What a season, friends (and it’s not even over yet!) — so much to discuss and so little time. In continuing our thoughts from last week, we’ll once again touch upon the magical greatness of the RCL leagues (one more shout out to MattTruss for editing all these posts AND serving as the god of all things RCL), and then I’ll be a little all over the place as we wrap 2023 fantasy baseball up and head into the cold, dark offseason.
The last week has provided RCL twists and turns aplenty. I truly couldn’t enjoy the format more, and it’s making me never want to play in a weekly league again (tempting, but ultimately unrealistic ; ) — those standard leagues are making me feel like I have one hand tied behind my back. Last week we talked about the great Night of the Living Zombinos league, and another shout out goes to every one of my competitors in NOtLZ, who are grinding away to the bitter end. And speaking of grinding away, I’m not sure I’ve ever been in a league as competitive as RCL 18, or as Vin Wins has dubbed it, The Laura Holt Challenge. My team is one of four competing for the top three spots, and the standings have been changing not just every day but often with every game (if not every inning, if not every at bat/pitch thrown!)
But enough about the leagues I’m doing well in; it’s time to touch upon Perts, where I am mired in either 8th or 9th place (or possibly 10th by the time you read this). It’s time to answer the question of how I failed so miserably, despite having god-of-real-and-fantasy-baseball-until-September Shohei Ohtani on my team, and having a solid start to my draft (Ohtani, Goldschmidt, Semien, Lindor). Obviously, the tough competition is part of it; it’s not called Perts for nothing. My draft went downhill in a hurry after those first four — this was due in part to the fact that I was on autodraft for about half of the draft, but I don’t think that’s a valid excuse for my team’s poor performance. When I won this league a couple years ago, I believe I used every single one of my 500 roster moves, but I did take notice that year of how many very successful RCL teams used only a handful of transactions. Since I also had a couple RCL teams that did well for most of the year but tanked at the end when I started doing way too much tinkering, I’d always wanted to try this strategy — i.e., have a great draft, sit back, and don’t over-manage. I thought Perts might be a good time to do so, especially since I knew I had a solid offensive core with a bonus stud pitcher going into the season, and knowing that I was swimming with sharks in terms of fighting for the best streams and free agent pick ups… why not zig while everyone else was zagging? Turns out my team was nowhere near solid enough to attempt this, and I think the other reason is that it’s just not my managerial style. Maybe someday I’ll draft an RCL team that’s so stacked that I can just sit back and watch it succeed, but I’m not going to hold my breath. This season taught me that I am indeed a tinkerer, and it’s likely the only approach that is going to lead me to RCL success. I’m still working on finding that happy medium between victorious roster manipulation and disastrous over-managing, but putting in a ton of work in the two leagues mentioned above has gotten me a lot closer to that ideal formula.
Last week we talked a lot about starting pitching, and bargains in the NOtLZ league; this week let’s look at both NOtLZ and my RCL #18 challenge league for hitting bargains. Turns out there simply aren’t as many of them in the last five rounds of these drafts, which is already something to at least keep in mind in terms of future RCL roster construction. It’s always eye-opening to look at just how few players, but particularly hitters, that were drafted in rounds 20-25 are still on their original rosters as we close out the year. Clearly, this is even more magnified in shallow leagues with an active waiver wire like the RCLs, and really drives home how important it is to know when to hold ’em, and know when to fold ’em, if you will. (Side award for my personal biggest regret drop of the season, and sadly it wasn’t even in a shallow league: one Mr. James Outman. Even with hindsight being 20/20, it sure made sense at the time: Outman was platooning in an extremely competitive outfield, and he hit .165 for the entire month of May). We’ll give the NOtLZ best draft pick, hitter category, to (drum roll please…) team DZ1979, who nabbed Cody Bellinger in round 20. Bellinger remained on DZ’s team all year and comes in at #22 on the fantrax hitter rater for the season, so quite the value indeed. I’m giving the runner up prize to Satchel Rages, who picked Lane Thomas in round 23 (he misses being credited with the top pick because he actually dropped Thomas on April 23… but gets awarded this all-important runner up prize because he was smart enough to pick him back up on May 12th). Thomas was actually an even better value, sitting at a lofty #19 on the fantrax hitter rater, right ahead of Pete Alonso. He’s also probably my own personal most valuable late pick/free agent pick up across my leagues this year (not that he feels very valuable right now in the midst of a cold stretch right when I needed him most, but I digress). If you look at that top 20, Thomas is really the only late-round guy (his fantrax ADP was 286; everyone else in the top 20 was in the top 65 ADP) in the bunch — I’m not sure exactly how the math translates, but I’m pretty sure this is another incentive to stock up on those top hitters early.
Moving on to the TLHC league, RCL #18, we’ll start with the runners up (again, they are runners up because the player was not kept by his original drafter all season): first, team Gascoin drafting Bryson Stott in round 25. Stott will finish the season with an average near .280, and (at least) 15 homers and 30 steals. He was pretty much the MVP on one of my NL-only teams this year, but he is another player who I may have trouble valuing heading into next season. Similarly, my other runner up for best hitter pick in this league would have to be NC Philly taking Marcell Ozuna in round 24. Unfortunately for NC Philly, Ozuna was dropped almost immediately, so he wasn’t able to take advantage of Ozuna’s 37 home runs this year (also, even having him on a team I hadn’t realized just how ridiculously good his average and OBP are: .270/.341!?) So, the top hitter pick in this league, round 20 or later, who stayed on a roster all year (again, this is a very interesting exercise, in my opinion, just to see how few great hitting bargains there were late, and how few of those weren’t dropped)? Congrats to Bluefield Baby Birds, who will be fighting for the league title this weekend, for drafting Luis Arraez and his game-changing .353 average in round 20.
One more NOtLZ sneaky runner up pick before we move on: Creative Chaos with Cal Raleigh in round 20. Last week I touched on whether or not I should have just kept William Contreras on my roster all year instead of dropping him during a cold streak and streaming catchers the rest of the way; I’m going to say that the short answer is yes. I believe Raleigh stayed on the Chaos roster all year, which not only netted his team a cool 30 homers (plus 77 runs and 75 RBI), it also saved him a lot of time and angst worrying about what I think most of us have decided is a stupid position. My mind is already churning a little about how to approach catcher next year; more on that to come this winter!
Another thing I like to start thinking about early, is how to value these great hitter value picks going into next season. This is true for valuable in-season pick ups as well (quick shout out to one of my 2023 faves, Nolan Jones). Overall, I was surprised at how many of my hundreds of transactions this season made a big impact, but it does make the good ones stand out (see below if you’re in an RCL and don’t know how to look at everyone who played on your team this year – it’s quite the trip down memory lane!) Will I overvalue them because they helped me so much this season… or will I undervalue them because no matter what their ADP is, it will look exorbitant for a guy I picked out of the free agent pool in 2023? It’s difficult to gauge where you’ll want to draft value guys you missed out on this year as well: if you let Bellinger tank a few of your teams two years ago, then avoided him completely this year, it’s awfully scary to jump back in at an inflated price next year worrying that it will turn into 2021 all over again. It will vary with each player, of course, but it’s one of the reason I like to start thinking ahead as early as possible — I’d prefer to have some values in my mind before ADPs, sleeper posts, and other analysts’ opinions are out there to cloud my judgment. (Not that I won’t use some of this information by combining it with my own thoughts to land on my own rankings, but I do like to have a clear idea of who I’m thinking I’ll want to target before all of that other noise comes in).
One other topic I realize I don’t have the time to delve into now, particularly before looking at more data, but am mentioning now to help me remember that I’m looking forward to exploring it more during the offseason: closers. What I said last week was that I wondered if it was a coincidence that one of my best teams of 2023, was one where saves was my weakest link. With all of the deep-league paying attention I do, even if I have a bad draft when it comes to saves, I’m usually pretty good at stumbling upon multiple closers throughout the year in my shallower leagues without really even trying to. In NOtLZ, I’m sitting at ninth place in saves. I’m still not really sure how I tanked the category so badly in a league I paid this much attention to all year. But the fact that it hasn’t kept me from being the favorite to win this league overall is what I need to explore… could I have had the best RCL season ever if I’d just gotten my relief corps together properly? Or was backing off when it comes to alloting resources (in the form of draft picks, time, and free agent concentration) towards saves exactly what gave me the strength in the hitting and other pitching categories to propel my team to an excellent season? What I do know for now, is that even without being able to find a good closer or enough saves to make it a successful category for me, it was still worth passing on a closer early — even if it had turned out to be a guy like Devin Williams who will likely end up as the #2 most valuable fantasy closer this year — and taking a hitter instead.
Okay, now that thing where you can look at your entire 2023 RCL roster (which Truss figured out how to do when I asked him a few years ago): on your team page (or anyone else’s team page for that matter), just click “Stats” and then “Full Fantasy Team.” And if you rosterbate as much as I do, be prepared to set some time aside for this task ; ) Happy real-life playoffs/fantasy offseason to all, and to all a good fall and winter!
