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Friday, March 29, 2024

National Fantasy Baseball Championship Cutline Primer

The Cutline Championship is a points-based, best-ball scoring format. The leagues consist of ten teams and uses standard NFBC roster requirements and position eligibilities. There will be an initial snake draft to fill 36 roster spots then a pair of in-season FAAB periods. The first is the week after the season starts where you can add up to five more players with the second in early June where you can add as many as you want to a maximum of 46 roster spots. The regular season ends right around the All-Star break where teams will be entered into the Cutline Finals, Consolation Round or have their season end. More teams will be eliminated over the next nine weeks until a Cutline Champion is crowned in early September.

SCORING

The Cutline scoring is designed so that the ranking of the players by points emulates the ranking via standard 5x5 rotisserie scoring. The hitter’s correlation coefficient is .99 while pitcher’s is about .90.

A noteworthy difference between the Cutline and other NFBC contests is there isn’t a Friday transaction day for hitters. The scoring period for everyone runs from Monday through Sunday.

Points are awarded as follows:

HITTING

  • Home Run: 6 points
  • Stolen Base: 5 points
  • Hit: 4 points
  • Run: 2 points
  • RBI: 2 points
  • At-bat: -1 point

PITCHING

  • Win: 6 points
  • Save: 8 points
  • Inning Pitched: 3 points
  • Strikeout: 1 point
  • Hit or Walk Allowed: -1 point
  • Earned Run Allowed: -2 points

BEST BALL

For those not familiar, best-ball scoring means your optimum lineup will be determined automatically each week without you ever setting a lineup. The only team management required is the initial draft and the two in-season FAAB periods. The NFBC site does the rest.

The intelligence is designed to account for corner infield, middle infield, utility and multiple position eligibility. There’s no delineation between starting pitchers and relievers – your top nine arms each week contribute to your total, regardless of their role. Shohei Ohtani can count as a hitter or pitcher. The site will determine how to deploy to maximize team points.

PROPER RANKING USING POINTS SCORING

As discussed, back-testing using previous season’s final stats was used to produce a system that correlates very well to 5x5 roto-scoring. That’s all well and good but it’s still essential to come up with a draft list incorporating principles intrinsic to points scoring.

If you play fantasy football you know where this going. The key to points leagues is rankings should not be based on raw points but rather adjusted points using the last player drafted at each position as a baseline. The idea is everyone in the league is credited with the number of points scored by the worst active player at each position so the person with that player essentially earns no useful points from that player.

Mathematically, find the worst draft-worthy player at each position, subtract those points from everyone at the position and re-rank according to those adjusted points.

Truth be told, this is by no means perfect, especially in a best-ball format. The calculation only works if one player occupies each roster spot all season – which is obviously not the case. In addition, the use of corner, middle, utility and players that are eligible for multiple positions skew the replacement level. Still, doing the best you can to determine replacement is better than ignoring it. Ultimately, draft flow comes down to varying expectations of player performance but having a starting point where, at minimum, the players are ranked accurately relative to each other is very beneficial.

HOW MASTERSBALL GENERATES CUTLINE RANKINGS

Let’s start with pitching. There are ten teams with nine roster spots so the expected points from the 90th highest total is subtracted from all the hurlers.

Hitting is where it gets dicey. Here’s what we know.

  • Need 20 catchers
  • Need 30 corner infielders, with a minimum of ten each at first and third
  • Need 30 middle infielders, with a minimum of ten each at second and shortstop
  • Need 50 outfielders
  • Once those are all covered, need 10 highest left to be utility

WIth so many multiple eligiblity players in today's game, position scarcity isn't a factor except at catcher. That is, using the 20th highest total for catcher and the 120th non-catcher for replacement, there's ample non-catchers to fill the above requirements so all 10 teams have a legal roster.

GO BIG OR GO HOME

Before we go on to discuss some specific strategies, it’s necessary to set the proper mindset. Sure, there’s a league prize as the top-scorer in each ten-team league will pocket a nifty $250. Hopefully it’s obvious that the NFBC Cutline is a contest where you’re playing to win the whole kit and caboodle and not simply best nine others to double your money. As such, you’re going to need to take some chances along with being clever about roster construction to take best advantage of the best ball aspect.

Taking chances means jumping players with higher ceilings up the rankings. This doesn’t mean players with high stable floors but limited ceilings should be ignored. It just means you’ll need to increase your risk profile to defeat the thousands of teams trying to win the Cutline Championship.

There are three subsets of players that generally carry the most risk:

  1. Young players with a limited track record
  2. Foreign players
  3. Players with an injury history

Can Marcus Semien and Yuli Gurriel sustain last season’s power spike? Can Fernando Tatis Jr. maintain such a high BABIP? Can Luis Robert be productive with poor plate skills? Can Chris Sale stay healthy? These are all legit concerns that may worry conservative drafters. Sorry, but caution will not take down the Cutline.

Neither Shogo Akiyama nor Yoshi Tsutsugo have swung at Major League pitch in anger yet. Kwang-Hyun Kim and Shun Yamaguchi haven’t thrown a pitch that counts in the bigs. Josh Lindblom has, but that was before honing his craft overseas. Sure, we’d like to see if they pass the eye test in the spring but we don’t have that luxury. Risk averse players prefer to dance with the devil they know. Winning the Cutline requires venturing into the unknown.

Something to keep in mind is with best ball scoring, someone will always be there to backfill an injured player. Even though you risk carrying an empty roster spot, you won’t be getting a zero – you just have one fewer option to fill your best lineup..

Please don’t misinterpret the above and throw a dart at every pick. All I’m saying is you need to pick and choose instances to let your hair down and go outside your comfort zone.

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF BEST-BALL SCORING

Consistency is a concept not all that relevant to standard rotisserie formats. You don’t care about the pathway; all you care about is a player’s season ending stats. However, the best-ball aspect of the Cutline affords several means to take advantage of the scoring to optimize your weekly scores.

Every player has a baseline expectation but there are factors that can raise or lower that expectation over the course of a scoring period – at least on paper. The idea is there will be some weeks a handful of players exceed their baseline and will be included in your total while others they fall below, to be replaced by some other players in a positive situation that period. Hopefully, your reserves are diversified and healthy so there will always be a few with advantageous scenario.

Bully hitting, manage pitching

In standard roto, "bully hitting, manage pitching" entails focusing on bats early and drafting pitching later, then being smart with two-start guys and dominant middle relievers. Obviously, there isn't any in-season managing, but the idea can be deployed by stocking up on quality bats, virtually assured to produce enough to be in the best-ball lineup so you can draft extra pitchers hoping one pops. To be honest, this was more effective before off days were added to the schedule, availing more two-start weeks, but I personally feel it's still worthwhile.

To that end, when drafting "reserve" pitchers, a lesser starters on a better team is desired over a superior hurler for a weaker team. The scoring is designed to emulate 5x5 value which includes ratios and wins. You're looking for a couple of back-end pitchers to jump into your lineup, you don't care about ratio damage. It makes sense if a pitcher gets a win, his ERA and WHIP were decent that game. There are exceptions, but the main point is you're looking for a couple of guys to grab a win and jump into your active lineup that week.

Another pitching ploy is taking advantage of a closer bias. Many don't like taking closers, in part due to the volatility, but also because they're so reliant on saves. I like to steer into this skid and draft three or four closers I feel are fairly safe since saves often come in bunches. Again, it's best-ball, you're looking for an outlying perfomance to leap into the active lineup. There will be many weeks of no saves, but I want the ones with multiple. Having three of four closers increases the chance of having one pop.

Ballparks with extreme park factors

Players get an inherent bump while at home. This is further embellished in good hitting venues. The key is realizing a home run park isn't always a run park. In general, you want power hitters in a home run park and all around players in a park good for runs, hopefully in an above average offense.

Multiple position eligibility and utility

This is less effective

In a standard league where you set lineups, taking the inevitable discount on UT-only is a strong play. In best-ball, it isn't as beneficial. This doesn't mean avoid Nelson Cruz or Yordan Alvarez, but having a UT-only requires ex

Summing up

Yeah, I’m crazy thinking it’s going to take this sort of out-of-the-box thinking to win the Cutline – but I’m also right. Remember, this doesn’t apply to your early or even middle round picks. Let’s designate corner, middle, utility and two outfield spots for hitters (total of five) and four pitching spots you expect different players to occupy in your optimal lineup. That’s nine so beginning in Round 15 and through your reserves you focus on these highly variable players. Initially, that’s 22 candidates to fill nine spots. After one week that grows to 27 and eventually 32 players. Sure, there will be injuries but chances are you’ll always have more than twice as many options to take those nine spots. With those odds, there’s a good chance, most, if not all are filled by players enjoying a week over their baseline expectations. That’s how you win a contest of this nature.

As alluded to throughout this discussion, there are topics that require further treatment. Another is how to construct a best-ball pitching staff. Look for those discussions soon.