A couple weeks ago, I covered the ever-fascinating topic of rebuilding. The crux of my rebuild strategy is to target valuable major league talent rather than a boatload of prospects. Your season will be more fun, and you can trade your talent for the best building blocks during the season. Now it’s time to look at the opposite perspective of the rebuild – going for broke.

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Jose Fernandez was having a dominating 2014 season until he needed Tommy John surgery last May. The 22-year-old righty could be one of the more dominant arms in the game when he returns. Fantasy owners would love to have him available mid-season as a boost their team.  While he is on the disabled list (DL), some other pitcher must be filling in for him. Fernandez’s projection should include this replacement pitcher’s production. Here is a break down of how I put on value on players who will miss significant time.

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The Phillies “rebuild” (or lack thereof) is a common source of scorn around these parts, but there’s a method to their madness. Interim team president Pat Gillick spoke with reporters on Monday about the club’s plans, and his comments resonated with me. The Phillies are in the same position as I was in ottoneu last offseason – few real assets with a need to get younger and cheaper. And so, today’s topic is about being methodical.

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Two things make it hard for me to justify spending precious auction dollars on starting pitching. I touched on this topic in my conclusion to yesterday’s Madison Bumgarner post, so let’s just pick up where I left off.

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Any keeper league that allows offseason trading will have its share of rebuilding teams. The guy who drafted Chris Davis, Joey Votto, and Cliff Lee will need time to recover from those dreadful picks. If the standard of excellence is high enough in your league, a perfectly adequate roster might still qualify for a touch of rebuilding.

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During the season, my Daily Grind column relied heavily upon what I called the Factor Grid. It’s a simple spreadsheet with a few of the most important park factors. With those in mind, fantasy owners and daily fantasy players can wisely select the hitters in the best offensive venues and vice versa. It’s a simple but effective strategy.

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We’ll talk about two separate tactical topics today, because neither is really sufficient to carry a post by itself.
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We often talk about fantasy strategy here. I often talk about strategy. When we do so, we lump tactics and strategy together in a way that obscures the relationship between two similar concepts. Tactics and strategy must be executed hand-in-hand to find success, and it can be helpful to recognize when you’re employing a tactic and a strategy. It’s not a mind-blowing topic, but the offseason is a great time to make subtle adjustments to how you think about fantasy sports. I’ve identified this as a potentially valuable adjustment for myself, and I’m sharing it with you.

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I’m here to introduce or perhaps reinforce an idea today. People always, always, ALWAYS oversimplify things. Why didn’t such-and-such team win? It’s because so-and-so made a bad pitch. We readily gobble up that answer even though it’s probably one of a thousand ways to explain why a team lost a contest. Fantasy baseball has its share of oversimplification too.

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You probably know the drill by now, but if you play in Yahoo leagues, there’s a Hail Mary option at the end of the season to chase wins, strikeouts, or if you’re in a miserable league like I am, points. You can whittle your innings down to precious few, even one third of an inning left on your allocation for the season — and then run five starters and two relievers out there to try and blow the roof off. It doesn’t matter if all seven guys through complete games, you’ll get credit for their stats, for better or for worse.

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