inthedougout

January is a month of new beginnings.  Clean slates.  Resolutions.  The end of one year, the beginning of another.  For us, it also marks the end of the fantasy football season and, officially, the beginning of the march to fantasy baseball season. For some, the grind never stopped, which is why we're here, in January, talking prospects.  Going into any new season, my personal opinion is that the veterans have largely solidified their status - in one direction or another.  It is the prospects -- the post-hype and the new-hype that disorient and disturb the board more than any other category of players.  That's our inquiry for the moment. Post-hype prospects I have three post-hype prospects that I am targeting, in particular.  They are Michael Busch (Cubs), Kyle Manzardo (Guardians), and Curtis Mead (Rays).  Busch is a pretty easy pick, but I suspect his price is going to get too expensive relative to his ADP neighbors.  Busch was shipped from the Dodgers to the Cubs, which is o

We are several weeks into the season and, at this point, we can all agree that everything we knew going into the season was thrown out the window as soon as the games started.  That said, there is still a lot of baseball yet to play and for us, as fantasy nerds, a lot of in-season management to navigate.  As we move forward into summer, here are a few things I either have done or am thinking about doing. Use your FAAB to get the young pitchers and sell them, almost immediately, for impact bats. Put this one in the category of "shiny new toy."  Sure, I have preyed on our inattentiveness, but in re-draft settings, I see no issue with snagging these higher-end rookie pitchers and then flipping them.  In two different settings, I was able to flip Bibee for Miguel Vargas and then, separately, Mason Miller for Jordan Walker. Will these trades work out for me?  Probably not, but I have a lot more faith in Vargas and Walker, particularly, than I do in Bibee and Miller.  Find the leve

Last year was one of my more successful fantasy baseball seasons.  I played in nearly 10 leagues, all different shapes, sizes, and contexts.  Heck, I was lucky enough to play in the so-called "Listener League" at CBS with Scott White, Frank Stampfl, and Chris Towers.  I even wound up winning that league.  However, as successful as last year was for me, I was disappointed with how I got there.  It felt more like throwing darts as opposed to knowing which darts I was throwing and why.  There was little examination -- a post mortem -- to figure out which darts failed and why.  In other words, it felt more lucky than good.  I wasn't satisfied with that and thus, this year, my approach was to be far more systematic.  Now that I can reflect on the draft season, here's how my strategy formalized. 1.   Go into your draft with a clear strategy.  This year, mine was the infamous "OF-3B-2B" stack. My goal for every draft was to leave the first three rounds with an outf

Anecdotally, last season was one of the more memorable fantasy baseball seasons.  We had, of course, the controversy surrounding the humidors , the c onstruction of the baseball , and " sticky stuff ."  The three of those factors alone made it even more challenging than usual to value players given the relatively unknown and uncertain playing environments. Last year was also quite memorable because of the number of high-end prospects that received legitimate and significant playing time.  Throughout the year, I found myself having to make complicated lineup and roster decisions because I was betting on when certain prospects would get called up (and let's face it, whenever you can add top prospects like Corbin Carroll and Gunnar Henderson, you should probably just go for it).  I expect this year to be similar, but one major difference between this year and last year is that we now know top prospects will be making their way onto the major league rosters.  Because of that,

It's December and, for the diehards, it's officially draft season for fantasy baseball.  Frankly, it's fair to ask whether the fantasy baseball season ever really ended.  While it's true that many of us began tending to our wounds in October, diagnosing the hits and the misses, a few of us never really stopped thinking, obsessively, about fantasy baseball.  For me, personally, I have been trying to stay permanently in "draft-season" meaning I want to be in some form of a draft between now and the end of March.  Recently, I was fortunate enough to join several industry experts, including Scott White, Frank Stampfl, and Chris Towers in a 12-team head-to-head points mock draft .  In this article, I will cover a few high-level observations (heck, even a few things that surprised me) and the lessons I learned. Lesson #1 :  Aaron Judge was not universally considered a first overall pick and that surprised me. This one surprised me.  As soon as I drafted Judge, the

                           The Major League Baseball winter meetings are officially over and there was one clear winner from free agency: the players.  While I have yet to dig through the official numbers, this year's free agent class appears to be getting longer contracts, by and large, to their predecessors.  I expected neither Trea Turner nor Xander Bogaerts to fetch 11 year contracts, but here we are.  The other winners?  Let's look at it through the perspective of fantasy baseball.  Here's Part 1: Clear upgrade:  the Phillies lineup Adding a player of Trea Turner's caliber is a boost to any lineup, but adding an elite leadoff option to an already potent lineup is borderline cheating.  Last season, the Phillies trotted out Kyle Schwarber as a leadoff hitter, followed by Rhys Hoskins and JT Realmuto.  By no means is that a bad  lineup, but there's no speed in the top end of that lineup.  As good as Schwarber may be at getting on base, he also struck out 200  time