Fantasy Baseball 2024: FAABing for Treasure

(It’s fantasy baseball draft season! The FTN Fantasy team and a host of helpful guests present our Ultimate 2024 Fantasy Baseball Guide. Check it out and prepare for the 2024 MLB season!)

It’s almost here. The biggest fantasy baseball draft month is March, and for many of us, that will be NFBC Main Event time. The first drafts will take place March 12, with the last scheduled for March 27. Drafts can be entered in for a live event in Las Vegas March 20-27, or almost any day in between the 12th and the 27th as an online drafter. It’s a $1,750 entry fee, though, so once you step onto the pier you need to be ready.

But What About After the Draft?

For the next three months or so, all fantasy baseball players, and certainly all NFBC Main Event participants, will be focused on draft day. After all, this is the highlight of the year, and you can put yourself in a great or terrible position through your draft results. But what about afterward? You’ll need to make savvy moves — cutting some players; benching others; and of course, adding to your roster. Main Event participants have $1,000 of FAAB assigned to each team to use as they see fit, and there of course is a wide range of approaches to the weekly FAAB exercise (NFBC teams have a weekly FAAB submission deadline of 10 p.m. ET). Some fantasy baseball managers tend to limit their FAAB bidding so that they have a higher amount to use later. Others try to get the splashy top target early in the season because this could result in a four- or five-month helpful addition to their roster. But no matter your approach, I believe it is helpful to know what you’re working against. 

Each Main Event league (and of course each fantasy baseball league that uses FAAB as a tool) is different, and knowing the tendencies of your leaguemates gives you a big leg up on the competition. In NFBC, of course, the leagues are assigned randomly, so except for players who have experience with others assigned to the same league, it is difficult to know how the FAAB will play out. One thing is for sure, though, you’ll want to figure out an approach before the season begins, because then you might be…

FAAB Trends

It’s no surprise that FAAB spending generally occurs early in the season. However, 2023 was a bit of an aberration because early spending was pushed up even more (see FAAB Chart 1 below) – when Main Event teams spent $60 or more from Week 2 through Week 8. In contrast, 2022 showed spending like this from Week 3 through Week 8, and 2021 was only Weeks 2 through 6. Perhaps this doesn’t seem like a big difference to you, but at the end of Week 8 (the traditional day of early reckoning for Main Event FAAB spenders), $542 had been allocated out of the initial $10,00 FAAB budget in 2023 compared to $464 and $474 in the previous two years. Please refer to FAAB Chart 2 for the cumulative figures. 

So what is the result of this spending pattern? Later in the year, if your team is in contention, you are working with far fewer resources. While it is true that you don’t need especially large amounts because everyone else has spent down on FAAB, it is still helpful to have FAAB dollars at your disposal in the latter stages of the season. 

FAAB Chart 1

FAAB Chart 2

So What Do I Do?

First, I would suggest that you listen to Jack Sparrow, er, Captain Jack Sparrow (see below for instructions). 

Second, take a look at what I term the Main Event WOW bids from the start of the season through July 23 of last year — the first 18 FAAB runs. These WOW bids are the highest amount spent on any one player and generally correlate to the player attracting the most high bids that week. 

• 3/26: Darick Hall $221
• 4/2: Dany Jiménez $363
• 4/9 Oscar Colás $372
• 4/16 Taj Bradley $557
• 4/23 José Alvarado $399
• 4/30 Tanner Bibee $504
• 5/7 Bryce Miller $468
• 5/14 Eury Pérez $415
• 5/21 Bobby Miller $329
• 5/28 Bobby Miller $412
• 6/4 Royce Lewis $429
• 6/11 Elly De La Cruz $650
• 6/18 Emmet Sheehan $178
• 6/25 Gavin Williams $228 (2)
• 7/2 Jordan Westburg $177
• 7/9 Colton Cowser $225
• 7/16 Aroldis Chapman $316
• 7/23 Christian Encarnacion-Strand $283

Notice anything? A lot of these acquisitions were hot rookies or young call-ups being added to the player pool — talented and unproven (OK, not Dany Jiménez). But because of performance or injury issues, a minority of these guys paid off for the big spenders. I would say Tanner Bibee, Bryce Miller, Eury Pérez and Bobby Miller were solid pickups. I’m a big supporter of Royce Lewis, but he was hurt after his big callup and while he produced when healthy he didn’t provide the counting stats overall. Elly De La Cruz wowed us in spurts and added steals for sure, but he wasn’t a 100% winner. I’m not saying that fantasy managers should ignore these big-ticket guys but it’s no slam dunk, particularly when you factor in the cost.

Third, develop a budget that you will do your best to stick to. It will be difficult, but you can do it! See my suggested FAAB spending plan (highlighted fourth column in FAAB Chart 3 below) and use it as a starting point – it will have you spend at a decent rate early but still hold enough back for the late stages of the season. If you do this your FAAB budget will have more money than most players in your league during the first 20 weeks of the season. 

The key is that when you are entering bids on multiple players, you must still be cognizant of the total amount you might spend. For example, let’s say in Week 2 you are trying to add three players. You put all three in for $30 or so for your first-choice free agents, and let’s suppose you win all three. You say to yourself, “This is great, I’m well under my $60 suggested budget. I’m a FAAB master!” But then you win all three bids and — voila — you have spent $90 in Week 2. Make sure that you are willing to go over budget for those exact player additions if you are successful – don’t do it for short-term fixes:

FAAB Chart 3

This FAAB code might help:

• Short-term additions — one- or two-week holds (10% or less of weekly budget)
• Medium additions — could hold for a month or six weeks (33% of weekly budget)
• Big acquisitions — expect to hold all season (up to 200% of weekly budget, but understand you can only do this 3-4 times per season.

But please remember:

So my suggestion for the base FAAB code is detailed above. Fantasy managers still need to spend early — these are the potential FAAB pickups that can alter a season. But one must be careful to maintain resources for the entire 27 weeks. Because injuries, demotions, and downright poor play occur throughout the year, and FAAB is our only remedy to fix what ails your team. Many good additions can be made — even early in the season — for low bid amounts. Don’t be fooled into thinking that you have to go big on every bid. Having said all that, there is a time and place for large bids — but it should be on a player that you expect to hold for a long duration. And please remember one thing about this proposed FAAB code — if you have no budget, you just might end up with no rum at all…