2023 Champions Profile - Lucas Biery

[Tom Kessenich]

Lucas Biery has known the feeling of coming close to tasting the sweet nectar of success of a high-stakes championship only to see his dreams of a title come tumbling down before it all came to fruition.

In 2022, he chased glory in the NFBKC Draft Champions contest for much of the season only to see an injury to LeBron James late in the year cost him a shot at the overall title. So, he knew in 2023 that when his team in the NFBC’s Online Auction Championship was contending for that particular title late in the season that no matter how good his team was it was never over until it actually really ended.

“I thought (winning the championship) was a realistic possibility in September,” he admitted. “But after what happened the previous year in the NFBKC I didn’t want to count my chickens before they were hatched.”

Wise approach.

As it turned out, though, Biery’s team was just that good. He topped a record field of 840 teams to win the record $10,000 grand prize.

“It’s surreal,” he said. “I am trying to envision what I did, take note and hopefully try to recapture similar strategies moving forward.”

What Biery did was extremely impressive to say the least. He dominated his league by winning with 131.5 points (87.33%). He then won the overall title with 7,381.5 points, earning 90.96 percent of all available points. He finished 122 points ahead of Ante Meich in the overall competition.

Despite having such a dominant team the closing weeks of the season were hardly stress free with so much on the line.

“It's nerve-wracking because this may never happen again,” he said. “I didn't want to blow it.

“My team had some good days and some bad days, but I couldn't drop down that fast, so I was cheering for my opponent to not rise up since not all of his hitters were not full-time anymore and his arms weren't throwing full starts down the stretch.”

Biery’s championship roster was built around a few key pieces in particular. Among them were:

Gerrit Cole $35
Freddy Peralta $9
Nathan Eovaldi $5

“Grabbing both Freddy Peralta and Nathan Eovaldi in both of my OLACs helped push me forward,” he said.

But he pointed to one offensive player who was especially important.

“Buying Corbin Carroll for $24 was paramount,” Biery said. “Without him this wouldn’t have happened.”

Toss in some outstanding FAAB moves and the end result was one magical season.

“I didn't enter this contest with an overall (title) in my mind,” he said. “I am a realistic person, and I often draft veterans with higher floors and want to create a high-floor team, so I wasn't swinging for the overall.

“I just had a pretty good auction, hit on a lot of FAAB adds, and managed the team well. I also had a lot of luck. Any team with Carroll, (Tarik) Skubal, and (Cole) Ragans got lucky to an extent - however I put myself in a position to get lucky.

“There is a misnomer that to win an overall you need risky upside guys like (Byron) Buxton, (Giancarlo) Stanton and Chris Sale etc, but you need to just have a well-balanced team that checks off all the boxes as well as possible, even if it is with boring veterans.”