2024 NFBC Champions Profile - Mike Mager

[Tom Kessenich]

Respect is hard fought and earned. In the NFBC it’s hard to come by. Mike Mager has won the respect of his peers in large fashion.

Considered by many one of the pre-eminent players in the industry, Mike isn’t known for braggadocio or flights of fancy. He has earned the respect of the best players in fantasy baseball the simplest way possible – by winning.

And in 2024 he went out and won big in one of the NFBC’s most prestigious contests – the Auction Championship.

Competing in one of our most difficult leagues a year ago – the Las Vegas $2,500 Auction – Mike took down the field there en route to one of the most impressive accomplishments we saw in the entire 2024 NFBC season as he won the $30,000 grand prize in the Auction Championship.

It was a championship he won nearly from start to finish, taking hold of the lead in April and never relinquishing the top spot until the season had come to an end, finishing 147 points ahead of Mark Northan’s second-place team.

“It felt awesome (to win the title) and extremely gratifying,” Mager said. “I previously had a number of close calls in overall contests. I had finished second, third and eighth overall in the Main Event and second and fourth in the Draft Champions contest, and second, fourth and sixth overall in the Auction Championship but had never won an overall title and really wanted to win one quite badly.”

This time there would be no close but not close enough. It was going to be an easy road to the title. In fact, he also finished fifth overall in the contest as well.

His winning total of 1,515.5 points was 91.8 percent of available points in this 165-team field. That's the highest percentage of points in the 14-year history of this Auction Championship. He finished with 139 points to win his league title, also one of the highest winning point totals in this format.

His championship team was led by Shohei Ohtani, who he got for $35, along with William Contreras ($16), Bryan Reynolds ($17), Emmanuel Clase ($19) and Sean Manaea ($2). Getting Brice Turang in the reserve round didn't hurt, either.

“I was fortunate to come out of the auction with a pretty good team, had a few big picks in the reserve rounds, and then had some very helpful FAAB pickups that helped my team when injuries started to accumulate,” he said. “While I had some injuries, my team luckily enjoyed better health than many other teams.

“Most of the final month was pretty stressful in that I had been leading the overall contest since April and the mere possibility of losing the overall lead in September, after my prior close calls in overall contests, would have been personally devastating. Mark Northan had a great team and Brian Jenner had two great teams that were frequently challenging me for the overall lead.

“Fortunately, the last week wasn’t too bad as I managed to build a lead that seemed relatively safe during the final days of the season.”

Not surprisingly, it was early in the season when Mager began to get a sense his team might be on the verge of something truly special.

“At some point during the summer, after leading the overall contest for a few months, I started to think I had a real chance to win the title,” he said. “Based on past experience, I did not get too excited in April and May, and even June, about leading the overall contest as I know how much can change over the course of a very long season.”

As an auction veteran who has had tremendous success in the format, Mager went into the league with a specific plan in place. But as is so often the case in auctions, especially a competitive one like the Vegas $2,500 league, he quickly realized he had to quickly adjust on the fly.

“My original plan was to auction two aces and one higher-priced (and hopefully safe) closer,” he said. “In my particular auction – a very competitive $2,500 league filled with great players – the top starting pitchers were going for multiple dollars more than AAV and I missed out on at least my top 15 SPs.

“At some point, I shifted gears, decided to lock down one strong SP, go for depth with my other SPs, and reallocate funds to roster two strong closers. Framber Valdez was my one strong SP, and I did not spend more than $11 on any other SP. Some of the money that I was prevented from spending on a second high-ranked SP was reallocated to a second strong closer, and I auctioned Emmanuel Clase and Ryan Helsley.

“This draft day shift in strategy worked better than I ever could have hoped, as Clase and Helsley gave me a large number of saves and great ratios, which meant I was never under pressure to FAAB a closer for additional saves. A second draft day strategy that worked was auctioning Shohei Ohtani at the height of the gambling controversy involving his interpreter. This decision was nerve wracking at the time but obviously paid off very handsomely. William Contreras, a target of mine in multiple high-stakes leagues, also wound-up being worth every dollar spent on him. While many of my reserve round picks were flops, I hit home runs with Brice Turang and Jared Jones.”

Having taken home his first national title, Mager’s wisely used much of his prize money on expenses tied to his family’s move from New York to North Carolina as well as covering his funds for the 2025 NFBC entries, including the biggest NFBC high stakes contest of them all.

“I also applied some of my prize to cover the entry fee for this year’s Platinum league,” he said.

Let that be a warning to the other 14 players in this year’s Platinum – Mike Mager is coming. Quietly.

[Baseball Furies]

And not a mention of him taking down the most prestigious contest in the NFBC, the MTM Ultimate and the $40,000 first prize. The disrespect is staggering!

[Greg Ambrosius]

And not a mention of him taking down the most prestigious contest in the NFBC, the MTM Ultimate and the $40,000 first prize. The disrespect is staggering!

You must have missed this very good and thorough story on Mike Mager's dominant win in the New York Ultimate League:

https://nfbcforums.shgn.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=23769

[Baseball Furies]

Yes, I did see this (it's a $5000 entrance fee by the way, not 10 ) but it's always good to mention THE premiere draft event in all the NFBC as often as possible especially when summarizing an epic year like Mike had.

[Tom Kessenich]

Mike will be joining me and Jeff Erickson on our Sirius show Wednesday night. This will mark our return to Sirius after a year's hiatus and we're very happy to have Mike be our FIRST NFBC guest to join us on the show. The show returns in its usual 10 pm ET to Midnight time slow and Mike will be on at 10:15 pm ET. Be sure to tune in on Sirius Channel 87.