Fantasy Baseball 2023: NFBC Main Event History

It’s almost here. Fantasy baseball draft month for almost everyone is March, and for me, that means it’s NFBC Main Event Time. 

The NFBC Main Event is the premiere high-stakes fantasy baseball event in the industry and will boast a record $200,000 grand prize in 2023. Each league consists of 15 fantasy entries and the top three finishers in each league are cashing positions – with $7,000 to the league champ. So – let’s say you’re interested in entering. Who will compete with you in your quest for Main Event glory? Why, you’ll be going up against top fantasy players. Who you ask? TOP MEN.

The Main Event can be entered via live drafts in Las Vegas and New York, along with online drafts in the two-week window of March 17-30. Last year there were 47 leagues so at 15 teams apiece that meant that 705 separate entries vied for the crown of Main Event Champion.

As a 5×5 rotisserie league, you’ll likely need to do well in all 10 categories to win your league title. But there is also the overall component to consider. This year the top 30 overall finishers will earn money in addition to any league winnings – and those overall places are determined by each fantasy team’s placement in all ten categories on an overall basis. For example: Last year there were 705 teams, and overall champ Robert Cramutola (aka Big Bucks Bob) had the 10^th-best overall WHIP of 1.065. That earned him 696 points in that category. Every team is ranked in all ten categories as if it is a 705-team rotisserie league, and the top point totals score on the overall leader board. Big Bucks Bob totaled 6,238 points out of a maximum of 7,050 – or 88.5% of maximum. Outstanding work. 

For those unfamiliar with the NFBC or the Main Event, here are some tips:

• You don’t know which fantasy managers will be in your league until it is set up a few days beforehand;
• As in all NFBC Baseball Leagues – you set your KDS (Kentucky Derby Style) draft preferences and find out a few days before your starting draft slot. This allows managers to rank their draft slot of preference, ranking their preferences 1 through 15 before the leagues are randomly selected;
• As in all NFBC FAAB Leagues, you get $1,000 of FAAB to use over the course of the season. There are no $0 bids, so you have to conserve your resources to some extent if you want to add free agents in September; 
• FAAB bidding occurs once per week (Sunday nights) at 10 p.m. ET. You must have all bids entered and saved by then for the system to consider them. Special care must be taken to have a full roster because you will not be able to add another player until the following Sunday;
• Lineup sets are twice per week for hitters – Monday and Friday – and once per week for pitchers. This can be difficult if you have a player (particularly a pitcher) who is uncertain to pitch in the coming week because of a nagging injury or some other difficulty.

That’s what makes it fun.

Here are the all-time Main Event league winners – Mark Srebro leads with 12 titles, having won in all five time periods shown. Next with 11 titles is Stephen Jupinka, who has also been steadily winning across the history of the event. Next comes KC Cha with nine titles, and then the famed duo of Brian Slack and Nickolaus Sackett, with eight. These fellows didn’t start winning until the 2012-15 period but even so are up at the top in overall victories. Speaking of recent phenomena, Philippe Dussault already has seven titles to his credit, with six in the last three years. He’s now tied with Clark Olson, Scott Jenstad and Eric Heberlig at seven overall and of course had a season for the ages in 2021 when he won the Main Event overall plus every other league you could imagine.

Truth be told, all those on the list below are outstanding fantasy managers – that’s why competing in the Main Event is so difficult. You might find two or three of those below in your league in March (yikes!), but heck, if you wanted to just dominate a group of players who aren’t paying attention, you wouldn’t have entered the NFBC Main Event. There are 30 managers (or manager combinations) shown below with four or more titles over the 20 years this event has been running. These are the top Main Event players as they’ve proven their mettle over the years. 

Focusing on last season, I list below those who won a 2022 Main Event League – including the four fantasy managers who took down two Main Events last season (noted with an asterisk): Steven Weimer, Scott Jenstad, Scott Fleming and (of course) Mark Srebro. The other 39 leagues were won by a wide variety of fantasy entrants. There were relative newcomers (such as Ben Tidd); veterans who continue to put up numbers (Stephen Jupinka, Shawn Childs, Clark Olson, Abdulaziz Madani, Chris Fessler, Rob Silver, Eric Heberlig); and strong partnerships (Mirshak/Kahn; Bone/Thistlewood, B.Macey/T.Macey; Atkins/Erickson; Slack/Sackett, McDonough/Sabatino/Abbott, Winokur/Mager, Ferrari/Childs).

So here is the dream when we all enter the Main Event – can we end up on the top overall leaderboard? Here are the top 20 from 2022 who earned worldwide fame and admiration. And just so you don’t feel like it is too difficult to achieve this, remember that the top 30 will get overall Main Event winnings this coming season. Who will crack the top of this list in 2023? I can’t wait to find out.