FSTA Draft In Las Vegas On SiriusXM

[Greg Ambrosius]

The 13-team FSTA Industry Draft will be held on Wednesday, Jan. 15th at the Bellagio Las Vegas and will air live on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio 210/87 starting at 7 pm ET. The channel is dedicating four hours to the draft, which should be fun.

Draft picks are going to be announced live on Monday, Jan. 13th at 6 pm ET. We are being randomly picked and will then pick our draft spots on the air. Could be fun.

Tom and I will represent the NFBC team and do our best to make you proud. We'll let you know what our draft pick is in a few minutes. GO NFBC!! GO NFBC!!

[Greg Ambrosius]

Tom and I get the 2ND PICK!! Not a bad way to start out our team. I like it.

Defending champion Todd Zola (and Lawr Michaels) pulled the 1st pick. They will take Mike Trout. That means we are taking Miguel Cabrera and building around good power, a high average and a solid third baseman. We like it.

I'll post the draft order once it is complete.

[Money]

Tom and I get the 2ND PICK!! Not a bad way to start out our team. I like it.

Defending champion Todd Zola (and Lawr Michaels) pulled the 1st pick. They will take Mike Trout. That means we are taking Miguel Cabrera and building around good power, a high average and a solid third baseman. We like it.

I'll post the draft order once it is complete.

If you ask me you got first pick

[Greg Ambrosius]

Tom and I get the 2ND PICK!! Not a bad way to start out our team. I like it.

Defending champion Todd Zola (and Lawr Michaels) pulled the 1st pick. They will take Mike Trout. That means we are taking Miguel Cabrera and building around good power, a high average and a solid third baseman. We like it.

I'll post the draft order once it is complete.

If you ask me you got first pick

I knew you'd like that pick Joe!!

Now the goal is to just get to Las Vegas. We're getting 7 to 9 inches of snow here today as the winter from Hell just keeps going and going and going. It's been an unbelievable winter here and if we do get to Las Vegas it's very possible that Tom and I stay there forever. My family won't like it, but I may stay out in Sin City through May. I hate this winter.

Okay, back to shoveling and trying to find a way to get from Iola to Las Vegas tomorrow.

Oh, and if you're listening to SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio this week, Tom and I have a 2-hour show on Thursday from 1-3 pm ET from the Bellagio. Should be fun as we review the FSTA Industry Draft from the night before. Join us.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Here's the draft order for tomorrow night.

1-Lawr Michaels/Todd Zola, Mastersball
2-Greg Ambrosius, Stats/NFBC
3-Charlie Wiegert/Vlad Sedler, CDM Sports
4-Tim Heaney, KFFL
5-Marc Griffis, Fantasy Sharks
6-Chris Thompson/Jeff Paur, RT Sports
7-Glenn Colton/Rick Wolf/Stacie Stern, Colton & The Wolfman
8-Steve Gardner/Howard Kamen, USA Today
9-Ray Flowers, SiriusXM Fantasy Drive
10-Jeff Mans, Fantasy Alarm
11-Chris Liss, RotoWire
12-Ron Shandler/Brent /Hershey, Baseball HQ
13-Anthony Perri, Fantistics Fantasy Sports

[Baseball Furies]

Isn't about time we got some new names on this "experts" list? And by my count, maybe five of these guys qualify as such. I'll leave it to the imagination who, because the last thing in the world that I would want to do is hurt anyone's feelings.

[southpaw23]

Isn't about time we got some new names on this "experts" list? And by my count, maybe five of these guys qualify as such. I'll leave it to the imagination who, because the last thing in the world that I would want to do is hurt anyone's feelings.

So true.

Is there a link to the draft board so we can see all the picks?

[fozzie]

Per Steve Gardner, it'll be posted here:

http://www.rtsports.com/fsta

[Yah Mule]

Per Steve Gardner, it'll be posted here:

http://www.rtsports.com/fsta

Nice job, fellas. That's a strong team.

[southpaw23]

Quite the discussion on Sirius/XM regarding "experts" vs high stakes players. Got some folks riled up to say the least. Valid points on both sides.

[Money]

Quite the discussion on Sirius/XM regarding "experts" vs high stakes players. Got some folks riled up to say the least. Valid points on both sides.

That would've been interesting to hear. Personally I think we all play and participate for different reasons. The "Expert" tag would only be relative to those approaching the game from the same perspective. The guys who make a living at it from an informative / public forum standpoint have a tough road to hoe when it comes to competing against those in this arena, simply because they have different objectives.

Because of those objectives, they straddle a line, a line that puts them at a disadvantage when it comes to competing at the highest level. I believe it is virtually impossible to publish or speak your every thought and constantly compete at (this) the highest level. You have to do one or the other. No one can do both and I suspect there have been many who've tried. As a guy who has no interest in the public side, I hope that those "Experts" continue to attempt to compete here, because over the long haul, they really have no chance.

[Baseball Furies]

Quite the discussion on Sirius/XM regarding "experts" vs high stakes players. Got some folks riled up to say the least. Valid points on both sides.

That would've been interesting to hear. Personally I think we all play and participate for different reasons. The "Expert" tag would only be relative to those approaching the game from the same perspective. The guys who make a living at it from an informative / public forum standpoint have a tough road to hoe when it comes to competing against those in this arena, simply because they have different objectives.

Because of those objectives, they straddle a line, a line that puts them at a disadvantage when it comes to competing at the highest level. I believe it is virtually impossible to publish or speak your every thought and constantly compete at (this) the highest level. You have to do one or the other. No one can do both and I suspect there have been many who've tried. As a guy who has no interest in the public side, I hope that those "Experts" continue to attempt to compete here, because over the long haul, they really have no chance.

Would have been even more interesting to hear if I was the one they were interviewing about this! Oh wait, it was me. Sorry, I was up very early for this.

[Greg Ambrosius]

The only fantasy experts I know are named Jupinka, Childs and Hinkelman. They certainly aren't Ambrosius, Shandler or Zola, no offense. I don't think any of us get caught up in the "experts" tagline; these are early season industry drafts with writers who hopefully have been doing rankings and projections and ratings for months. We used to be out there in the day before you guys started drafting in November and even earlier!!! We know where the experts can be found and this is the place to start.

It's an Industry Draft. Nothing more. But a fun industry draft that hopefully gets people excited about baseball in January.

We went into this draft hoping to get young, upside players and we weren't going to be afraid to take chances on guys like Billy Hamilton or Michael Wacha or Jurickson Profar. This is a 13-team league -- who the hell plays in that format anyway? -- and there's enough free agents available if one of our guys miss, so they are worth the gamble. We liked our team, but we'll see how it plays out. Here it is:

C - A.J. Pierzynski
C - Carlos Ruiz
1B - Edwin Encarnacion
2B - Jurickson Profar
SS - Elvis Andrus
3B - Miguel Cabrera
CI - Aramis Ramirez
MI - Kolten Wong
UT - Billy Butler
OF - Yasiel Puig
OF - Billy Hamilton
OF - Michael Cuddyer
OF -Torii Hunter
OF - Marlon Byrd

P - Justin Verlander
P - Hisashi Iwakuma
P - Michael Wacha
P - Zack Wheeler
P - Chris Archer
P - Ervin Santana
P - Jose Quintana
P - Kenley Jansen
P - Steve Cishek

Reserves: Andre Ethier, James Paxton, J.P. Arencibia, David Freese, Nick Franklin, James Loney.

Okay, swing away at it!!!

[Greg Ambrosius]

We had our STATS Fantasy Advantage show on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio yesterday afternoon for two hours and it was a lot of fun looking over this draft and talking about the trends. A few items of note from this draft:

* 12 of the first 52 picks were SPs; in the NFBC 12 of the first 54 picks are SPs. For once, the industry writers have come around and seen the value of Starting Pitchers.

* Bryce Harper went 7th overall and the next two teams each wanted him, so he wasn't falling from the Top 10 here.

* This group definitely held off on closers, which you can do in a 13-team league. Craig Kimbrel went 64th and we got Kenley Jansen 106th overall.

* Everyone is questioning us on Billy Hamilton at 77. In a league where the only prize is bragging rights for winning it all, why not? Go big or go home folks.

* Masahiro Tanaka was a value at 117; Jose Abreu similarly at 104.

Enjoy all.

[Baseball Furies]

[quote="Greg Ambrosius"]The only fantasy experts I know are named Jupinka, Childs and Hinkelman. They certainly aren't Ambrosius, Shandler or Zola, no offense. I don't think any of us get caught up in the "experts" tagline; these are early season industry drafts with writers who hopefully have been doing rankings and projections and ratings for months. We used to be out there in the day before you guys started drafting in November and even earlier!!! We know where the experts can be found and this is the place to start.

It's an Industry Draft. Nothing more. But a fun industry draft that hopefully gets people excited about baseball in January.


Really?! I would venture to say that there are about 30 or more other guys who have not made your "HOF" that would strongly disagree with this statement which is just utterly ridiculous. And most of them are your top money players and winners year in and year out. The FSTA bills itself, as does Tout, Labr and host of others, as drafts featuring "Industry Experts". So either you are or you aren't if you're in these drafts. If you're not one and they invited you to participate, that's fine, but let's not pretend that the industry guys that participate in these drafts don't feel or portray themselves to be anything less than "experts" for one second. It's an antiquated and incestuous good ole boys network who play for nothing but bragging rights among themselves, with zero financial or other skin in the game, with rules that most of us don't even use or play by, while being wrong far more often than they're right, and getting paid to do so while kissing each other's asses and patting each other on the back. Not one of them could carry guys like Shawn Childs', Steve Jupinka's, or Lindy Hinkelman's fantasy baseball jockstrap (not to mention David DiDonato's, Bob Particelli's, Jim Ferrari's, KJ Duke's, Dan Kenyon's, Rick Thomas', Scott Fleming's, Glenn Schroter's, Glenn Lowy's, Jeff Dobies', Ken Magner's, and Mike Edelman's, etc. just to name a few). I apologize in advance to all the others I could not or did list here to give the deserved honorable mention.

[Greg Ambrosius]

The only fantasy experts I know are named Jupinka, Childs and Hinkelman. They certainly aren't Ambrosius, Shandler or Zola, no offense. I don't think any of us get caught up in the "experts" tagline; these are early season industry drafts with writers who hopefully have been doing rankings and projections and ratings for months. We used to be out there in the day before you guys started drafting in November and even earlier!!! We know where the experts can be found and this is the place to start.

It's an Industry Draft. Nothing more. But a fun industry draft that hopefully gets people excited about baseball in January.


Really?! I would venture to say that there are about 30 or more other guys who have not made your "HOF" that would strongly disagree with this statement which is just utterly ridiculous. And most of them are your top money players and winners year in and year out. The FSTA bills itself, as does Tout, Labr and host of others, as drafts featuring "Industry Experts". So either you are or you aren't if you're in these drafts. If you're not one and they invited you to participate, that's fine, but let's not pretend that the industry guys that participate in these drafts don't feel or portray themselves to be anything less than "experts" for one second. It's an antiquated and incestuous good ole boys network who play for nothing but bragging rights among themselves, with zero financial or other skin in the game, with rules that most of us don't even use or play by, while being wrong far more often than they're right, and getting paid to do so while kissing each other's asses and patting each other on the back. Not one of them could carry guys like Shawn Childs', Steve Jupinka's, or Lindy Hinkelman's fantasy baseball jockstrap (not to mention David DiDonato's, Bob Particelli's, Jim Ferrari's, KJ Duke's, Dan Kenyon's, Rick Thomas', Scott Fleming's, Glenn Schroter's, Glenn Lowy's, Jeff Dobies', Ken Magner's, and Mike Edelman's, etc. just to name a few). I apologize in advance to all the others I could not or did list here to give the deserved honorable mention.

Mike, I have no idea why every single post of yours this year is bitter, but I'll play along. Okay, there are 444 players in the NFBC that I'd take over any one of the 13 owners in this Industry Draft. Does that make you and everyone else feel better? It's an Industry Draft to kick off the fantasy baseball season and it was carried live on SiriusXM to promote the industry. To find fault in all of our picks is fine, but honestly I think a lot of folks were using our NFBC ADPs and many picks fell in line with what I'm seeing now in the NFBC. I don't know if that's good or bad, but for the most part it was good ol' boys making good ol' picks.

But you're right, us writers couldn't hold your jock strap or anyone else's that you mention here. We're just guys who got a lucky break and were invited into the good ol' boys network, for whatever that's worth. But enjoy the results and again, with any luck, we intrigued some baseball fan out there who will start playing fantasy baseball this year for the first time. That's the importance of it, not to impress the NFBC rank and file.

[Baseball Furies]

The only fantasy experts I know are named Jupinka, Childs and Hinkelman. They certainly aren't Ambrosius, Shandler or Zola, no offense. I don't think any of us get caught up in the "experts" tagline; these are early season industry drafts with writers who hopefully have been doing rankings and projections and ratings for months. We used to be out there in the day before you guys started drafting in November and even earlier!!! We know where the experts can be found and this is the place to start.

It's an Industry Draft. Nothing more. But a fun industry draft that hopefully gets people excited about baseball in January.


Really?! I would venture to say that there are about 30 or more other guys who have not made your "HOF" that would strongly disagree with this statement which is just utterly ridiculous. And most of them are your top money players and winners year in and year out. The FSTA bills itself, as does Tout, Labr and host of others, as drafts featuring "Industry Experts". So either you are or you aren't if you're in these drafts. If you're not one and they invited you to participate, that's fine, but let's not pretend that the industry guys that participate in these drafts don't feel or portray themselves to be anything less than "experts" for one second. It's an antiquated and incestuous good ole boys network who play for nothing but bragging rights among themselves, with zero financial or other skin in the game, with rules that most of us don't even use or play by, while being wrong far more often than they're right, and getting paid to do so while kissing each other's asses and patting each other on the back. Not one of them could carry guys like Shawn Childs', Steve Jupinka's, or Lindy Hinkelman's fantasy baseball jockstrap (not to mention David DiDonato's, Bob Particelli's, Jim Ferrari's, KJ Duke's, Dan Kenyon's, Rick Thomas', Scott Fleming's, Glenn Schroter's, Glenn Lowy's, Jeff Dobies', Ken Magner's, and Mike Edelman's, etc. just to name a few). I apologize in advance to all the others I could not or did list here to give the deserved honorable mention.

Mike, I have no idea why every single post of yours this year is bitter, but I'll play along. Okay, there are 444 players in the NFBC that I'd take over any one of the 13 owners in this Industry Draft. Does that make you and everyone else feel better? It's an Industry Draft to kick off the fantasy baseball season and it was carried live on SiriusXM to promote the industry. To find fault in all of our picks is fine, but honestly I think a lot of folks were using our NFBC ADPs and many picks fell in line with what I'm seeing now in the NFBC. I don't know if that's good or bad, but for the most part it was good ol' boys making good ol' picks.

But you're right, us writers couldn't hold your jock strap or anyone else's that you mention here. We're just guys who got a lucky break and were invited into the good ol' boys network, for whatever that's worth. But enjoy the results and again, with any luck, we intrigued some baseball fan out there who will start playing fantasy baseball this year for the first time. That's the importance of it, not to impress the NFBC rank and file.

Greg, how is it that every time that I speak the truth or say something that you feel may be unpopular or contrary to what you write, it automatically makes me bitter? I'm sorry that I'm not one of the guys on this forum who likes to kiss your ass and pat you on the back all the time even when they are let down by your product and service as much as they may like it for various reasons. If you aren't catering to your customers with the level of quality and service we think we are entitled to for the amount of time and money we invest in it each year, I for one am going to say something about it until it gets better or no longer exists, whichever comes first.

And every single one of my posts has not been bitter. The only ones that might seem that way are the ones that you like to reply to. You run a A National High Stakes Fantasy Baseball Competition (or so it is billed), so please don't be apologetic for yourself or the rest of the industry guys who bill and promote themselves as opinion leaders, gurus, or experts to this audience. You might not do that, but the majority of them do. It's not about ADP and inspiring people to play fantasy baseball. It's about leagues like the FSTA that have virtually no bearing on what we do here in the NFBC or similar competitions that promote themselves as examples of expert drafts for others to emulate. It's time for the true "Tout Wars" to begin, but only with drafts that mean something when they start to include the real fantasy baseball pros of the high stakes world. This might be a good idea for you to consider promoting. It's what put poker as a national, high stakes competition on the map and made it the phenomenon that it is today. It could do the same for your competition which wouldn't hurt the company's coffers in the process. But I'm sure all of what I am saying will again be taken under strong consideration for sometime in the future whenever that is...

[COZ]

Narcissist Translation: "I am the only with the guts to speak the truth and to stand up to that dictator Greg. All you other peons lack the requisite balls to do so, but I will do it for you. See I KNOW whats best for the rest of you and the NFBC. And you will thank me later. Just trust me, I KNOW what I'm doing. I KNOW marketing. I KNOW promotion. And not only am I going to sacrifice my good name and come across as an ***hole, I am doing this for the good for everyone else, for Greg, for the NFBC, for YOU, because I really do care.

How dare they call themselves experts when they don't put up 20k like US? Why are they called experts but not us? How can you truly be called an "expert" if you don't put your money where your mouth is? Why are they promoted and yet, we, who put up $20K, are not given more attention!?!?! We need to be promoted. We need to be like poker. We need to be on TV. We need to promote more and bring in more big fish or the NFBC will die. Greg and Tom don't know what they're doing but I DO. We need a television show on the big whales. Trust me, people will LOVE me. I just need to be on TV. I need to be like Phil Hellmuth. I need more attention!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! "

Sincerely,

The Truth
aka COZ

[joshguy]

Narcissist Translation: "I am the only with the guts to speak the truth and to stand up to that dictator Greg. All you other peons lack the requisite balls to do so, but I will do it for you. See I KNOW whats best for the rest of you and the NFBC. And you will thank me later. Just trust me, I KNOW what I'm doing. I KNOW marketing. I KNOW promotion. And not only am I going to sacrifice my good name and come across as an ***hole, I am doing this for the good for everyone else, for Greg, for the NFBC, for YOU, because I really do care.

How dare they call themselves experts when they don't put up 20k like US? Why are they called experts but not us? How can you truly be called an "expert" if you don't put your money where your mouth is? Why are they promoted and yet, we, who put up $20K, are not given more attention!?!?! We need to be promoted. We need to be like poker. We need to be on TV. We need to promote more and bring in more big fish or the NFBC will die. Greg and Tom don't know what they're doing but I DO. We need a television show on the big whales. Trust me, people will LOVE me. I just need to be on TV. I need to be like Phil Hellmuth. I need more attention!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! "

Sincerely,

The Truth
aka COZ

That is a great post!

[Gekko]

The problem is Hellmuth was/is considered a top player and can get away with being an ahole