The Z Files: NFBC Draft Championship Strategy Tips

The National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) is open for business, launching their Draft Championship (DC) contest a couple of weeks ago. The NFBC DC is a draft-and-hold format, with 15-team mixed leagues, each team drafting 50 players. The contest follows their standard rules, allowing all moves on Mondays, with hitter-only moves on Fridays. As suggested by draft-and-hold, there are no free-agent pickups. Once you select your 50th player, your roster is set through the end of the season.

Please note, I am writing this because I am a fan of the contest. There's nothing in it for me, so to speak, though I am comfortable using this platform as RotoWire does sponsor the NFBC Online Championship, so there's certainly a symbiotic relationship between the two companies.

The standard NFBC uses a four-hour clock during waking hours, then pauses eight hours overnight, during which picks can still be made. The typical draft takes three weeks. Most are shorter, a few drag out. There are alternate set-ups with different time limits, mostly designed to shorten the draft. There's also an Express version, done in one sitting. These will be offered after the new year.

Personally, I'm a big fan of the format, participating in a few every season. I enjoy the camaraderie of the standard leagues as well as the rush of picking all 50 players with a one-minute time limit, so I usually split my entries between the two.

Each individual league rewards a champion and runner-up. In addition, each team is lumped into an overall competition, crowning an overall champion as well as paying other top overall finishers. Entries are $150, $400 and $1000. New this season is a 12-team DC format, starting as low as $50. These are stand-alone leagues, not part of an overall contest.

I'm about to embark on my initial DC for the 2018 season. As alluded to, I like the social aspect, so I patiently waited until I was done writing my assigned site outlooks, lest I incur the wrath of my editors for filing late due to being distracted in the chat room.

While I don't want to get into the skill versus luck nature of the hobby, it's fair to say attrition has a lot to do with team success. It's also reasonable to contend those counting FAAB as one of their better skills may not gain the same advantage they do in formats with weekly pickups. That said, there are a few considerations inherent to a draft-and-hold format, designed to best take advantage of the setup.

The question I get asked most when approached about DC leagues is, "How many pitchers do I need to draft?". Obviously, answers vary, but my target is 23 arms. Depending on the number of starters, closers and middle relievers, I've drafted as few as 21 and as many as 25.

The key is the middle relievers. They're necessary to insure having nine healthy arms each week. Additionally, they're speculative closers. Ideally, if you handcuff your closer with a usable middle reliever that doubles as his understudy, you can save a roster spot, or perhaps draft an extra starter.

Before this season, my typical breakdown was 14 starters, six middle relievers and three closers. Of the middlemen, two were next-in-line for saves. If one of them set up my closer, I'd take just five middle relievers, taking an extra starter or even hitter.

As will be discussed a lot this offseason, including in my feature contribution to the 2018 RotoWire Fantasy Baseball magazine, the use of middle relievers on fantasy rosters should increase this season to combat not only rising ERAs, but also starters averaging fewer innings per outing. As such, I plan of drafting up to eight middle relievers, likely at the expense of a starter.

The other way to conserve roster spots is by building in a ton of flexibility with your hitters. Batters eligible at multiple positions are even more paramount in this format. The extends beyond covering the perceived scarcity at the middle infield spots. Dual eligibility at first and outfield is just as important. I like to set up a chain, covering all positions. A chain is something like players with 1B/3B, 2B/3B, 2B/SS and 1B/OF eligibility. The idea is to be able to activate a player at any position into your lineup, without having to use the utility spot. If my 2B-only player gets hurt and my best reserve is an outfielder, I can move 2B/SS from middle (MI) into 2B, 2B/3B from corner (CI) into MI, 1B/3B from 1B into CI, 1B/OF from OF into 1B, clearing an OF spot. Having as much redundancy as possible helps. You don't want to break the chain by losing any one player.

Having redundancy avails two options. The first is uber-relevant this season as it appears they'll be a two-round discount on Nelson Cruz, only eligible at utility and not likely to gain eligibility elsewhere. My best DC finishes were drafts in which I was able to grab David Ortiz at a similar discount, then set up roster flexibility chains. I plan on doing the same this year with Cruz.

The other advantage of redundant chains is clearing a roster spot for an extra pitcher. Again, this is even more relevant this season, since doing so may allow for an extra middle reliever without sacrificing a starting pitcher.

Another one of my favorite ploys is gaming splits. It works much better here than FAAB leagues with short reserve rosters, since it isn't long before three or four of your reserves are essentially DL spots, leaving three or four healthy reserves to cover your entire roster. My favorite targets are lefty-swinging platoon hitters and batters playing half their games in an extreme hitter's park. I focus mostly on outfielders, but don't overlook the chance to enact it at middle or corner infield.

The idea takes advantage of one of the deficiencies of conventional player valuation, which by extension directs many cheat sheets. Most valuation processes assign positive value to exactly ample players to fill a legal roster for each team in the league. Obviously, this is fueled by each player's season-long expectations.

The at-bats of a hitter on the strong side of a platoon are going to be lower than a regular. Let's say the per at-bat production of this pair of hitters is identical. The regular starter is going to land higher on the cheat sheet, since his counting stats totals are higher. However, if the lefty platoon player is slated to face three right-handers in a weekend series, his expectation is the same as the regular for that three-game set, save for the possibility the platoon hitter is lifted for a pinch-hitter. Still, the discount derived from drafting the platoon guy is well worth sacrificing an at-bat or two. Furthering the advantage is some lefty-handed platoon hitters face a southpaw on occasion, which gets baked into their season-long expectation, dragging down their numbers, especially batting average. In this scenario, he's facing minimal left-handed pitching while not missing a game with a lefty starting, so he could actually be better than the regular with similar expected production.

A batter's season-long expectation is an average of their home and road projections. Concentrating on players with favorable home venues in essence makes their expectation equal to doubling their home projection. If this were the input into the little black box, they'd be ranked much higher than using their actual projection. The NFBC transactions are set up in accord with most series. Sure, they'll be the occasional four-game road series starting on a Thursday, following a three-game set at home, but at least the player has four games from that Monday-Thursday period, while many others have an off day at either end.

Ideally, I'll shoot for five or six of this type of player to fill two active roster spots, usually outfielders since the largest inventory of platoon hitters resides in the outfield. Doing this instigates a domino effect. Working backwards, fading outfielders in Round 13 through Round 23 or so avails drafting better starting pitching. In turn, this enables me to snag a better second closer when I'd otherwise be looking at a starter. It doesn't always work this way, but that's the idea. Sometimes the platoon ploy paves the way for investing in better catchers.

Speaking of which, that's the final tip, handling backstops in the DC format. As I've discussed in the past and will reiterate in the coming weeks, there's an inefficiency with respect to how the market ranks catchers. Some of it is not properly accounting for the scarcity at the position, some is the false notion receivers are more prone to injury. Regardless, the average draft position of catchers is always later than where their numbers dictate they should be drafted. I like to take advantage of this with one of my two catcher roster spots, often electing to take one early. Last season, my choice was Jonathan Lucroy. Suffice it to say, it didn't work out. However, I'm a process over outcome guy and still believe in the process. That said, other than J.T. Realmuto, I don't have an early target with which to significantly exploit this market inefficiency, so I may not be as apt to snag one early this season.

Fortunately, that's fine, since there's another valuation anomaly with respect to catchers. Each draft spot has an expectation attached to it. Due to the scarcity at the position, the expectation of a catcher selected with the 23rd pick is lower than that of a position player chosen in that spot. The difference is, as the draft proceeds, all of the ensuing position players will be drafted fairly soon, but the catcher pool at this point is slow to leave the board. Furthermore, once you get to this quality of backstop, the difference in ranking at the position is infinitesimal. Putting it together, waiting on catcher yields grabbing one commensurate with his draft spot, plus enables rostering a backup with nearly identical expectations. At every other position, the injury fill-in is a lesser player. If you wait on catcher, this difference is insignificant. In fact, it's perfectly viable to wait on both catchers, especially if draft flow blocks you from taking one early.

Well, there you have it. An NFBC DC primer. Hopefully, even if you're not planning on playing, you gleaned a nugget or two apropos to your own league, as most of the ideas transcend all formats. Understanding the axiom, "No one cares about your team but you", if there's interest, I'll be happy to share my roster in the comments.