This post is a collection of strategies and thoughts from my 2026 Dynasty Baseball Team Reports. Some were free and most were on the Patreon. I wanted to collect them in one easy to read post. Also make sure to check out my previous strategy articles if you haven’t read those already, linked to below. Here are my 18 Dynasty Baseball Strategies/Thoughts for 2026 (A Collection from the 2026 Dynasty Baseball Team Reports):

Strategy Articles from Previous Years
11 Dynasty Baseball Rules to Live By from 2019
10 (More) Dynasty Baseball Rules to Live By from 2021
Top 10 Trade Negotiation Techniques (Patreon only)
16 Dynasty Baseball Strategies/Thoughts for 2023
20 Dynasty Baseball Strategies/Thoughts for 2024
19 Dynasty Baseball Strategies/Thoughts for 2025

CLICK HERE TO JOIN MY PATREON FOR TONS OF EXCLUSIVE CONTENT ALL OFF-SEASON, INCLUDING:
-A TOP 200 SNEAK PEEK OF THE 2026 TOP 1,000 DYNASTY BASEBALL RANKINGS (full Top 1,000 coming soon)
-TOP 100 2026 DYNASTY FANTASY BASEBALL PROSEPCTS RANKS (a Top 500 coming soon)
–2026 DEEP POSITIONAL RANKS: Top 80 C–Top 91 1B–Top 97 2B–Top 101 3B–Top 161 SS–Top 288 OF
-TOP 161 2026 FIRST YEAR PLAYER DRAFT RANKS
–2026 FYPD TARGET & STRATEGY GUIDE
–END OF SEASON 2025 TOP 450 DYNASTY RANKS
–END OF SEASON 2025 TOP 325 PROSPECTS RANKS
-HALP’S DYNASTY BASEBALL PODCAST: END OF SEASON MAILBAG!
–SPREADSHEETS

1) Everyone talks about bat speed these days for hitters, but nobody talks about bat speed against for pitchers. So let’s dive in a little bit. The first thing you will notice is that the spread for bat speed against isn’t even close to as wide for pitchers as it is hitters, because obviously a pitcher is only going to have so much control over how fast a guy swings. But there are discrepancies, and like I wrote in the Will Vest blurb, they can give us some signal for sure (“I didn’t rank Vest in last off-season’s Top 1,000 rankings, but he did make the rankings in a different way, writing in the Paul Skenes blurb, “Skenes had the 8th best swing speed against amongst qualified pitchers at 70.9 MPH. The only qualified starter to induce slower swings was Chris Sale, and Will Vest led of all baseball amongst qualified pitchers.” That should have been the indicator for me to put Vest in the damn rankings, but I didn’t listen to the signs.”). Chis Sale once again led all starters with a 70.9 MPH against, and Hunter Greene was 2nd at 71.1 MPH. Skubal was third and Skenes was 4th. I mean, the fact that those 4 guys are top 4 tells me that bat speed against means at least a little bit. The interesting takeaway from that is that Slade Cecconi is 5th. I wasn’t big on Cecconi before diving into this, but now I think I am willing to take a flier or two. On the flip side, I found it interesting that Clayton Kershaw ranked dead last among qualified starters with a 73 MPH bat speed against. That is straight terrible considering most pitchers sit around the MLB bat speed average of 71.7 MPH. And they have been swinging that hard against him since bat speed has been tracked since 2023. So that tells us not to put too much value into bat speed against, especially on this end of it, as there were other good pitchers on the bad end of the leaderboard like Merrill Kelly, Carlos Rodon, Shota Imanaga, Sonny Gray, and Corbin Burnes. So I get why nobody talks about it, because there is limited value in it, but I still think it’s fun and interesting to see how much hitters love to (try) and tee off against Kershaw, unsuccessfully for the most part ha. Either way, while there isn’t a ton of value in it, I do think there is some, and the one name to really takeaway is Slade Cecconi. Let’s see what happens with him in 2026.

2) I’m genuinely curious if there have been advancements with shoulder surgery. I remember when shoulder surgery was a big deal for hitters, and while it’s certainly still a big deal, it used to routinely destroy player’s seasons when the rehab went right up until the start of the season, and sometimes even their careers. Now, it really does seem like they come back even better and stronger than before. They get power bumps! People were scared off of Zach Neto because of the shoulder surgery last off-season, and look how that turned out. Shit, people were turned off by Shohei effing Ohtani because of his off-season shoulder surgery too. Daulton Varsho straight up looked like he returned from surgery with a bionic shoulder. It really is remarkable to me, and while this only applies to hitters at the moment, we’ve actually seen some pitcher shoulder surgery success stories too of late. Brandon Woodruff’s stuff was down, but other than that, he looked and performed absolutely great. And even more recently, Daniel Espino was back out there looking like fire in the AFL coming off two shoulder surgeries. I’m still scared off by pitcher shoulder surgery, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t know, I kinda see something brewing here. I’m all in on the shoulder surgery discounts going into 2026 (Rainer, Conrad, Crisantes), and I even might have some more forgiveness for shoulder surgery pitchers in the future. I don’t know what they are putting in these shoulder surgeries these days, but at the least it’s something to keep our eye on.

3) Jumping off from the Trey Yesavage blurb, he got me interested to dive into how many of the top pitchers in the game don’t have that super elite fastball. The Big 3 (Skubal, Skenes, Crochet) all have elite fastballs. The 2nd Tier (Yamamoto, Gilbert, Brown, Greene, Woo, Ragans, Ohtani) all have elite fastballs too. That says something right there that all of the top 2 tiers in my dynasty rankings have 95+ MPH elite fastballs. Sanchez, Fried, Kirby, Ryan, Peralta and Bradish are the next 6 vets on my dynasty rankings and all had elite to excellent fastballs/sinkers. The old guys, Wheeler, Sale and deGrom have elite fastballs. There are obviously good pitchers out there who don’t have truly elite fastballs, and I don’t think I’m discovering anything new here, but point being, having a truly elite fastball matters a lot. It probably does cap your upside if you don’t have it. I’m not saying this to scare you off Yesavage, because I absolutely love him, and I think his fastball does have the potential to be very good. Even if it stays just mediocre, the rest of the arsenal is good enough to make him a fantasy beast. But when we are splitting hairs amongst the very top pitching prospects in the game, you need to be very critical, and it’s my reasoning (along with better control) for putting Burns #1.

4) Nothing hurts more in dynasty baseball than when you trade away a young player/prospect who turns out to be a star. Earlier this year, I had a subscriber cancel and said the reason was, “I’m done with fantasy baseball. I traded away C. Carroll and I will never forgive myself.” I still live with the pain of trading Juan Soto away in 2017, the year before he shot to the moon. I won the championship that year by 0.5 points, so I needed every point, but that trade still haunts me. I had another subscriber ask me in the comments, shoutout VinnyB, “Yo Halp, been catching up on the podcasts this week. Super cool! Konnor Griffin’s sonic explosion through the prospect stratosphere has blown my mind. I drafted him 1.9 in the FYPD back in Feb while he wasn’t in my main plans. I ended up moving him for picks that netted Seaver King & Yorger Bautista along with one of my top gets Ryan Sloan. I’m not losing sleep over it but that second guess phenomenon won’t leave the back of mind anytime soon. Any sane comments(lol)?” And here was my response to him, and it’s the best I got on how to handle the pain, “Wish I had some great sage advice, ha, but really, every “bad” decision I’ve made in dynasty sticks with me. It just does. You just have to realize it is part of the game, and it’s going to happen and it’s going to keep happening. I also try to then focus on the good decisions I’ve made, which of course the bad ones stick more than the good ones. And also focus on next year’s draft, and trying to find that gem again. And I guess the biggest advice, is to remember we all do this because it’s an awesome hobby, and by not being able to get trading Griffin away out of your mind, you aren’t dwelling on the any number of other horrible things you can be thinking about that actually matter a lot more in life ha”

5) Way, way back in October of 2024, I went where no man had gone before, deep into the bat speed leaderboards to see if we could glean any sleepers from them, and it was immediately obvious that there was a treasure trove of value to be pulled from there. Seriously, bat speed was not really being talked about or used that much (or nearly at all if my memory serves me right) as it was relatively new to Statcast. As the off-season went along, people jumped on the bat speed bandwagon, and at this point it is very obvious that bat speed is a tremendously valuable tool to use in your player evaluation. I had a ton of target hits using bat speed like Tyler Soderstrom, Jo Adell, Junior Caminero (less a target and more just staying super high on him), Spencer Torkelson, and Addison Barger. Hunter Goodman I didn’t call a target because I was worried about his glove, but I did name him as a bat speed standout and worth going after for that alone. There were misses too like Oneil Cruz, Garrett Mitchell and Jordan Walker, but I’m less interested in focusing on the guys with huge bat speed this off-season, and more interested in how many guys were able to improve their bat speed year to year. I closed out my thoughts on bat speed last year by writing, “Guys who “swing for the fences” are going to swing faster, hit for more power, and strikeout more. Guys who swing slower are going to make more contact, but not hit for as much power. So I don’t think bat speed is necessarily a completely sticky thing if a player decides to change his approach to hit for more power or contact. We’ll have to keep an eye on this in future years as we continue to build on this data to see how often that happens exactly, and how often it’s successful. Really cool to have this data at our fingertips now.”

And as we saw with PCA, bat speed can definitely be improved very quickly, and it can result in the power explosion we want. Meaning, we shouldn’t just automatically cap a player’s power upside if they come up and don’t immediately swing a fast bat. PCA improved his bat speed by 2.1 MPH and went from 10 homers to 31 homers. Brice Turang was the #1 bat speed riser in baseball, raising it 4.5 MPH, and he went from 7 homers to 18 homers. Anthony Volpe was the 2nd biggest riser at 3.3 MPH, and while he didn’t have a great year, he did go from 12 homers to 19 homers (and now he’s getting the supercharged shoulder ;). Sal Frelick raised it 1.9 MPH, going from 2 homers to 12 homers. Geraldo Perdomo raised it 1.4 MPH, going from a career high of 6 homer to 20 homers. Maikel Garcia raised it 1.1 MPH, going from 7 homers to 16 homers. There are more power breakouts up and down the bat speed risers list. While you can’t solely contribute bat speed to all of the power breakouts, it is clearly a major reason. And the takeaway for me here is what I suspected last off-season, which is that guys can improve their bat speed considerably year to year. It’s why I’m not panicked over Matt Shaw’s below average 69.6 MPH swing (I’m more panicked about his playing time now). My bet is that rises in 2025, just like it did with PCA this year. So while bat speed is certainly a major tool to use, I would caution about putting too much emphasis on it, especially for younger players who are still getting comfortable vs. MLB pitching. It is not a power death sentence to swing a slower bat, as the skill can very obviously be improved, and be improved in a major way year to year.

6) Am I the only one who finds interviews with prospects (and really athletes in general) mostly boing and devoid of any value for dynasty? I’ve had opportunities to interview prospects, and I’ve passed them up. Back when I was co-hosting the Razzball Prospect Podcast with the artist formerly known as Ralph Lifshitz, I remember that Cody Ponce floated out there that he would be interested to come on the show when he was a prospect with the Brewers, and I just wasn’t interested in it really. I could have definitely asked Harrison Bader for an interview when I was emailing with his former coach and mom, because they were so excited that someone was hyping him up. Bader was my OG pro debut breakout with 11 homers in 61 games in his debut. That was back when the draft was earlier in the year and allowed for even bigger samples. And the prospect/dynasty world wasn’t what it was today, so I was just about the only one writing about him and giving him love. But again, I just wasn’t interested in even asking. Most of the athlete interviews I see, especially with young prospects, are kinda awkward and stiff and not much is said. But I get it, because I also wouldn’t want to ask like “got ya” questions that could get them in trouble with the organization, or questions that could make them uncomfortable. I grew up watching the Howard Stern show on E!, so I feel like I wouldn’t even be able to trust myself to not try to ask some weird shit just to get a reaction ha. But that is why I respect it when you can get an interesting interview out of these guys without doing that like with the Baseball America Chase Dollander interview where he claimed the Rockies never even brought up any strategy around pitching at Coors Field when he was in the minors. I’ve seen other interesting ones too where they stuck to baseball and was able to glean some value from it, like one with Cade Povich where he showed very little interest in trying to gain velocity out of fear of injury. Baseball America does a great job with them and so do other places. I’ve seen Eno get some good stuff from Jackson Holliday and Rafael Devers. It’s not an avenue I’m looking to go down from a content creation standpoint, but I’m genuinely curious on people’s thoughts on them. Do most people love the athlete interviews, or are you mostly like me and find them on the boring side (for the most part)?

7) I talked shit about athlete interviews in a previous Dynasty Team Report, so let me give props where it is due to both Grayson Rodriguez and Foul Territory on an awesome post trade interview. That is a highly recommended watch. Grayson came out for blood, threatening to bean former Orioles teammates who didn’t get in contact with him after the trade (he pointed out Gunnar was the first to reach out), and also licking his chops at killing any white-tailed deer that might be frolicking in the Anaheim area. Imagine you’re a deer. You’re prancing along, you get thirsty, you spot a little brook, you put your little deer lips down to the cool clear water… BAM! A fuckin bullet rips off part of your head! Your brains are laying on the ground in little bloody pieces! Now I ask ya. Would you give a fuck how many lat strains and bone spurs the son of a bitch who shot you was suffering through? … but seriously, Grayson also said there isn’t some big secret injury here that scared Baltimore away. He was just constantly, minorly straining his lat, and he’s been dealing with these bone spurs for several years. The hope is that the bone spur surgery will help with the lat. There is obviously injury risk, and I guess after watching that interview the “makeup” whispers kinda make sense, hah, but hard to say from just one interview. And even assholes can be good at baseball. I’m still liking the injury discount.

8) There is a major gap between how badly fantasy managers think Great American Ball Park tanks pitchers, and how much Great American Ball Park actually tanks pitchers. It’s really not that bad guys. It is only the 4th worst ballpark in baseball with a 103 Park Factor (3 year rolling average), meaning it’s not all that much worse than average (100 Park Factor). Coors has a 113 Park Factor for reference. For just 2025, it was actually a below average hitter’s park at 18th overall! I’m telling you, it’s really not that bad. Sure it juices up homers, but that is much more a positive for hitters than it is a negative for pitchers if the rest of the park factors mitigate that HR advantage, which is the case in Cincy. People were scared off of Greene when I was yelling buy. People were scared off of Lodolo when I was yelling buy. People were dropping Burns in FYPD Ranks because of it when I ignored it. Shit, just look at the season Andrew Abbott just had. He doesn’t even have nasty stuff and he still managed a 2.87 ERA in 166.1 IP, I’m not saying that wasn’t good luck or that is sustainable, I’m just saying you can even get random great years like that. Please do not be scared of this ballpark. It is not worthy of that level of fear, and I still see fantasy managers treat it like some horrific ballpark. I’ve been sweeping up on value because of that fear, and I plan to do the same in 2026.

9) It’s time to change the prospect eligibility rules for pitchers. 50 IP doesn’t make sense anymore. Maybe it made sense when starters went deep into games and routinely threw over 200 IP, but those days are long over. If a guy goes 150 IP these days, that is basically considered a full workload. Maybe not for the best starters in the game, but for most starters. Even comparing the threshold to hitters, 130 at bats, pitchers need to go for a much larger percentage of their season than hitters to lose prospect eligibility. If we use 600 AB as the marker for a full season of at bats for a hitter, 130 at bats would be 21.7% of their season. Even if we push the full season threshold up to 180 IP for pitchers, 50 IP is 27.8% of that season. If we lowered it to the hitter threshold of 21.7%, that would come out to 39 IP. I submit that 40 IP should be the new cut off for pitchers. Chase Burns shouldn’t be prospect eligible anymore with 43.1 IP. Nolan McLean shouldn’t be prospect eligible anymore at 48 IP. Do these guys really still feel like prospects to you? I know that service time comes into play too in real life, but most of my leagues go by the 130 AB and 50 IP limit. Also, not to get off topic, but we shouldn’t we use Plate Attempts and not At Bats for hitters. A walk doesn’t count as an AB. What is with punishing players that walk a lot? MLB can barely get out of their own way, so tweaking rookie eligibility rules is so far down their list it’s not even funny, but I really think it’s time for a change. Not an overhaul, just a small one.

10) Betting on Tommy John/internal brace returnees is a total roll of the dice. We have no idea which ones are going to come back fully healthy and which ones aren’t, but one thing I noticed in 2025, is that you can tell which ones are fully back extremely quickly. Conventional wisdom would say we should give guys time to shake the rust off, but that wasn’t the case at all in 2025. The guys who came back and looked great from literally their first rehab outing, were the guys who kept on looking great. And the ones who looked rusty out of the gate, more or less remained rusty all season. I still buy into the conventional wisdom somewhat, but I think it’s worth mentioning that in practice it didn’t work that way at all. And it’s a lesson I’m taking with me for 2026. Basically buy hard on a guy who dominates in their first rehab outing, and at the very least don’t buy on a guy who doesn’t look back to 100%.

11) I was given in the option at the 2024 trade deadline in my 18 teamer to take a mid round FYPD pick, or instead, to take on Trevor Rogers with his remaining 1 year, $4 contract as a flier in a larger deal. I know the other owner was trying to clear that roster spot, which is valuable in our league, and also to clear that $4, which has value too, but I still said why not, I’ll take the shot on Rogers over the pick. I thought at best I would get some extra innings which always comes in handy in that 18 teamer, but never in a million years did I expect what ended up happening. And then I was able to flip Rogers’ expiring contract at the deadline to a team going for the championship for 6 years of Ben Rice (other pieces were involved in the deal on both sides too, but I don’t want to get too in the weeds on it). Even though I thought Rogers would end up a negative asset, I just didn’t need another mid round FYPD pick. You don’t need nine thousand decent prospects on your team to have a good dynasty team. The off chance that a bottom of the roster MLB guy, with just a smidgen of hope, would be able to contribute for my team in 2025 was enough for me to take the shot. I was torn on which one to take at the time, and I want to remember the lesson that even a long shot MLB player can be more valuable than another prospect. When looking at tack-ons for larger trades, don’t always opt for the prospect. Sometimes take the “junk” sitting on the bottom of their MLB roster. It just might pay immediate dividends.

12) I get the foreboding sense that 2025’s low velo, plus changeup lefty revolution is going to backfire in 2026 if the pendulum swings too far in the other direction. K to BB is King is for a reason, and that reason is that it is a much more reliable indicator of a pitcher’s true ability for things he can control. For one, what if the baseball’s aren’t as dead as they were in 2025? Baseball even acknowledged that the balls were not carrying as much this year, and that it was not by choice. Back in 2023/24 I wrote in the Strategy/Thought of the Day Section, “MLB changes the baseball every damn year, and I’m not even 100% sure they are truly in complete control of every change, as my understanding is that they manufacture new balls for every season.” Back then, everyone thought MLB was messing with the balls on purpose, and like I wrote, I wasn’t so sure that was the case. I had a sneaking suspicion that they were as clueless as we were as to how the balls would actually play, and that is now basically proven correct. So if the balls start carrying more, are guys like Cameron going to see as much success? Or if BABIP luck doesn’t go their way as much, will they have as much success?

13) The Andrew Vaughn Story is like a scared straight after school special for dynasty owners who think it’s okay to dabble in bad organizations. I don’t do it all the time! Every once in a while! I can stop whenever I want! We all know bad organizations are a prospect graveyard for raw, toolsy teenagers, but Vaughn shows us even nearly MLB ready college bats are not immune. A good organization like the Brewers on the other hand can work miracles. Low velo? No problem, we’ll still turn Logan Henderson into a beast. Horrific control? No problem, we’ll still turn Miz into an ace. Lower velo Woodruff? No problem, he’s still an ace. They just took Brice Turang and pulled off the single greatest raw power uptick we’ve basically ever seen in the Statcast era. They got a super team friendly deal on an elite prospect (Chourio), correctly promoted him at 20 years old when he was ready to contribute, and then stuck with him when he got off to a bad 1st half in his rookie year. How many other organizations would have panicked and demoted him and messed with his development? DSL breakouts. Trade cast offs like Vaughn and Priester breakouts. Proximity play breakouts like Durbin. Short righty pitcher breakouts like Freddy Peralta. An assembly line of elite bullpen arms. It’s wild how good they are at literally everything. Milwaukee is simply one of the best organizations in baseball across the board, and their players/prospects 100% deserve a bump just for being in the organization. It’s what gives me the confidence to call Logan Henderson one of my biggest targets this off-season. And it’s what gives me confidence to stick with Braylon Payne through the ups and downs. Bet on Milwaukee.

14) The beauty of dynasty leagues especially, is that you don’t have to panic if a player you believe in doesn’t have a perfectly clear path to a full time job to start the season. People have short memories, so maybe you don’t remember how Ben Rice’s lack of clear path was absolutely killing his value last off-season, but it was real. I named him a major target despite that and had faith it would work itself out one way or another. The same thing happened with Spencer Torkelson, and Torkelson was also a major off-season target for me and big hit. Taking advantage of that playing time uncertainty created monster value to be had on both of them, with both of them going for soooooo cheap. Even a little uncertainty of a players full time job status will scare so many fantasy/dynasty managers away, and it’s an area to 100% take advantage of when it happens. I get in redraft leagues being a bit scared, but in dynasty, you have the long term view to fully stay the course if you believe in the bat. And Rice and Torkelson both had very clear reasons to believe in their bats. For 2026, Matt Shaw and Jasson Dominguez now fit this bill. Don’t panic.

15) There has always been a certain hive mind/consensus/flaw/I don’t know what exactly when it comes to ranking pitching prospects on Top 100 lists. I always love seeing this get exposed a bit when the smart redraft guys get their eyes on these super talented, non Top 100 pitching prospects for the first time in spring, or in their MLB debuts. Getting those fresh eyes on pitching prospects who have been evaluated by the same people for years always reveals something about the prospect world to me. I love it when the redraft guys are like, “whoa, who the hell is this guy and why wasn’t he getting more hype.” I’m not even trying to come at anyone in the prospect world, because it really could just be a function of how volatile pitching prospects are. One tweak, or one new pitch, or one level of better control/command can take a guy from a middling prospect to an elite one in the blink of an eye. We see it all the time with veteran pitchers in the majors, so imagine the volatility of 19/20/21 year olds. Good luck predicting which ones will stay healthy and find that right tweak to unlock all of the upside. It’s not an easy task. But I also find when it does happen, sometimes list makers don’t make the big jump in the rankings quick enough. They lean toward being more conservative than aggressive with the rankings, which I understand. But that has consistently created great buying opportunities on underrated pitching prospects, and I’ve been preaching to shop in that aisle since I started ranking. Take advantage of it as a dynasty owner. Prospect lists are far from perfect to begin with, and they are even less perfect when it comes to pitchers. You don’t need to pay up for the already tippy top pitching prospects to find gems.

16) It’s so easy as fantasy baseball analysts and players to overrate the 2nd half of the season vs. the 1st half of the season. It makes sense, because the argument would be a player made a real change, either good or bad, and that change is going to carry over into the next season, but it’s not always so simple. Just looking at 2024, Maikel Garcia had the worst wRC+ in baseball in the 2nd half amongst qualified hitters with a 51 wRC+, and he broke out in 2025. Andrew Vaughn was 2nd worst at 60, and he’s now getting love and hype as a possible 2026 breakout. Brice Turang was 9th worst with a 71 wRC+, and he was another huge breakout this year. All of them had much better 1st halves before dropping off, but that didn’t stop them from having big seasons the next year. Sometimes injuries and getting banged up in general can cause a 2nd half decline. We aren’t always aware of what a player is battling through, and when they get a full off-season to heal, they look much better. We are all well aware of the of the slow starters like Julio Rodriguez, where just because they have huge 2nd halves, doesn’t mean they are going to carry that over fully at the start of next season. Some guys take awhile to get into a groove. It’s why in most cases, it’s smarter to use as big of a sample as possible, and that big sample is the entire season, not just one half, where small sample shenanigans can often lead you astray. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to parse out why one half was much better than the other. And we should always be on the lookout for skills changes, especially for young players, in both a positive and negative direction, but I think we need to keep in mind the bias we have for overrating 2nd halves when history says we shouldn’t put as much emphasis on it as we do. The bigger, full season sample should be given greater deference.

17) I would have put my thoughts on the recent off-season moves here, but I made that a separate post yesterday, and I don’t really have a great dynasty thought/strategy in mind right now. I don’t want to force it so I’m not going to hav … actually, you know what, that did spark a legit dynasty baseball thought/strategy, which is to not force it. So many of my worst decisions came from forcing a trade that I didn’t really want to do because of a lack of patience. Maybe a better deal would come along later. Or maybe it’s just not set up to make that move right now. Don’t force a bad trade just to fill a hole if your gut is screaming at you that the trade is bad. Filling a team need with a bad option at a cost is much worse than just keeping the need open and staying flexible for the right opportunity. Trust that the right move will come along, just as this immaculate dynasty baseball thought/strategy came along for me at the last second 😉 (please know this is mostly tongue in cheek ha) … but also seriously, don’t force shit, both in life and fantasy, it never ends up worth it. Dynasty Buddha signing out 😉

18) The 2026 season is my 10 year anniversary season of me starting Imaginary Brick Wall. December 16th, 2015 was day where I said eff it, I’m finally starting that blog I’ve been thinking about starting for awhile. I named it Imaginary Brick Wall and posted my first article, “Why the Name?” I wrote, “it represents striving to reach your goals despite the seemingly impossible hurdles in your way. I hoped it would inspire both myself and others when they read the name, even if just a little.” … and now 10 years later, I really can’t even wrap my head around not only how far I’ve come, but how far the dynasty baseball community has come. It has so far surpassed any expectation I had 10 years ago. When I wrote “I hoped to inspire both myself and others,” I thought I was going to maybe inspire people to be a musician, or artist or something … not to be dynasty baseball writers hah. There wasn’t even a real job of “dynasty baseball writer.” You would have been crazy to even think it was possible, but damn, here we are today with not only myself, but many other writers doing this full time or making legit part time money or just writing for the love of the game (which I did for the first 5 years of writing, and still do). I’m not saying I was the first guy to write about dynasty baseball or that I’m even close to solely responsible for the boom, but I like to think that I played a role in it, and I’m equally as proud in seeing that boom as I am for my own success. And of course, it’s the people who play the game and have such a strong passion, curiosity and sense of community that was the real engine for what it is today. I seriously can’t put into words how thankful I am for each and every one of you, and I hope in turn that my passion for the game comes across in my writing and continues to spread the good word of dynasty baseball. What an insanely little awesome corner of the internet we’ve all built here. Genuinely, thank you. It’s nuts.

Strategy Articles from Previous Years
11 Dynasty Baseball Rules to Live By from 2019
10 (More) Dynasty Baseball Rules to Live By from 2021
Top 10 Trade Negotiation Techniques (Patreon only)
16 Dynasty Baseball Strategies/Thoughts for 2023
20 Dynasty Baseball Strategies/Thoughts for 2024
19 Dynasty Baseball Strategies/Thoughts for 2025

CLICK HERE TO JOIN MY PATREON FOR TONS OF EXCLUSIVE CONTENT ALL OFF-SEASON, INCLUDING:
-A TOP 200 SNEAK PEEK OF THE 2026 TOP 1,000 DYNASTY BASEBALL RANKINGS (full Top 1,000 coming soon)
-TOP 100 2026 DYNASTY FANTASY BASEBALL PROSEPCTS RANKS (a Top 500 coming soon)
–2026 DEEP POSITIONAL RANKS: Top 80 C–Top 91 1B–Top 97 2B–Top 101 3B–Top 161 SS–Top 288 OF
-TOP 161 2026 FIRST YEAR PLAYER DRAFT RANKS
–2026 FYPD TARGET & STRATEGY GUIDE
–END OF SEASON 2025 TOP 450 DYNASTY RANKS
–END OF SEASON 2025 TOP 325 PROSPECTS RANKS
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By Michael Halpern (@MichaelCHalpern)
Email: michaelhalpern@imaginarybrickwall.com
Twitter: Imaginary Brick Wall (@DynastyHalp)
Blue Sky: Dynasty Halp (@ImaginaryBrickWall)