This is a long-term 13-team roto league with four keepers. The rules only allow players to be kept for three years and only if you drafted them outside of the first five rounds.
Despite a couple of decent finishes, I have never won this league. The daily roster movement format does not suit my erratic attention span to fantasy baseball. And let’s be honest, roto isn’t my speciality. However, my SWDL/TGFBI partner (David Runciman) has won this league SIX times.
Like so many years in this league, 2022 started off well after an exceptional draft, and I was there or thereabouts for the first half of the season. Third place became fifth place and then I sort of gave up. Eighth place was pretty embarrassing.
Keeper No.1: Shohei Ohtani – I certainly didn’t utilise the daily league format to its potential. I missed several good starts and many times had him in a pitching slot when he was hitting.
Keeper No.2: Jesse Winker – The 7×7 roto rewards walks and holds. I kept Winker to aid with the walks but his .688 OPS was easily the worst of his career. Despite the dismal campaign, Winker walked 84 times, which was good enough for the joint-seventh highest
Keeper No.3: Ketel Marte – Over the last three seasons, Marte was a stud (he hit .318 over 1,197 plate appearances). He was also a stud in May, June and July, but absolutely dreadful in April, August, and September.
Keeper No.4: Sandy Alcantara – It was lucky that I kept Sandy. I had a couple of other potential pitching keepers and I nearly kept another hitter instead.
The season was summed up by four players I drafted with high expectations – Whit Merrifield, Javier Báez, Jo Adell, and Jered Kelenic. Adell was optioned at the start of May and Kelenic was hitting .140 in mid-May when he was demoted. It could be argued that I kept both players on my roster for too long. The shallow bench does not lend itself to stashing players.
My third and fourth picks (Báez and Merrifield) were dreadful but having invested high picks, I just could not pull the trigger to drop them for a hot hand on the wire. I still don’t know whether I should have benched Báez or dropped him earlier.
LOOKING AHEAD TO 2023
Drafting injured Jacob deGrom with a later pick qualifies him as a keeper, and obviously, Alcantara and Ohtani will be kept, and probably Justin Verlander, so I will have to go hitter heavy in the draft.
Featured image of Shohei Ohtani by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images
Deep League Roto 