well as most of my future podcast appearances
Any time now we should get an update from Passan or Drellich that MLB increased the bonus pool offer to 25M and no talks about CBT. Who else is excited?
@FredZinkieMLB
My issue with it is that it basically destroys the value of closers and takes away from the strategy of the game. There'll be dozens of guys available in FAAB that will get 20-25 SV+HD with solid ratios so Clase becomes like a 10th round pick?
Thanks to
@deadpullhitter
for being my proxy in the NYC Super Auction yesterday and to
@GregAmbrosius
for speaking loud and clear so that I could hear over Zoom. Auctions are already hard, it was even harder over Zoom but I think it worked out okay
Are our brains still affected by the higher FAAB bids in the short season? Here is the FAAB $ spent per team in the NFBC Main Event after 2 bidding periods:
2019 - $56
2021 - $97
The Belt signing basically completes the Teoscar trade since the money evens out. Downgrade from Teoscar to Belt for 1 year to get Swanson for 3 years + Macko. I like it.
⚾️ 2022 Fantasy Baseball draft season has arrived!⚾️
The
@FTNFantasy
Five Tool
#MLB
#FantasyBaseball
130-page Draft Guide and site access is live.
Sign up for either the full season, draft season or high stakes package:
🔗
#FTNBaseballDraftGuide
I just signed up for the new
@TheNFBC
Champions League. It's a package that includes 1 Main, 1 OC and 1 DC (+$250 Champions League fee).
Your points for those 3 teams will be added up and the top 15 players will qualify for a live auction in Vegas in 2025.
What do NFBC Main Event Overall Standings mean after Week 4?
-Of the top 50 overall teams at the end of the season in 2019, 24 were in the top 100 after week 4.
Top 25 after week 4 - Avg finish 115th
26-50 - 204th
51-100 - 211th
Outside top 100 - 307th
Timeline of my feelings about Montero in the past 2 weeks:
-He's not the closer, I was right to drop him.
-Oh shit he got a save, I'm an idiot
-Dammit a W, I'm really an idiot
-Oh wait I wouldn't have started him anyways.
-He gives up 4 runs, wow what a great move to drop him.