For some people, Fantasy Baseball means a draft with some of your college buddies with beer, bragging rights and maybe a few bucks to make it interesting; for others, there are big buy-in National Contests where winners can take home six-figure pay days. One such high stakes contest is the National Fantasy Baseball Championship, more familiarly known as the “NFBC”. The NFBC Draft holds 12-team and 15-team format leagues with buy-ins ranging from $125 to $20,000; with leagues drafting online and live in Chicago, New York and Las Vegas, the NFBC has something for everyone. Although there are standalone leagues where the top three teams win prizes, the majority of NFBC leagues compete against a number of other leagues for large overall prizes. The three most popular contests are the $350 Online Championship ($75,000 Grand Prize), the $1500 Primetime ($80,000), and the $1500 Main Event ($125,000).
This will be my 6th year competing in the NFBC, as I started out playing the Online Championship in the comfort of my living room, but have been a participant in the Live Drafts in Las Vegas for the past four seasons. Due to the nature of the Overall competition format, there is no trading allowed in the NFBC to avoid collusion, so getting all your stats coverage during the draft is very important – you cannot punt Saves or Speed and then go trade for them during the season. Rosters are the fairly standard 23-player format with 14 hitters (C, C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, CI, MI, OF, OF, OF, OF, OF, UT/DH with 9 Pitchers and 7 Bench Players, there are no Disabled List slots). Teams are given 1000 “Dollars” to bid on players during Free Agency each Sunday. This is called the Free Agent Acquisition Budget and the entire process is called “FAAB” (spoken as the word, “Fab”).
I participated in two live drafts this weekend in Las Vegas, the first was the 12-team Primetime on Friday afternoon where my co-owner and I had the 4th pick in the draft order. Our plan was to target a big 1B early because we felt there would be a nice OF option in Round 2 or 3 to pair with the 1B; things worked out well as we got our top non-Mike Trout ranked player in Paul Goldschmidt and rolled with that.
12-Team Primetime Draft Results (March 27th)
Player (Draft Selection)
C: Salvador Perez (10)
C: Miguel Montero (18)
1B: Paul Goldscmidt (1)
3B: Matt Carpenter (12)
CI: Mike Napoli-1B (20)
2B: Javier Baez-2B/SS (19)
SS: Starlin Castro (9)
MI: Danny Santana-SS/OF (14)
OF: Yasiel Puig (3)
OF: Carlos Gonzalez (4)
OF: Nelson Cruz (7)
OF: Shin-Soo Choo (16)
OF: Eric Young (23)
DH: David Ortiz (11)
P: David Price (2)
P: Zack Greinke (5)
P: Gio Gonzalez (8)
P: Taijuan Walker (15)
P: Homer Bailey (21)
P: Clay Buchholz (24)
P: Greg Holland (6)
P: Jonathan Papelbon (13)
P: Addison Reed (17)
Bench Hitters: Asdrubal Cabrera-2B/SS (22), Juan Lagares-OF (26), Alex Rodriguez-3B (29)
Bench Pitchers: Kendall Graveman (25), Danny Salazar (27), Raisel Iglesias (28), Tim Lincecum (30)
We were relatively happy with the overall roster, especially with our Top 6 picks (Goldschmidt, Price, Puig, Cargo, Greinke & Holland); but where the NFBC differs from most one-off leagues is the difficulty in finding values and sleepers later in drafts. There are no secrets in the NFBC, everyone knows every player and does not care about the established ADP; so if you really want a player, you need to jump on them when you are worried they might be selected soon. This was the case in Taijuan Walker, who had just been named as part of the rotation; even with an ADP of 241, we felt taking him at pick 172 was the right move at the time. We took some chances with our later Starting Pitchers in Buchholz, Graveman, Salazar, Lincecum and Cuban export Raisel Iglesias – some of these guys have potential to be big busts, but they have big upside as well and in the 12-team format, Starting Pitching is one of the easier things to replace in FAAB. Getting three established Closers was a priority for us, but we did not want to waste a bunch of early picks to do it, so after we got Holland we started looking for some of the decent guys who fell – even though Papelbon has Ken Giles breathing down his neck, he has been very solid recently and even if he is traded it will likely be to a team that needs a Closer.
Our second draft of the weekend was the 15-team Main Event, where we also picked 4th in the draft order. We again were targeting a big 1B, and after Paul Goldschmidt went off the board at #2, Giancarlo Stanton was selected #3, we were looking at Andrew McCutchen & Clayton Kershaw as options, but decided to stick with our game plan and selected Miguel Cabrera, as we have Batting Average and Power as our primary goals for our early picks.
15-team Main Event Results (March 28th)
Player (Draft Selection)
C: Jason Castro (18)
C: Robinson Chirinos (21)
1B: Miguel Cabrera (1)
3B: Kris Bryant (5)
CI: Joey Votto-1B (7)
2B: Howie Kendrick (10)
SS: Elvis Andrus (11)
MI: Jedd Gyorko (19)
OF: Ryan Braun (3)
OF: Danny Santana-SS/OF (12)
OF: Shin-Soo Choo (15)
OF: Oswaldo Arcia (16)
OF: Emilio Bonifacio-2B/OF (23)
DH: Aramis Ramirez-3B (17)
P: David Price (2)
P: James Shields (6)
P: Masahiro Tanaka (8)
P: Brandon McCarthy (14)
P: Aaron Sanchez (20)
P: Kendall Graveman (22)
P: Craig Kimbrel (4)
P: Kenley Jansen (9)
P: Neftali Feliz (13)
Bench Hitters: Matt Joyce-OF (24), Trevor Plouffe-3B (27), Blake Swihart-C (28), Jake Smolinski-OF (29), Chris Coghlan-OF (30)
Bench Pitchers: Andrew Heaney (25), Brandon Morrow (26)
While we were targeting three Closers just as we did in the Primetime, we did not intend on going after Craig Kimbrel early, but the alternatives at the end of the 4th round were not great in our opinion, so we decided to try to get an edge in the Saves category while still getting 100+ strikeouts from that slot. Kenley Jansen is out the first month, but it is for a foot injury, not anything to do with his arm/elbow, so the potential of five months of a Kimbrel/Jansen combo was too much to pass on in the 9th round. Kris Bryant is obviously one of the more intriguing selections in Fantasy this season, but I think the price point on him was fair enough here as he was going in the 3rd to 4th round of a lot of drafts. Combining Bryant with Votto seemed like a smart move; the power that we gain from Bryant will balance well with the batting average help from Votto. While we are light on OF depth, the flexibility that Danny Santana and Emilio Bonifacio give us, allows a multitude of options with our OF spots and MI slot. Pitching is tough to come by in 15-team formats, but I will take our top three SP and our three RP up against any in the league; just need to manage FAAB and play good match ups at our other pitching slots if some of our young guys (Sanchez, Graveman & Heaney) do not pan out. We played chicken a little too long at C and were hoping to get a trio of Jason Castro, Dioner Navarro and Stephen Vogt (who is only 1B-eligible to start out the season, but should gain Catcher eligibility after a few weeks), but we got caught holding the bag when we opted to secure Jedd Gyorko in the 19th round, only to watch Navarro and Vogt be taken before it got back to us in the 20th. We both like Castro to improve in the high octane Astro lineup, and also think Chirinos has some upside in the Texas lineup and ballpark, while Swihart could be a nice sleeper with Christian Vasquez potentially slated for elbow surgery.
It was a fun and exciting weekend, where I get to see a bunch of great guys who are very talented fantasy managers. We ended up with four players on both of our rosters: David Price, Danny Santana, Shin-Soo Choo and Kendall Graveman; so here’s hoping for big years from that quartet. I recommend the NFBC to anyone looking to expand their Fantasy game profile next season, start small and jump into a $350 Online Championship league next year, you may find yourself partying with us in Vegas in the Primetime & Main Event leagues in a few years; who knows, you may win big in the Online Championship and decide to jump into the $20,000 buy-in Platinum League. Good luck this year in all your leagues.
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