This week I got to speak to The Man With The Living Room Plan, the one and only PL+ member SABRtoothTigers. I’m glad I got to follow up after speaking to him right after the Guillotine draft, but I also feel very lucky that he had time to talk to me at all given his uh, well, you’ll see his commitment to fantasy baseball within the first answer…
Asher Dratel: Alright, so first the boilerplate stuff. How many leagues are you playing in this season total?
SABRtoothTigers: I don’t think that’s as boilerplate as you are expecting. I’m in 31 leagues.
I’m uh, wait. What?
Yeah. It’s too much. I just can’t say no!
What formats are they generally?
7 are draft champions, 5 are best ball (including 2 PL Blind Drafts and Razzslam), so those don’t require FAAB, at least. A few Rotowire OCs, TGFBI, one Main Event, an Ottoneu league with Cherman as the commissioner, our Yahoo wacky leagues, some home leagues on Yahoo and a couple on Fantrax. Oh, and a couple on CBS. 4 are dyanasty/keeper, and one is NL only. Everything else is full-MLB.
That’s definitely the highest number I’ve heard so far, I guess it helps explain why you’re on PL and the Discord then.
I’m mostly on the Discord for #pets. In all honesty, it really is the people, not the baseball.
It is a very solid crew. Is this your first year in the Wacky Leagues?
It is! I started with the PitchCon blind draft, then hopped onto the regular blind draft, Guillotine, Grand Theft and League of Leagues. I intentionally avoided WorstBall because I knew I could handle doing counter-research with how many leagues I’m in, haha.
I think most managers generally agree that draft prep for WorstBall is the hardest one, there’s simply no research you can go off of.
I prefer to stumble upon a good WorstBall team accidentally.
Come by those stats honestly! When it comes to Guillotine, you had the most involved answer about your draft strategy during the exit interviews, how much has it held up over these opening weeks?
I think I was pretty prescient. Definitely wish I had taken Cole like I planned. And Liam Hendriks has been decent, but hasn’t been worth where I took him. Even though I knew I needed to prioritize pitching, I should’ve leaned much more heavily into it. I overpaid for Walker Buehler out of panic, and it handicapped me with future FAAB.
Yeah I overpaid for Brubaker this week but I am being incredibly stingy with my FAAB at this point even though it feels like we’re all chasing KingHippo every week.
I’ve been top 3 or 4 every week, which is fine until we get to 3 or 4 teams left, haha.
We’re rapidly reaching the point where it’s just all all-stars on every roster.
Yeah, it is wild to think about how much better the backend of every roster is, even if you didn’t get the top end FAs. Like I just picked up Ozuna and Keuchel for literally $0. Granted, Ozuna might be hurt now, but the point stands!
I was just about to mention those two, along with Minor and Keller, who aren’t as flashy but have definitely contributed. Nick and Hippo both emphasized that working the wire outside of the big chop window is crucial and I’m finding it incredibly true.
Very true. I’ve seen a couple of mid-week adds that have been real big performers.
You’re also rocking a 7-0-0 record in Grand Theft 4, what’s been your secret sauce to success over there?
Pitching, pitching, and more pitching. I’m doing in that league what I should’ve done in Guillotine. I can’t bring myself to be as extreme with it as Dave and have only half an offense, but I won’t have a bench bat for the rest of the year.
Yeah I just looked at your roster and it’s a pretty extreme tilt. How difficult has it been making up your protection list each week?
I sweat my list on the same level as I sweat my matchup, and I’ve really only had 2 close calls. I just copy and paste most weeks, heh.
Nice to have names you can trust week in and out like that. You’ve also rostered two no-hitters in that league, right?
In back-to-back weeks! Both with waiver wire pickups. Miley and Turnbull.
Imagine if you had stolen both of them those weeks…Speaking of, which of your thefts so far has been your favorite?
Unquestionably: Jesse Winker. I stole the future NL MVP from Myles after Week 2.
Yes! He was one of my mid-round OF trinity that I wanted in every league (the other two were AJ Pollock and Trey Mancini so…I guess I was like half right on that group overall.)
Yeah, I was targeting that group a lot, too. This is why you should always wait on OF!
What would you say to somebody who is reading these recaps and thinking about joining the leagues next season?
Absolutely join! I’m in big money leagues, and these are still the ones I dedicate all my time to. So much fun.
I also have to make it known that El Tigre is in first in both Blind Draft leagues, which I will be catching up with at some point midseason as they are completely normal fantasy baseball leagues week to week, so there’s not a ton to cover that fulfills the Wacky quota.
As a reminder, all of the leagues are a mix of staffers and PL+ members, so if you haven’t already, head on over to the PL+ sign-up page and get on the Discord so you can start prepping for the 2022 Wacky Season.
The Guillotine Leagues
Guillotine was kind of a bloodbath this week. Neither finish was particularly close, to put it bluntly, which led to another day of plentiful pitching availability. In League 1 Hunter Denson found himself on the wrong side of a near 100-point gap going into Sunday’s slate. His elimination meant we had 16 FAAB transactions on Tuesday morning, including $0 bids which are becoming more and more widespread as everybody jealously guards their remaining FAAB. Pitchers headlined the most expensive pickups for the week, with Jacob deGrom fetching $313 from Alex Drennan, and Brandon Woodruff a respectable $247 from Christopher Reeves. On the position player side of things, Freddie Freeman is now on his fourth team, and his travels are a good look at some of the weird dynamics in Guillotine: He was drafted in the first round by Anthony Tucker, then went to Mat Nielsen for $215 after week 3. After week 6 he was picked up by Hunter for $146, who only got to enjoy his production for a week before KingHippo was able to snatch him up for the bargain-basement price of $50 this week. If you can survive with your wallet intact for the first several weeks, it’s incredible the kind of stats you can pick up on the cheap as we head into the mid-to-late weeks here.
In League 2, it was our illustrious graphic artist Justin Paradis who saw the writing on the wall coming into Sunday down 60 points. His demise opened up another week of big-name pitching availability, and Rich Holman decided to start spending some of his FAAB, picking up Brandon Woodruff for a bargain compared to League 1, paying only $169. Ronald Acuña Jr./strong> commanded the top price this week, although even that was a relatively modest $200, also to Rich. Shouts to Michael Ajeto and his Mitch Haniger pickup for $27, may he reward your fandom in this most cutthroat league.
Austin Bristow II mentioned that we’re down below “standard” league size now, and it’s only going to get slimmer, so it’s getting to be time for rosters to become truly stacked, and I can’t really tell if that’s going to mean more blowouts at the end of the week or more squeaking by. Only one way to find out, though!
Grand Theft Baseball
The best moment of the week in Grand Theft has to go to League 2, where Ben Brown was late submitting his protection list without realizing. He removed a player by simply reposting the list with Sandy Alcántara’s name crossed out, at which point Justin Paradis twisted the dagger that Ben had driven into his own heart and stole him. Stone cold by Justin.
Notable thefts:
League 1: Allen Vaughan went against his own better Cardinals fan judgement and stole Craig Kimbrel from Ben, which goes with his ODB-related team name pretty well.
League 2: Aside from Justin’s cruelty, Collin Carlone made the most interesting pick this week, stealing Luis Castillo from Alex Tran. A bold strategy, Cotton.
League 3: ZachTipp got to snag Jake Cronenworth from Kyle Seiler, giving him a regular producer who seems to be playing every day for SD after some pre-season playing time concerns.
League 4: Mike Perugini (who is very strong and my friend) got his first win of the season, and used it to steal Michael Kopech from Wynn McDonald. Good for him!
WorstBall
Categories: An important standings update as I am on top where I belong! In terms of matchup performance, I have to shout out Scott Sieber, whose offense put together a league-leading 36 strikeouts, including three players with 10 each! It was dmcnic who won their matchup the hardest, besting Liam Casey 6-1, although they still have a losing record on the season as a whole. Scott pointed out that being .500 in WorstBall is a uniquely bad feeling, although every week I feel more comfortable in my insistence that WorstBall Cats is one of the toughest possible formats to manage.
Points: It was a pretty low-scoring week across the league. Matt Nielsen was the highest scorer with 276.75 points, a beneficiary of Castillo’s continued inability to get anybody out. Meanwhile, Wynn McDonald was betrayed by Mize busting out for -19.75 points and his inauspicious decision to start Spencer Turnbull on the 18th. His no-hitter was worth -31.50 points, although he did “bounce back” to contribute on Monday.
Featured image by Justin Paradis (@freshmeatcomm on Twitter)