How the NFBC Main Event Was Won: Learning from the Past

I fell for the hype. I never fall for the hype! I have bad drafts like everyone else, but if anything, it comes from being too conservative with my early picks. So at pick eight in the first round in Las Vegas of the NFBC Main Event (NFBC's 15-team league contest), I went against my better judgment and took Bryce Harper. There wasn't enough reason to take him there aside from some obvious flashes here and there….and the hype.

Harper has enormous upside of course, but with any first-round pick you need elite production, not just the chance that it might be there someday. To make matters worse, Harper got hurt in April so we will never know what his full season may have looked like, but 13 homers and two steals in over 350 at-bats sure didn't do the trick. Once I uttered "Justin Verlander" (on purpose believe it or not) in round three about 20 minutes into the draft, I was finished, I just didn't know it yet.

The NFBC is tough. Anyone putting up $1,600 to draft has likely experienced some success in fantasy baseball and has confidence in their ability. Last year was a mixed bag for me in the NFBC. I struggled mightily in the Main Event, but had a great year in the Primetime (NFBC's 12-team leagues contest), finishing seventh overall. However, I was third overall at the end of August and thought I had a legitimate shot at the $100,000 top prize. A combination of bad decisions, poor FAAB budgeting, and injuries led to a late-season slide. Even though the overall season was good, the combination of that late slip in Primetime combined with my worst Main Event result in a while left a bad taste in my mouth.

When starting my NFBC prep for this season, I looked back at 2014 to see what I could learn from my teams, but also to see how the winners put together their teams. Last year in this article, I went through how I approach the draft, FAAB management, and end-game strategy, but I have received a lot of questions about what it takes to win this level of contest, so I wanted to take an in-depth look at how 2014 was won.

Dale and Greg Morgan won the 2014 NFBC Main Event, taking home the $125,000 prize. The Morgans snagged the No. 1 pick overall and zigged a bit right away going with Miguel Cabrera rather than the consensus No. 1 pick, Mike Trout. They followed Miggy by veering a bit from conventional strategy and going with back-to-back pitchers at the Round 2-3 turn, selecting Adam Wainwright and Max Scherzer. Both Wainwright and Scherzer stayed healthy and were effective all year, building a very nice base for the champs. The two aces were the only two pitchers that they used for more than 121 innings and those two combined for 441.1 innings (they sat Wainwright for one start), 38 wins, 426 strikeouts and a 2.73 ERA. Now that is how you anchor pitching stats!

After the two starters, they took Hunter Pence and Ian Kinsler at Round 4-5 and then nabbed their first big value of the draft, drafting Josh Donaldson (and his 29 homers, 93 runs and 98 RBI) at pick 7.1. The next spot where they got an enormous value was in the 10th round with Victor Martinez. This pick played a huge part in their success, as Martinez provided a sizzling .335 average on the year with 32 homers and 103 RBI. Out of their top five picks on offense, four provided more than 600 at-bats and the fifth, Jayson Werth, gave them 532 at-bats. When you combine really smart choices with extreme health, you have the foundation of a monster offense. The Morgans also drafted Torii Hunter and picked up J.D. Martinez in June, giving them five Tigers in their lineup on a full-time basis for the second half of the season.

As they moved to the middle of the draft, they had seven hitters, two starters and one closer (Jonathan Papelbon) through 10 rounds. They took John Axford in the 11th round, proving that even the best team has picks that do not work out. The two aces allowed them to wait on starters for a bit, but their third starter, A.J. Burnett, had a brutal year with 18 losses and 4.59 ERA. They hit an absolute home run at the end of Round 14 with Dee Gordon. They were low on speed at that point, and were clearly very aware of that, going with another Tiger in Rajai Davis right after Gordon. The combo accounted for 98 of their 186 stolen bases on the year. Gordon turned out to be an invaluable pick, filling a middle-infield spot while stealing 64 bases, scoring 92 runs, and hitting .289. They were also snagged a nice value in the 17th round with Adam LaRoche. What is incredible to look back on is that after 20 rounds, aside from the top two aces, their only other starting pitchers were Burnett and Jake Peavy, two guys who really did not help their cause.

The last 10 rounds are a place to try and obtain a closer in waiting, fill-in open positions, and to speculate on young breakout players. Surprisingly, their last 10 picks are not filled with a bunch of huge hits – Derek Jeter, Ryan Ludwick, Scott Baker, and Rickie Weeks – although they hit on Josh Beckett in the 23rd round, who gave them a very important 2.65 ERA over 112 innings. On draft day, this was a team that had one closer (Axford lost his job in early May) and badly needed starters to back Wainwright and Scherzer. They had a huge offensive draft, grabbed two aces, and were then fantastic in managing their staff through free agency and in-season adjustments, mixing and matching a total of 25 starting pitchers over the course of the season.

After the draft, the season becomes twice-weekly lineup decisions (once a week for pitchers) and FAAB add-drops. FAAB is never easy, especially early in the year with every team very active within the shallow free agent pool. The Morgans spent the first few weeks speculating on a third closer and their first big FAAB buy was Kyle Farnsworth for $214 on April 20th with the thought that Farnsworth would end up closing for the Mets. He earned three saves fairly quickly, but was then traded to the Astros. They spent the next month with some small to medium bids that did not do much, but then had a season-altering day on June 15th.

First, they won a $5 bid on J.D. Martinez. Martinez's stat line from June 16th on (he was a full-time player for them) included a .327 average with 20 homers and 60 RBI over 355 at-bats. In the same week, they acquired Jake Arrieta for $134 and while the backup bid was only $35, this addition was fantastic. They used Arrieta every single week after adding him and his numbers in that stretch included a 2.69 ERA, 10 wins, and 123 strikeouts in 113 innings. Landing Martinez and Arrieta – on the same day no less – was pivotal in the $125,000 quest for the Morgans. A week later, they grabbed Matt Shoemaker for $62 and he responded with a 1.95 ERA over 78.2 innings – pure gold.

I looked at their FAAB moves before I looked at their final results and as of mid-season, I was still wondering where they were going to get the saves they needed to compete for the overall prize. To my surprise, they never added anyone to help with the category. They finished with only 50 saves, 37 from Papelbon, nine from Axford and a few scattered others. They were so good in nine categories that while not totally tanking saves (100 overall points in saves), they were still able to win. This is not an easy way to win and I wasn't sure it could be done with the overall prize. In the other nine categories, they put up an incredible 3,543 points out of a possible 3,780 – a whopping 93.7% of the points available in those categories. Even more amazingly, in the five offensive categories, they compiled 2,033 points out of a possible 2,100 (96.8%).

My big issue with one closer (aside from the obvious saves hole) in a league this deep is that it requires you to use your eighth-best starting pitcher many weeks, which is almost guaranteed to hurt your ratios even for the deepest staff. The champions combated this by adding Dellin Betances in mid-May and using him for 50 innings, and he returned a 1.26 ERA over 71 innings. If you are going to use a middle reliever, that is the level of production you need to get back. From their success, we learned that semi-tanking a category is possible, but you better be just about perfect everywhere else.

Looking to 2015

My biggest lessons from 2014 were that I needed to do better with the two specialty stats – saves and steals. I made a big mistake in both the Main Event and Primetime by only drafting two closers. I wrongly thought that they would keep their jobs, and that I would add a third closer as needed. Saves come into the league, but in these leagues, any reliever even in consideration for saves will get bid on and stashed. There were 30 pitchers in the majors with 15 saves or more in 2014. Of those 30, 24 were drafted in my Main Event League. Of the six that went undrafted, there were four that had more than 20 saves and the winning FAAB bids on them were $408 (Francisco Rodriguez), $177 (Hector Rondon), $123 (Zach Britton) and $20 (Sean Doolittle). In addition, Jenrry Mejia was dropped early on and then acquired for $157. So while people will mention Rodriguez and Britton as reasons not to pay for saves, those are two guys that you not only have to target correctly, but also outbid 14 other teams to get. I am going to focus on getting two closers I like and a third that I think has a chance at saves in the draft and go from there. Hopefully this year I can use my FAAB on trying to attack specific categories and breakout players rather than trying to cash in on saves.

The draft is obviously important, but in a league of this caliber, management and weekly activity are crucial to winning. With mid-week moves on offense, it is imperative to play matchups and to have flexibility on the bench to cover for injuries. It sounds cliché, but in leagues that are this tight, every single counting stat matters. In my Primetime league, the $6,000 league prize came down to a one-run differential on the very last day. While I cheered for Gregor Blanco's two late runs on that last Sunday, every stat period was just as important as the last one, and has to be maximized.

You won't find a better challenge than the NFBC, but that is what makes it the best game out there and anyone who wins a league or competes in the overall has earned it in every way. Hope to see you in Vegas this March!

This article appears in the 2015 edition of the RotoWire Fantasy Baseball Guide.