The Z Files: Adjusting on the Fly

The first chapter of the So-Called Experts Handbook is entitled, "No One Cares About Your Team But You." Of course, that doesn't stop us from bombarding the Twitterverse with every TGFBI, Razzslam and NFBC roster.

In that light, the next 2000 words or so are not intended to show off a couple of my recent drafts. Instead, I'm going to share some of the thought processes. The objective isn't to demonstrate how adept I was at adjusting on the fly. To be honest, I'm not sure I was entirely successful. However, getting a feel for how someone else handles the unexpected may aid you in your endeavor when faced with challenging scenarios.

American League LABR

Last weekend, I was one of the dozen assembling their AL-only LABR roster. We did it remotely using RTSports software. The previous evening, our NL LABR brethren held their salary cap draft and the prices seemed very chalky, at least according to my projected earnings. This is normal, as the NL LABR room is usually pretty conservative.

On the other hand, AL LABR tends to be more aggressive. However, it's also my experience that some of the aggressiveness is tempered in a remote setting, where fantasy managers are worried about unintentionally bidding more than they intended. As such, I was prepared to spend a decent chunk of my budget on the top end of the player pool.

Last week, I described my bookkeeping method. It begins with distributing the $260 salary cap allocation among the 23 active roster spots. In parallel, I track the players in pricing tiers, knowing I can overshoot the tier when necessary, though the intention is to pay a price commensurate with a lower tier. Keeping my designated roster spots and tiers side by side ensures there is an ample inventory to populate each roster spot. Once I observe there are no more players worthy of the highest remaining price point, budget is redistributed to better align with what is still available. If tracked diligently, budget will not be left on the table.

What follows is my roadmap going in, with how I filled each spot.

It was obvious from the jump my competitors would not be fazed by remote bidding, as every early hitter and pitcher went over my number. Usually this requires loosening the purse strings and joining the spending spree, but I opted to eliminate the $35 hitting line, add a $20 line and add $5 to each of the three $10 hitting lines. The adjusted template looks like this:

It soon became clear I wasn't filling the $25 hitting line without paying more than I desired. I also sensed I could acquire batters at good prices in the $10-$20 range. At the same time, I felt the prices for starting pitchers were becoming more reasonable, and even though I was happy with Ryu as my ace and Rosenthal as my closer (both rostered at a discount relative to the initial plan), I shuffled $10 to pitching with the intent of adding another solid starting pitcher, who turned out to be Lance Lynn, albeit for a few bucks more than I'd hoped.

As you can see, the third iteration of the roadmap aligns nicely with the final roster. I went over on a couple of spots and under on others, spending the entire $260.

The initial guide dedicated $180 to hitting and $80 to pitching for a 69/31 split. I ended up at $168 on batters and $92 for my staff for a 65/35 split.

In case you are wondering, there is method to my Valdez madness. AL and NL LABR follow pseudo-old school rules. Players acquired in the salary cap portion and via in-season FAAB must remain active so long as they are on the 26-man MLB roster. They can be put on reserve if they are sent to the minors or placed on the IL. On the other hand, reserve players have free movement between the active roster and reserves. It's clear Valdez will begin the season on the IL. Maybe he is able to return, at which point I have a defined grace period in which to act. In the interim, I have a roster spot with which I can freely stream my pitching reserves. Granted, Danny Duffy, Martin Perez, Jaime Barria and Bryan Garcia aren't exactly the mid-90s Braves rotation, but this is the reserve round of an AL-only draft. Maybe the Red Sox face the Orioles, so Perez is an option one week. The next week the Royals entertain the Tigers, so I flip to Duffy. If Garcia ends up closing, I can use him whenever I don't like my setup or starting options. If none of the reserves is in a good spot, I'll FAAB an innocuous reliever for $1, or perhaps an available starter with a favorable matchup. It's incumbent upon league managers to understand the nuances of their league's constitution.

It doesn't really matter how you feel about the team; the important thing is to follow along with the process of redistributing the budget to adjust to the room.

It isn't always a matter of reducing the top spot and increasing lower ones. If I headed into NL LABR with the same initial spending plan, I would have quickly adjusted to something like

The idea here is to get in on a couple of early expensive purchases since they were all very close to my expected earnings. I would have had less cap space to fill in the rest of the team, but in the range I adjusted, I'm usually able to target a few players I like more than the room, usually because I suspect they'll play more than everyone else anticipates.

Before turning attention to my recent NFBC RotoWire Online Championship draft, here are a couple of general observations.

We all have different expectations and rooms have their own tendencies, but the earlier NL LABR prices were chalky to me, while the AL prices were aggressive. Based on the current ADP, eight of the top 10 and 12 of the top 20 are NL batters. The difference of the rooms was ECON 101, supply and demand. There is a larger inventory of stud NL hitters, so it isn't necessary to pay what it takes to get one; there are enough options for those desiring to go that route. Meanwhile, there are fewer elite AL hitters, so their prices increase. I'll be curious to see if this holds true in the upcoming Tout Wars salary cap drafts. I'm in the NL, so I'll be prepared to pay up for some of the best hitters if the cost is reasonable.

Not only is the top of the pool better in the NL, so is the bottom. Heading into AL LABR, I wanted nothing to do with the end game. This fed into my decision to not chase the top talent, preferring to save budget to fill my roster with starters before everyone settled for $1 and $2 filler.

NFBC Beat Todd Zola RotoWire Online Championship

It's weird typing one's own name in this manner, but I digress. Each year, I'm privileged to have RotoWire and the NFBC sponsor a league with my name on it as part of the 12-team Online Championship. I'll admit 12-team formats are not my sweet spot since I'm so in tune with 15-team draft dynamics.

Anyone participating in NFBC drafts knows pitching is pushed to the point you're forced to jump an arm several spots higher than desired, or else be left in the lurch. I understood this going in and mapped out several options I'd grab in the early rounds if they were available from the seven-hole, with the exception of the first round where I wanted a batter.

As it turned out, pitching was selected even more aggressively than normal. When I was on the clock in the second and third rounds, my prospective pitching queue was wiped clean. In round 2, the decision was easy; grab another batter and start the staff with my next pick. Unfortunately, four of the five picks before my turn were pitchers: Max Scherzer, Luis Castillo, Brandon Woodruff and Clayton Kershaw. According to recent ADP data from the RotoWire OLC, Woodruff and Kershaw should have been there, and we all know ADP never lies. Sigh.

Here, the call was tougher. Should I reach for an arm just to get one, or delay getting pitching even longer? Options were Tyler Glasnow, Jack Flaherty or Zac Gallen. I'm leery of both Glasnow and Flaherty and the ADP that is never wrong showed Gallen would be gone by my pick in Round 4.

Then I remembered a mantra formerly front and center in fantasy baseball vernacular: bully hitting, manage pitching. It was time to steer into this skid and go back to my roots. A third bat was added to the roster before catching a break by snagging Gallen as my first arm in Round 4.

Having already played ADP chicken in the third and lost, the notion of going down that road again wasn't all that warm and fuzzy. No more games, let's be smart and take another hurler in the fifth.

Max Fried and Blake Snell went off the board prior to my turn, but Hyun Jin Ryu is still available, and I have him ranked higher than both. Let's see what the trustworthy ADP says. Hmm, he should be there for me in the sixth. Maybe I should… no, don't do it.

Hand injury aside, the edge Realmuto provides at backstop is huge in 12-team leagues. The heck with it, ADP chicken it is; Realmuto is now on my squad.

In Round 6 I grabbed… not Ryu. Dang, lost again. Sonny Gray, come on down.

At this point, it hit me. This is a Beat Todd Zola draft and when it was first set up, I announced it to the subscribers of my private site, several of which were staring at my drafting tiers, just like me. The room wasn't being overly aggressive, it was sniping me!

Narrator: Todd is being overly dramatic to elicit gratuitous compassion from the reader. He knew damn well going in this was not just a distinct possibility, but a foregone conclusion.

Did you guys just hear something? I could swear I heard a weird voice. Anyway, at this point I was committed to Plan B. There are a few different means of building a competitive pitching staff. I am certainly not going to win the SP1-SP3 battle, so the approach shifts to staying even at closer and crushing SP4-SP7.

It was time to get even with the stinking ADP. There are a ton of pitchers with an ADP in Round 20 and later, all of which I rank in the teens. Furthermore, most are ideal streamers, integral to my adjusted strategy. Here is the resulting team:

From the 11th to the 18th, all but one pick was an arm, the sole exception being Happ who I like and I wanted to add before one of my subscribers sniped me. Bundy's allure is working in a great pitching venue with a solid defense. Civale is a potential breakout candidate with several turns against the Royals and Tigers on the docket. Marquez is strictly a ploy to curry favor with Clay Link. OK, when the plan is streaming, Marquez can be used on the road, even though he loses the intrinsic skills bump he enjoys at home. This could be lessening though, as umpires are under greater scrutiny. Minor won't face his own team, but he'll draw the Tigers and I'm still a believer 2019 was real, and that was accomplished with the lively ball in a great hitter's park. Hernandez, Manaea and Paxton all have excellent home parks. My staff gets squashed when comparing the first three starters to other staffs, but it should shove, relative to the fields, from the SP4-SP7 spots when streaming is factored in.

Again, the point isn't to show off how I built what I consider a competitive staff. It could easily backfire, and RotoWire will end up doling out several free subscriptions to those ahead of me in the standings. Instead, this emphasizes the need to come in with a plan and run through all permutations. Remember your little league coach preaching to you to think what you'll do if the ball is hit to you before every play, as well as what you need to do if it is hit elsewhere? This is the fantasy drafting equivalent. Be prepared for whatever happens.

Oh yeah, and don't trust the ADP.