Baseball is back, and it feels great!
For someone who observes the start of a new draft season at the end of the previous one, it never really goes away, but after putting a dozen teams together, it’s time to see if the months of planning and prep will pay off.
Why play fantasy baseball?
My answer to that question has varied at different stages of my life, and is increasingly fluid to the actual circumstances of the league. When I was consistently playing in high-stakes leagues, the goal was simply to win money. Ideally, life-changing money. It hasn’t happened yet, and maybe it never will, but the enjoyment of playing stretches beyond prize money, and that has become more true after a particularly long stretch where I had fewer opportunities to catch up with friends in person. It may be surprising to some that a lot of great friendships begin at NFBC live events, given the primary motivation that leads many of us to play in those contests.
Friendships from fantasy baseball have been forged and flourished over time, and I was also gifted a head start by receiving invites to long-standing industry leagues like Tout Wars and LABR very early on during my time at RotoWire. Beyond those leagues, the rapid growth of TGFBI, paired with Baseball HQ’s First Pitch Arizona Conference, has helped bring a lot of us together over the years.
Regardless of the stakes and the opportunities to connect and build friendships, there is also the puzzle-solving element of this hobby that makes it enjoyable. Utilizing unique strategies and finding overlooked players is just plain fun, and each season presents a chaotic series of choices that puts your ability to problem solve and adapt to the test.
The first partial week of the season is low-key great because it provides an immediate challenge. For healthy players who didn’t have the role you were hoping for in the first three or four games, is it time to seek an upgrade from the waiver wire? In other instances, doing nothing is optimal because the player you have is actually more valuable than the alternatives you’re considering on the wire.
Plenty of late-round picks are made with the intent to churn the bottom of the roster. Streaming pitchers with favorable opening series matchups, and prospects who emerged from a spring job battle with an early opportunity, can be difficult players to assess in the early days of the season.
With Griffin Jax picking up the opening day save, while Brock Stewart tossed a scoreless eighth, Stewart looks like an easy drop Sunday for someone like Jason Foley, who recorded the final two outs of the ninth by striking out a pair of righties (Yoán Moncada and Luis Robert Jr.). Especially in the wake of spring, when the Tigers starting pitchers looked collectively improved from this time last year, it’s reasonable to carry over some of that excitement to holdover bullpen arms like Foley, especially if there is an uptick in fastball velocity that holds beyond the added adrenaline from opening day.
In shallow leagues, we’re left to wonder if Garrett Crochet’s excellent showing in the opener immediately places him in the mix as a waiver add, a decision that is even more difficult if your potential drop hasn’t pitched in the opening series. In nearly all formats, Victor Scott II might offer a short-term boost in steals for a speed-light roster as he gets a look in the Cardinals outfield while Dylan Carlson (shoulder) is on the IL.
Good luck as you weigh your early-season decisions!
Here’s a recap of what we discussed on Rates & Barrels this week.
Tuesday
- The most unusual, and still developing, story in baseball is unfolding in Los Angeles where Shohei Ohtani’s friend and former translator Ippei Mizuhara has been linked to a $4.5million gambling debt with an illegal bookmaker in Southern California. The footnote in “Ohtani News” for the week was that he was recently cleared to resume throwing as he continues his rehab as a pitcher.
- Ezequiel Tovar signed a seven-year extension with the Rockies, which given the quality of his defense alone, should work out just fine for Colorado. The bigger question we attempted to answer was whether Tovar’s aggressive approach can be smoothed out over time given that he’s still just 22 years old.
- Several job battle winners were discussed, and two of our favorites on the pitching side are Jared Jones and Max Meyer, even though the latter’s innings might be managed very carefully once the Marlins have a greater number of healthy rotation options at their disposal.
Wednesday
- Jordan Montgomery’s extended window as a free agent closed with his one-year, $25M deal with the D-backs. In a league desperate for quality starting pitching, it was a surprising outcome to say the least.
- Spring stolen base rates are among the most important stats from Cactus and Grapefruit League play. The Angels might be bad this season, but they appear poised to run a lot with Ron Washington at the helm. The biggest potential winner in all of this? How about Zach Neto, whose time in the No. 9 spot in the lineup should be short-lived.
- We introduced our 2024 All-Oatmeal Team selections, and were nearly in lockstep for the starting pitchers. Oatmeal is good — and we’ll look back at this group at season’s end to see if they were as reliable as we hoped throughout draft season.
Thursday
Will Smith signed a long-term extension with the Dodgers. Given that Shohei Ohtani will be there just as long, we wondered how the defensive alignment might work down the road, as Smith’s bat should age well enough for him to enter the first base/DH mix in the distant future when he’s less viable behind the plate.
We took a closer look at three of Eno’s bold predictions for the upcoming season. On this episode, I learned that my friend has very little confidence in the Brewers.
Eno outlined the strategy he employed with his co-manager in the NFBC Main Event, where pitching always gets a healthy boost. Which hitters tumbled the most compared to their pre-Main Event ADP? Among players with a Top 100 ADP, these hitters fell at least 20 picks from their non-Main Event positions.
Schwarber’s fall is the most logical — building in enough cushion to absorb his batting average, or being willing to give up a lot of ground in the category with an early-round pick, is suboptimal given the stakes and aspirations of winning the overall contest. Trout, Goldschmidt, and Arenado were all targets for me at their respective pre-Main Event prices, albeit with the acknowledgment that Trout’s lack of steals at this stage of his career made him a particularly tough player to draft if you were positioned in the back of the draft order and wanted to take advantage of Yordan Alvarez, Bryce Harper, or Matt Olson consistently being available with your first two selections.
- TL;DR: The general thinking is that missing out on the pitchers you like will be more costly than having someone else scoop these veterans at a slight relative discount.
Friday
— Join the Live Hive at 1p ET on our YouTube channel (youtube.com/c/ratesandbarrels)
— We’ll discuss opening oay takeaways, our predictions for division winners and major awards for each league, and have our pitching deep-dive series focusing on changeups.
(Top photo of Garrett Crochet: Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports)
