Before you dive in here, make sure you check out my 11 Dynasty Baseball Rules to Live By from 2019 and 10 (More) Dynasty Baseball Rules to Live By from 2021 if you haven’t read those already. This post is a collection of strategies and thoughts from my Dynasty Baseball Team Reports that I wrote earlier in the off-season, some were free and most were on the Patreon. I wanted to collect them in one easy to read post. Here are my 16 Dynasty Baseball Strategies/Thoughts for 2023 (A Collection from the 2023 Dynasty Baseball Team Reports):

CLICK HERE TO JOIN MY PATREON FOR TONS OF EXCLUSIVE & EARLY ACCESS CONTENT ALL OFF-SEASON & SEASON, INCLUDING:
-TOP 1,000 2023 DYNASTY BASEBALL RANKS
-TOP 500 2023 DYNASTY PROSPECTS RANKS
-TOP 109 2023 FYPD RANKINGS w/ Strategy & Target Guide
-OBP TOP 500 2023 DYNASTY BASEBALL RANKS
-PTS/6+CAT/OPS “UNIVERSAL” TOP 500 DYNASTY BASEBALL RANKS
-POSTION BY POSITION TARGET/SLEEPER/UNDERRATED SERIES
-ALL-IN-ONE RANKINGS SPREADSHEET

1) The Marlins are a perfect example of the volatility of pitching prospects. Max Meyer is out all of next year with Tommy John surgery. Jake Eder missed all of 2022 with Tommy John. Braxton Garrett (a late round target of mine who I named in my Top Early Off-Season Targets) missed all of 2018 with Tommy. Sixto Sanchez had a great rookie season then fell off the face of the earth with a shoulder injury. Trevor Rogers didn’t get much prospect love (I personally was always high on him and was a target of mine in his FYPD year), then he exploded in his rookie year, before tanking in his Sophomore season. Eury Perez, Jesus Luzardo, and Edward Cabrera have all missed significant time with arm issues (Luzardo had Tommy John in high school in 2016). Pablo Lopez is 26 years old, underwent Tommy John in 2014, has been in the majors since 2018, and this is the first year he eclipsed 111.1 IP. And all of this is from an organization that is lauded for their pitching development. One guy, Sandy Alcantara, came out unscathed. Just keep this in mind before you fall in love with every prospect who has a mid 90’s fastball and a nasty breaker.

2) Going after prospects from teams with great developmental reputations can be a double edged sword, because those teams will inevitably constantly have playing time logjams. Often times teams will trade from their prospect surplus, but it’s not that simple, because development doesn’t stop in the minors, so you can’t necessarily expect the same results from a prospect in a great organization after they get dealt to a lesser origination. There is also no guarantee they get traded, as depth is king, and there might be a 2-3 year period where they are part time players, scratching and clawing for playing time.

3) Jumping off from #2 above, I definitely favor going after players (and prospects especially) from smart organizations, but I’m not a total slave to it. If I love a prospect from a dumb organization, I’m not just going to completely write them off. Even dumb organizations have developed great players. Mike Trout is exhibit A for that. I was the super high guy on Trevor Story back in the day and that paid off big time. If it’s close, by all means go with the better org, but don’t drop a super talented stud prospect all the way down your rankings just because they weren’t drafted by a smart team.

4) Don’t get suckered in by AFL numbers. It is a hitter’s haven where players are often working on particular things and the competition can vary. You are much more likely to make a player valuation mistake by letting a strong showing in the AFL overshadow what a player did all season. The one exception is pitchers who were out for a large portion of the year. Big time stuff can’t be faked.

5) When a MLB player with a decent sized track record has a career year, or a down year, it’s easier to identify it as such and expect them to regress back to their career averages the next season. With minor leaguers it’s not so easy and things can get muddled. A career year is viewed as a true breakout and a down year can often have prospects completely written off, but prospects are prone to the uncertainty that is baseball just as much as major leaguers, and it’s important to at least keep that in mind when evaluating prospects. If you believe in a prospects tools, don’t go running for the hills if they have some ups and downs in the minors. Joey Wiemer and Garrett Mitchell are good examples of this. They can struggle hard at new levels, or just let their swing and miss issues get away from them for long periods of time, but they still have elite athlete tools that will shine no matter the level of competition.

6) Last off-season I took part in a 20 team Dynasty Mock Draft over at Rotowire and went with the bold strategy of taking Bobby Witt and Julio Rodriguez with the 18th and 23rd overall picks. All of my top targets were off the board, and I wanted to come up with angle to give me a long term leg up against very savvy, tough competition. It definitely raised some eyebrows and got some push back. Needless to say, the strategy paid off as I now have two long term pillars to build around for years. The other players I was considering in that area (Betts, Yordan, Machado) all had excellent years too, so I’m not claiming to be some genius, but it’s a reminder that the true elite of the elite prospects deserve to be right in that conversation, and I wouldn’t hesitate to do the same thing with Gunnar Henderson and Corbin Carroll this year. These guys have elite dynasty upside, and while it certainly adds more risk than going with a chalk pick, a little extra risk isn’t necessarily a bad thing when you’re trying to beat out 19 other smart owners.

7) Restricting trades after the season ends for any period of time doesn’t make sense to me. A large portion of the fun of playing in a dynasty league is that it is a year round thing. I love taking stock of my team directly after the season ends, thinking about my keepers and what my lineup will look like next year, seeing the holes I need to fill and the areas I’m weak in. If your team wasn’t in competition, you might not have had that much to do since the trade deadline passed in August, and you’re ripping and raring to go when the trade ban is lifted. Waiting months before I can start wheeling and dealing just seems unnecessary. Please lift that trade embargo, Mr. Commissioner. No taxation without representation. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Ask not what your country can do … my bad, got carried away there 🙂

8) Resist the urge to trade down in First Year Player Drafts. First Year Player Draft season is the time of year where you are sure to get peppered with tons of, “Hey man, you have interest in trading your 5th overall pick for my 11th and 16th?” Every dynasty manager has that Bill Belichick in them, trying to tinker, strategize, and out smart the competition, but in 99% of dynasty leagues I’ve played in it rarely makes sense to trade down. In most leagues there is a surplus of prospects available anyway. Either they can be picked up freely during the year, or there is a prospect max per team that creates a prospect crunch. Even if those don’t apply to you, you don’t need a million prospects in your system. One gem is worth more than several decent guys. Hold strong in your draft position, dodge all of those shady trade offers, and pick the best available player.

9) Ever since Colorado installed the humidor they have somehow managed the worst of all worlds outcome where their pitchers are still unusable for fantasy, but now their hitters don’t get that huge bump anymore. They still have the best hitter’s park in baseball, but it’s not far and away so much better than the other good hitter’s parks in the league. The days of just blindly going after every Coors hitter seems to be over.

10) One of the best places to search for value in Dynasty Leagues is with former super hyped prospects who struggle when they debut in the Majors, and if they debut particularly young, the buying window could be open for a few years. Trading for Bryce Harper in 2014 was probably the best move of this type I’ve made. Trading for Anthony Rizzo in 2013 was a close 2nd. Tork and Riley Greene are both firmly in this category. They struggled to varying degrees in their debuts, but they were both very young, they hit the ball quite hard, they didn’t show any major strikeout issues and they had relatively mature plate approaches. Now that they brought the fences in and down, I like going after them even more. If they are on the bench of a contending team who wants to lock in a more sure thing, they could be ripe for the picking.

11) It is important to be constantly re-evaluating your prospects, and valuing them with a cold, objective eye. These are very young players who are constantly being challenged at higher levels with new information constantly coming in. These aren’t mid 20’s/30 year old MLB players with longer track records at the same level to draw on. Prospect values change fast. It’s often why the best fantasy managers are actually the easiest to trade with, because they stay on the ball and are on the same page as to current values. There is nothing more frustrating talking trade with someone using values that are months outdated. Sure, those dynasty managers will occasionally send you a lopsided trade in your favor, but you can’t depend on that and trying to negotiate more precision trades can be rough. The one area you have to careful with though is when former hyped guys struggle at Triple-A or in their MLB debut. If you constantly drop an older prospect on the precipice of the bigs for the next hyped guy in A ball, you will never graduate anybody.

12) It’s generally not a great idea to target players from bad teams, but Kansas City is an offense on the come up, and bad teams usually have plenty of jobs to be won. Kansas City realizes this themselves by trading for fringy guys like Drew Waters and Samad Taylor this year, but the two players who I think will especially take of advantage of that opportunity, and will probably come at dirt cheap prices this off-season, are Michael Massey and Edward Olivares. Both are late round targets of mine.

13) There is great value to be had in Dynasty leagues by going after older pitching. Old guys can get downgraded too much in general, but it’s especially unwarranted with pitchers. Having a track record of being able to throw a full starter’s workload is really more important than having youth. Young pitchers have often never thrown, and sometimes haven’t even come close to throwing a full workload, making it a major question mark if they can even do it. You also almost have to expect and plan for a flame throwing youngster to miss 1-2 years with Tommy John surgery. The older guys might have gotten that Tommy John out of the way already. Plus, pitching is so risky in general that I wouldn’t count on any pitcher, regardless of age, to be a long term core of my dynasty team. I’ll build a core of young hitters, and then go after established pitching when I think I have that 3-5 year contention window to make my mark.

14) It can be so tempting to pay up for a career year, but it almost always ends up being an overpay. Just look at Salvador Perez this year vs. what he did in 2021. It’s not like they don’t have the ability to repeat, because they obviously just did it, it’s just that literally everything has to go right from luck to health and everything in between. A career year in a contract year is the scariest, because who knows what extra work the guy was willing to put in behind the scenes that he may be a bit more lax on after he scores a $360 million contract. Aaron Judge is the most obvious example for this year, but it applies to every veteran who just had the best year of their career. Let’s also not even get into the fact that MLB was feeding Judge the juiced ball to help him break the AL home run record. You are way better off looking for the guy who has the ability to put up that career season, but didn’t for whatever reason, rather than going after the guy who just did it.

15) Diversifying your farm system shouldn’t be a major consideration in prospect drafts, but it’s definitely something to keep in mind. Diversification means not only positions, but also in regards to proximity and upside/safety. For one, it can help in trades because your trade partner might be targeting, or have a preference for a specific type of prospect. It can also help if there is a limit on the number of prospects you can own. If you’re constantly going for far off upside, you won’t be clearing enough spots to bring in fresh meat every year. As for hitting vs. pitching, I like anywhere from a 80/20 to a 70/30 split. When you follow the minors, it’s extremely easy to fall in love with tons of pitching prospects, but you need to fight the urge to go too pitching heavy. They will inevitably break your heart. At the same time, don’t go too far the other way and be afraid to draft any pitching prospects at all. Definitely take your shot on a few.

16) Not every target of mine is someone I’m necessarily going to really stick my neck out to grab. If you’re constantly reaching for all of your favorite underrated targets, you’re basically eliminating the excess value they should provide to you. The value comes from letting that player fall right into your lap. Gaming the draft is a big part of fantasy success, and you have to risk losing a guy. If you miss out on them, c’est la vie. I certainly have some targets I need to have and am willing to go above and beyond to get, but you have to pick your spots.’

11 Dynasty Baseball Rules to Live By from 2019
10 (More) Dynasty Baseball Rules to Live By from 2021

CLICK HERE TO JOIN MY PATREON FOR TONS OF EXCLUSIVE & EARLY ACCESS CONTENT ALL OFF-SEASON & SEASON, INCLUDING:
-TOP 1,000 2023 DYNASTY BASEBALL RANKS
-TOP 500 2023 DYNASTY PROSPECTS RANKS
-TOP 109 2023 FYPD RANKINGS w/ Strategy & Target Guide
-OBP TOP 500 2023 DYNASTY BASEBALL RANKS
-PTS/6+CAT/OPS “UNIVERSAL” TOP 500 DYNASTY BASEBALL RANKS
-POSTION BY POSITION TARGET/SLEEPER/UNDERRATED SERIES
-ALL-IN-ONE RANKINGS SPREADSHEET

By Michael Halpern (@MichaelCHalpern)
Email: michaelhalpern@imaginarybrickwall.com
Twitter: Imaginary Brick Wall (@DynastyHalp)