Back at the end of May, I wrote an article that was inspired by a Twitter discussion about whether fantasy baseball writers/analysts needed to play in high-stakes leagues to lend some credence to their work. I vehemently disagree with that premise because I think analysis/research and gameplay are two different skills; however, I do think there is value in fantasy analysts sharing how their teams are performing and looking for trends. That was why I wrote an article discussing the performance of each of my redraft fantasy baseball teams in 2024 to evaluate how I was doing and what mistakes I was making.
Now it’s time to update that article.
Similar to the first one, the purpose of this article is to put my cards on the table. I give my opinions on players and trends weekly, so you deserve to see if I’m able to execute any of that in practice. I believe there is value in hearing/reading other people walk through their own decisions and mistakes, so we want to see how my management since June has helped or hurt my teams.
Below I’ll quickly go through the current performance of all my teams and how they’ve risen or fallen in the standings since the start of June. I won’t go through every single move I made, but I’ll look at some of the reasons each team is successful or not based how I managed the roster during the season. Thanks to Jenny Butler, I have a weekly record of all the waiver moves I’ve made with an explanation of why, so I can go back and look at exactly what I did and how it helped or hurt.
NFBC Leagues
For comparison, here is the photo of how my teams were doing back on May 30th:
Overall, I’m pretty pleased with my NFBC performance. Five of my seven teams are in contention to win their respective leagues, and I feel really good about the fact that my second Rotowire Online Championship team (12-team league) was 11th when I last wrote this and is now contending to win the league.
Since three of these teams are NFBC 50s, which are draft and hold formats where you don’t make any waiver moves during the year, it’s not as useful to break down what happened on those teams. I didn’t make any moves, I just tried to set my lineup as efficiently as possible and hoped that I drafted enough depth to keep putting out a solid lineup. So we’ll start with my two Online Championship teams. How did my two OC teams basically flip? Why was my top team a contender and then fell off and what happened to make the second team a contender?
If we start with the team that “fell off,” it’s pretty easy to see why. In early June, I had to drop Ronald Acuna Jr. from that team and so I fell from first place to third place by the time I posted the first article. That team also lost Yu Darvish and Ozzie Albies in the following weeks, and I really just missed the mark on waivers during the year with this team.
The one common thread that I see with this team that faltered is that I took a lot of gambles on young hitters on waivers. In the weeks after I had to drop Acuna, I added: Kyle Manzardo, Tyler Black, JJ Bleday, Brooks Lee, Coby Mayo, and Nacho Alvarez, which I’m particularly mad at myself about since I didn’t believe he was ready but I was talked into taking a gamble due to the lineup he was in. That same week I could have bid on Xavier Edwards instead. Meanwhile, I was the runner-up bid on James Wood and didn’t bid enough when I had opportunities to add Heliot Ramos, Jake McCarthy, Luis Garcia Jr., Jose Miranda, and Xander Bogaerts.
I also added young pitchers like Shane Baz and Max Meyer, who have not been nearly good enough for 12-team formats.
To me, that all spells out a need to re-evaluate how much I prioritize prospect hitters on the wire. We’ve seen that the transition from Triple-A to the majors is a big one, and it appears to be rare for guys to hit the ground running. Some of the young hitters who have thrived like Ramos, Miranda, and Lawrence Butler, who I wound up adding in this league, are getting their third or fourth chance at big league pitching. Maybe it takes that long to click for many young hitters, and I need to be better about that in the coming years.
So what did I do differently on the team I’ve turned around?
Admittedly, a lot of it was being patient with the team I drafted. Early in the season, the hitting on that team was performing poorly, and I was upset about having Manny Machado, Jose Abreu, Brandon Lowe, Anthony Santander, Daulton Varsho, and Brandon Drury on the same team. I did point out that, of that group, only Santander is a player I was actively targeting in most leagues, and he basically exploded after I posted the first article, which is what he tends to do over the summer. However, I also got great returns from guys like Zach Neto, Ceddanne Rafael, Ezequiel Tovar, and Yainer Diaz, who were slow out of the gates.
It hasn’t all been rainbows, since this team lost Kyle Tucker and Christian Yelich, but I hit on a lot of waiver moves on this team, adding Heliot Ramos for $3, Jose Miranda for $5 before his hot streak, Lawrence Butler for $86 right after his hot first few games back, and Tyler Fitzgerald for $51. I wasn’t precious about my cuts here, and I tried to be aggressive in getting hitters I believed in, but I was also lucky in two respects. For starters, I got saved from myself a bit when my competitors outbid me for guys like Max Kepler or Matt Vierling, guys who I had higher on my priority list than Ramos and Miranda respectively. I also had extra money to spend on hitting because my pitching held up throughout the season.
Back in the first article, I commented about my second OC team: “My poor OC squad has Luis Castillo as its anchor, but early struggles from Joe Musgrove and Bailey Ober hurt my rotation, and I don’t have a lockdown closer on this team, other than Mason Miller, as my trio leaving the draft was rounded out by Pete Fairbanks and Tanner Scott. I’m not way off the pace in any of the pitching categories and think I can make up some ground, but it will take some doing.”
Since then, Castillo has been solid, Bailey Ober has been really good, Luis Gil emerged, I got decent starts from Brayan Bello, Jose Soriano, and River Ryan in short stints, and my bullpen of Mason Miller, Peter Fairbanks, Tanner Scott, and Ben Joyce helped me make-up for some waiver wire misses with Max Meyer (again), Cal Quantrill, and Gavin Williams. I also stashed Jared Jones and Joe Musgrove during their rehab stints, and I hope they can help strengthen my rotation to get me across the finish line.
My TURF team was also 11th when we checked in at the end of May and 114th overall, so it’s another team where I’m happy about the turnaround since I’m now in third and sitting at 41st overall.
Back in May, I was disappointed by the performance of Edwin Diaz but happy I drafted Robert Suarez and grabbed Jason Foley on waivers. Since then, Diaz recovered and Foley fell apart, but I’m sitting fourth in the league in saves so I don’t even need to mess with a third closer right now. That has been an interesting lesson for me. I’ve always wanted three closers, and I think I’ll continue to try and come out of a draft with at least three closers I think have a chance to be good, but if I notice early on that I’ve landed on two strong ones, I don’t think it’s necessary to scrounge the waiver wire for a third to remain competitive, and this is in a 15-team league. Sure, you can look, and, obviously, adjust to your specific league, but maybe don’t force a bad closer onto your roster and risk your ratios if you have a couple of anchors at the back.
Cole Ragans and Bobby Miller were also my top two pitchers on that team, and while I was excited about that when I left the draft, Miller has been awful and hurt. Ragans has been fine, but Bailey Ober rebounded from his poor start, Jared Jones was great for me, and I was able to land solid waiver claims with Tobias Myers, Taj Bradley (who has kind of collapsed), and Robbie Ray.
I had a lot of missteps on the waiver wire for hitting here, bidding on guys like Garrett Mitchell, Brandon Drury, Gio Urshela, Hunter Renfroe, and Angel Martinez, but I was quick to move on when it seemed necessary. I dropped Urshela two weeks after adding him in mid-June, dropped Drury two weeks after adding him in early July, dropped Garrett Mitchell after two weeks in mid-July, and moved on from Angel Martinez after three weeks in August and he only lasted that long because I got outbid in other attempts to drop him.
That churning allowed me to add guys like David Hamilton (before his hot stretch) and Lawrence Butler, but it’s been FAR more misses than hits with hitters here, and I’ve been helped by strong summers from guys like Neto, Rafaela, Tovar (yes, this is a different team), Ian Happ, and Rhys Hoskins.
Perhaps there’s a lesson in that too. We often talk about streaming starting pitchers, but I’ve been streaming hitters more in this league than pitchers and even though my success rate isn’t good when it comes to adding “rest of season” talent, I keep climbing the standings. A good week or two of production from a hitter can really help in the counting categories, and if you don’t wait too long to move on then you can maybe find another good week or two from another hitter. Obviously, we’d love to land on guys who produce week after week for the rest of the season, but that’s highly unlikely. Looking more short-term, especially in deeper formats like this 15-team league, can be underrated.
AL Tout Wars
For comparison’s sake, this is how the standings looked back at the end of May.
Well, that certainly hasn’t turned out the way I wanted. If you look at the individual categories, you can see that I lost the most ground in OBP, runs wins, and WHIP. The offensive category losses here can probably be traced back to my offense early on being carried by Kyle Tucker and Rafael Devers. Obviously, having to endure the Kyle Tucker saga in an AL-Only league is brutal, but Devers has also been struggling of late.
Some of my early season success stories also had their Cinderella moment end. Tyler Freeman went back to a bench role, Jonny DeLuca used up all fantasy viability, and Ezequiel Duran was sent to the minors. I got lucky that Paul DeJong continued to hold value and both Vinnie Pasquantino and Nolan Schanuel have been surging, but that simply hasn’t been enough for me.
I had a speed deficit at the beginning of the season, and even trading for Jose Caballero didn’t help me. Given that I also didn’t get enough hitters in strong lineups, I’ve struggled in runs too, and those draft deficits are hard to make up in an AL-Only format.
I also spent less money on starting pitching in this draft, thinking that if I could finish in the middle in Wins but do well in all the other pitching categories and then spend up on hitting, it could work for me. Well, I’m doing well in all pitching categories aside from wins and strikeouts, but I’m not in the middle of the pack in those areas, and I didn’t hit on the hitting like I needed to with that strategy. It’s something I’ll need to tweak before next year.
I also spent $5 in the draft on each of Shane Baz and Coby Mayo, hoping they would be up by the summer and emerge as clear difference-makers for me. That has not worked out. Baz has been fine but Mayo still seems buried in Baltimore. Perhaps spending that kind of money in the draft on prospects that aren’t a sure thing to start the year in the majors is not a smart move. My $12 draft buy on Ceddanne Rafaela worked because he’s had the full season to play through the struggles and emerge as a viable fantasy player in all formats. So this is yet another league where I’m seeing that relying on unproven rookies who don’t have long leashes is perhaps riskier than I thought.
Considering I have over $200 remaining in FAAB, it seems clear to me that I wasn’t aggressive enough in bidding on some players. Oh, and then I spent over $100 on Keston Hiura when he was called up by the Angels because he had been crushing the ball and I thought he’d get a full-time role to end the season. Mistakes were made.
Rotoworld Staff Leagues
There are two Rotoworld staff leagues for me this year, one of which is roto scoring and the other is head-to-head. I’m also currently performing mediocre in both, but we’ll start with the roto league.
Here is where I stood in May:
I haven’t tracked my waiver moves in these Yahoo leagues, so it’s a little harder to see where I went wrong, but the roto league has fallen a bit due to poor starting pitching and lack of adjustments.
Although I drafted Chris Sale, Luis Gil, and Tanner Houck on this team, I also drafted Kevin Gausman, Justin Steele, Bryan Woo, and Yu Darvish. Plus DL Hall and Casey Mize. Yet, since Gausman, Steele, and Darvish were veterans I trusted, I held onto them for a while and didn’t snag good enough replacements on the wire.
The same can be said of veteran hitters I wanted to believe in like Gleyber Torres, Yandy Diaz, Taylor Ward, and Dansby Swanson, who have all not been good but remained on my team for far too long. Add to that losing Michael Harris II and Mookie Betts, and this was a team with some bad luck and poor management that never really had a chance. I needed to be more cut throat with my precious veterans, especially in a trading league. Lesson learned.
And now for the head-to-head league.
In May I was slightly worse:
This has been an abject failure all season long. It would be easy for me to blame the head-to-head structure of the league since I don’t usually play in those. Maybe I’m not making enough weekly pickups. Maybe my team wasn’t built with enough balance for the format. It’s entirely possible I simply am missing competitive advantages in head-to-head leagues, and we have to be open to accepting our weaknesses in a format or a league type.
But this was also another team with a poor draft that I wasn’t able to shake because I held onto veterans for too long. It was tough to have Kevin Gausman, Spencer Torkelson, Jeimer Candelario, Josh Lowe, Josh Jung, and Randy Arozarena all on this team. I also drafted Jake Burger and Masataka Yoshida but cut both of them early in the summer before they got hot which has been brutal to see play out. Taylor Ward also went into a months-long cold spell, and I had to move on from him as well. I made some solid adds by scooping Zach Neto when somebody cut him and adding Jake McCarthy and then Mark Vientos and Eugenio Suarez before their hot streaks, but it wasn’t enough to move the needle.
Home League
Lastly, let’s look at my home league, which is a 5x5 roto league that uses OPS instead of AVG. I’ve been competitive in this league for almost all of the six years I’ve been a part of it, but I’ve never won it, so it means as much to me as many of the industry leagues because I am compelled to get over that hump.
I’m sitting pretty similar to how I was back at the end of May:
I came into the season with Freddy Peralta and Bobby Miller as my two keeper starting pitchers, but I found value in Max Fried and Chris Sale in the draft, which saved my bacon because Miller has been atrocious and Peralta has not been the ace I thought he was. With Jared Jones also getting hurt, Kutter Crawford struggling, and my waiver wire bets on David Festa and River Ryan not paying off, I was forced to make a big trade. I dealt away Shane McClanahan, who is keepable in the 19th round next year (which means he’s a keeper at an ADP bargain for 3+ more years based on our league rules). I included Tyler O’Neill, Kutter Crawford, Miguel Vargas, and others in the deal to get back Austin Riley, Vinnie Pasquantino, and Framber Valdez, who are all not keeper-eligible.
That trade, and some waiver moves, have been helpful for me to compensate for injuries since I had Miller, in addition to Triston Casas, Evan Carter, Matt McLain, and Luis Rengifo, who were big parts of my offensive plan this season. I also kept James Outman coming into the year and he fell flat on his face, and all those injuries forced me to cut Willson Contreras back when he broke his forearm because I thought the absence would be extensive.
That Contreras cut was a good lesson for me in a keeper league as well. I was so focused on keeping McLain and Carter on my IL because they were young hitters who I thought had upside, and I felt like they could potentially contribute this year but certainly next year. I cut Contreras as a result and have really struggled to land on a catcher since. Meanwhile, McLain never came back this season and is keepable in the sixth round, which doesn’t seem that great of value right now, and Carter also never came back and is keepable in the ninth round, which is not great for an OPS league. I focused too much on the potential of young hitters and not on what my team would potentially need this season. It was a sizable misstep.
Luckily, I was able to land some hitters on waivers who have really produced for me, namely David Hamilton, Lawrence Butler and Tyler Fitzgerald. But I also got strong stretches of production from Carlos Santana, Jonathan India, and Travis d’Arnaud.
I was in on Butler coming into the year, so I was happy to buy back in there on the hope he would produce, but Fitzgerald was just a fluke if we’re being honest. He was producing at an insane rate after being called up, and I needed offense, so I took a gamble. He has way outproduced what I thought he would do, but that’s also a good lesson that sometimes if you have a need, you don’t need to overthink your add; just take a shot on a player who’s currently producing in the places you need production and hope it continues.
There were also mistakes, of course. Bids on Connor Norby, James Outman, and Joey Loperfido didn’t amount to much, and I cut Jake McCarthy before he got hot and moved on from Gavin Lux too soon (although at least I got Fitzgerald out of that).
This was also another league where I landed on two solid closers in the draft, taking Emmanuel Clase and then a draft day discount on David Bednar, who was hurt when we were drafting. I was able to scoop Trevor Megill on waivers and stash Devin Williams on the IL, so I can compensate for Bednar’s struggles of late, but this is another example for me where having two solid closers means I haven’t had to dive into the mess on the waiver wire all year, and I love that. Not only because it saves some stress, but also because it saves waiver money for those hitters that I mentioned earlier and other guys like Matt Wallner (OPS league after all) and Geraldo Perdomo, who have delivered for me in small samples.
Hopefully this exercise was useful for you. After having done it for all of my teams, I would encourage you to do the same for yours because I think it can give you a real sense of not only the state of your teams but also the strengths and weaknesses of your process. I’ll come back at the end of the season with some form of my major takeaways from the year based on the performance of my teams.