Meme Drafts
Fantasy baseball is about having fun. One of my leagues is a head-to-head format against my former college teammates. I use this league as an opportunity to be (a little) less competitive.
My first few seasons – about a decade ago – were frustrating. My attempt to build balanced rosters led to a consistent top two roto score and a sub-.500 H2H score. Apparently, being good-but-not-great in every category is an excellent way to consistently lose over half the categories per week. Then, completely by accident, I stumbled upon a strategy I’ve been successfully using for the last half decade.
One year, I happened to get lucky with some pitcher picks. I combined a few heavy investments with breakouts from Corey Kluber and others. By dominating the six pitcher categories (we add K/BB) and continuing to split the hitter categories, I was able to charge from middle of the pack to a consistent top-of-the-league position.
We held our auction last night, and this season’s roster is my most extreme, memeiest build to date. Behold.
| Position | Player | Cost | Keeper? |
|---|---|---|---|
| C | Yasmani Grandal | $1 | N |
| 1B | Eric Thames | $1 | N |
| 2B/SS/OF | Chris Taylor | $7 | Y |
| SS | Amed Rosario | $2 | N |
| 3B | unrostered | ||
| MI | Scott Kingery | $2 | N |
| CF | Kevin Kiermaier | $2 | N |
| OF | Michael Brantley | $2 | N |
| OF | Delino DeShields | $2 | N |
| UTIL | Jose Martinez | $1 | N |
| UTIL | Dexter Fowler | $2 | N |
| BN | Victor Robles | $1 | N |
| BN | Michael Conforto | $2 | N |
| Total | $25 |
The offense obviously isn’t ideal, especially early in the season. It cost $25 of my $260 budget – a 10/90 hitter/pitcher split. I kept just one player, the ever-versatile Chris Taylor.
The goal here is to have just enough to compete in every category during a lucky week. I think this club accomplishes that goal. They produce home runs, steals, runs, and even contribute to average and OPS. With the exception of Grandal and whoever I pick up to play third base, every single player has $10 potential.
By saving my tiny war chest until late in the draft – I started with a $12 max bid – I was able to become the king of dollar days, securing many of these values in the process. If there’s an issue, it’s that too many of these players are platoony.
| Position | Player | Cost | Keeper? |
|---|---|---|---|
| SP | Clayton Kershaw | $50 | Y |
| SP | Max Scherzer | $46 | Y |
| SP | Chris Sale | $46 | Y |
| SP | Corey Kluber | $35 | Y |
| SP | Carlos Carrasco | $28 | Y |
| SP | Zack Godley | $7 | Y |
| SP | Charlie Morton | $7 | Y |
| SP | Jordan Montgomery | $7 | Y |
| SP | Jimmy Nelson | $1 | N |
| RP | Arodys Vizcaino | $3 | N |
| RP | Joakim Soria | $1 | N |
| RP | Brad Ziegler | $1 | N |
| RP | Zach Britton | $1 | N |
| Total | $233 |
Mmmm, the top four pitchers plus Carrasco. And also three other good pitchers. Cheap closers. An injured “ace” as a trade chip. This club will dominate five of six pitching stats while remaining competitive in saves. Even a reliever-heavy roster won’t challenge me for rate stats most weeks.
To be entirely honest, I botched this pretty badly. By cutting Kershaw, Scherzer, and Sale, I probably could have saved between $15 and $20. You never really know how your leaguemates will behave in the auction until it happens. In the past, I’ve been surprised by how unwilling they’ve been to expend huge amounts on aces. The trend continued this year – Stephen Strasburg cost $37 in a market where he was the only available stud (besides an unhealthy Madison Bumgarner). It wasn’t an issue of budget either, everybody (except me) took at least $150 into the auction.
Epic fails aside, I’m still pumped to be running the quin-ace for a second consecutive season. Last year, I finished second in the regular season before getting bounced from the playoffs by the seventh place team (the first place team also struggled in the playoffs).
And with most of my rotation set to be unkeepable next winter, it may be time to hunt for a new meme! I’m looking at you: Kingery, Rosario, Robles, and Conforto.
You can follow me on twitter @BaseballATeam
This is just plain fun, people should take fantasy a little less seriously more often.
I guess my question here is: Doesn’t it become overkill at some point? Diminishing returns and all that? Winning a category by 1 or 50 still achieves the same desired result. Wouldn’t one of those aces been better served as a hitter? I guess I’m curious what your thinking is on this.
The win-by-one mentality is less helpful in H2H since everybody’s roster is built to some kind of extreme. It was that approach I referenced in the intro – hugely successful at roto but sub-.500 in H2H.
Can this league history be viewed somewhere? This strategy is super intriguing but I’m curious on how the rest of the owners operate and if this can be tinkered with to some degree.
I wonder if you would benefit by picking a specific category to try and win on the hitting side. Probably steals, since it’s least correlated with the other categories. There’s usually some pretty cheap one-tool steals guys available, and that one hitting category could swing quite a few matchups. DeShields gets you partway there already, and Fowler and Rosario should both chip in.
That was the plan, but some of the guys I was targeting i.e. Margot went for more than I could afford. I should be able to pick up a Maybin as needed though.
You definitely lost money on keepers (assming its a 12 team auction) andyou could easily still shark all the pitcher cats by letting one ace go and putting the $$ toward offense
The issue for me – and a big reason why I like doing this in this particular league – is that the difference in performance between a Justin Upton and Dexter Fowler is much smaller than the gap from Max Scherzer to Nate Eovaldi. But the cost difference is the same.
Would you ever dare try something like this in a straight Roto league?
No. Would never work in 5×5. I came pretty close to this last year in one league and got third while spiking Judge and Cozart for nothing. If that’s not enough, then it can’t be done.
$1 Thames? Is this a 6 team league? I know he has fallen off, but it sounds like 100% if this league had to go Stars and Scrubs which is not very reproducible
We have 2 UTIL instead of a CI and only 3 OF. So it pushes the 1B/OF pool towards the shallow end of the pool. I’m obviously quite thrilled to get Thames for nothing.
No 3B should invalidate your roster, right?
I have Jeimer Candelario now. But no, you don’t need to fill every roster spot in Yahoo. Which is the way it should be.
I love this. Its why local leagues are a bit different. I always feel my local league overvalues both SP and RP so Im always selling pitching for hitting. My ratio goes much the other way.
I’ve done something similar in my longtime yahoo H2H league with no keepers, to great success. I invest in a couple of aces and then chase young speedy dudes who give me AVG, R, and SB, who I find tend to be undervalued. Fill out RP with elite K and ratio guys. Sure, I lose HR and RBI more often than not, but I also win 3 of 5 hitting cats and 4 of 5 pitching cats (W, Ks, ERA, WHIP) almost every week. I don’t know why other dudes haven’t caught on yet but I’m happy to win 6-4 and 7-3 matchups year after year. Just gotta get to the playoffs, which are a crapshoot regardless.