Zach Waxman is an online friend of mine, I think. He seems like the kind of guy I’d hang out with in real life. But I guess I don’t know that for sure. But I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.
If nothing else, he has an interesting story to tell after he took first place out of 1,905 teams in last year’s NFBC Gladiator.
The Gladiator is a draft-and-hold league with no benches. You draft 23 players (from right now through early-January when the contest fills) and then you’re done. From there, a 5x5 standard roto league runs and winners are determined based on the performance of their 23 players.
It’s a wild way to play fantasy baseball, for sure. And drafting in November sounds loony tunes to most people (myself included until I started doing it a couple of years ago). But it’s a relatively cheap way to play and it gets you through these tough cold-weather months with no baseball.
Zach actually gave us a fair bit of strategy in the pod. I didn’t expect him to divulge as much as he did, and I learned a few key things as I set on my own quest this year to have some success in the context (I cashed in one of four last year and did not come anywhere near the overall cash).
Here’s that $10K team he drafted.
Fernando Tatis Jr.
Tarik Skubal
Chris Sale
Jacob deGrom
Andres Munoz
Jhoan Duran
Willson Contreras
Junior Caminero
Pete Crow-Armstrong
Royce Lewis
J.T. Realmuto
Jeremy Pena
Tyler O’Neill
Nico Hoerner
Paul Goldschmidt
Trevor Story
Nick Lodolo
Jesus Sanchez
Jo Adell
Kumar Rocker
Christopher Morel
Jeff Hoffman
Kris Bubic
I bolded the guys I thought were the clear difference-makers.
I’ll be drafting at least a handful of these in the next couple of months. If you want to join me, the lobby is here.
I also extracted last year’s contest data for you, and I give the average, 75th-percentile, and 90th-percentile values from 2025.
