Tactics and Strategy
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.
So what is the difference between tactics and strategy? Don’t bother with a dictionary, the definitions are muddied by their erroneous, interchangeable use in modern society. To simplify, strategy applies to the big picture while tactics are usually found in the details.
Here’s an example from a Glen Cook novel (a different genre of fantasy). A character who survived an assassination attempt went and “interrogated” an official after the event. The decision to do so was tactically wise – the character needed to learn why someone was trying to kill him. It was also strategically short-sighted – he revealed he survived the attempt. Our fantasy character was right to seek information, but he should have done so in a way that left his would-be assassins satisfied that the job was completed.
Stars and scrubs is a strategy. Loading up on scarce 30+ home run talents while skimping on the deep starting pitching market is a tactical use of the strategy. A successful owner will often employ the same strategy year after year in a given league. I have a couple keeper leagues where I know I will be streaming some position. Often it’s starting pitcher. Sometimes it’s outfield. Or maybe I’m streaming a stat like steals, runs, or strikeout rate. That I plan to stream is a strategy, how I stream is tactics.
Strategies tend to remain consistent over time while tactics can change frequently based on the market. For example, we’ve talked about reliever prices in ottoneu a lot recently. Strategically, all can agree that a winning ottoneu team probably has a healthy bullpen. The tactics used to build those great pens can differ.
In some leagues, owners are all over the potential relief aces – often before they reach anywhere near elite status. It can be tactically wise to pay a little for top relievers in those leagues, especially if you can identify another place to skimp without sacrificing talent. Other leagues pay less attention to relievers. In that case, it makes a lot more sense to go with a super cheap pen. If you can reasonably expect to grab a Wade Davis, Dellin Betances, and Ken Giles on a $1-2 contract as needed, why should you pay $20 for Craig Kimbrel?
The lesson today is to pick your strategy and stick with it. Don’t be a afraid to adjust your tactics. I’ve always preached flexibility – and that won’t change – but it’s useful to understand where flexibility is valuable and where it can be detrimental. Switching from stars and scrubs to a balanced approach 90 picks into a draft may be too late to adjust your strategy. It’s not too late to say, “oh, I’ll focus on different stars (or scrubs) than I originally planned.
I have a project in mind. I occasionally get this grand plan to create an omnibus of sorts on a specific topic. I’d like to create detailed posts for Strategies and Tactics. I don’t know if those posts will ever happen, but let’s talk about some of your favorites and how they’re classified in the comments.
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Big big fan of the non-closer relief ace strategy. I carry as many of them as I can on my roster. This allows me flexibility with actual closers, or with sub-optimal starting pitching, as the situation evolves.
I also jump all over single category speedsters who are multiposition eligible. Think Bonifacio. I don’t ever want to be forced to rely on someone like that, but in a daily lineups league it’s valuable having bench speed that can cover several potential off-day spots.
I also am not shy about carrying platoon hitters. Guys like Duda or Smith. Again it works best in a daily lineups league where I can easily avoid the bad side of the platoon, but it’s a real cheap way to get some great production.
I much prefer posts on strategy and tactics as opposed to player profiles. Looking forward to what you come up with.
My strategy is to minimize my vulnerability to injuries and down-years by employing several specific tactics: targeting multi-position players, avoiding high-cost pitchers in favor of numerous low to mid salary pitchers, signing several inexpensive, non-closer relievers with high-strikeout rates and the potential for numerous holds, keeping several high-end prospects to use (mostly) as trade bait for elite players on non-contending teams at the ASB.
Positional flexibility often allows me to insert my best-hitting bench player regardless of position by moving other starters around. By having Zobrist and Carlos Santana on my team, I was able to minimize the # of games started by my lower-level bench players.
Keeping trade bait allows me to acquire stretch-run stars. I was able to trade prospects for players like Kershaw and Starlin Castro after Tulowitzki got hurt (again) and some of my pitchers went down. Non-contending owners will trade their expensive non-keepers, and often cover their salaries, in order to build for the future. For 2015, I will keep minor-leaguers Jose Peraza, Daniel Robertson, Matt Olson and Blake Swihart in anticipation that they will allow me to acquire elite stretch-run help.
Multi-position player values go up the shallower the benches are. If a league has deeper benches I’ll aim to trade the multi-position guys for less positionally flexible, but better, players.
About prospects-for-stars, I find this varies by league. You do get a lot of people who overvalue prospects in dynasty though, because most people who don’t care about prospects probably wouldn’t bother with leagues with minor league systems. So even though I like prospects and draft picks, I often find myself somewhat reluctantly without them as I end up with trade scenarios I can’t refuse.
This is the good stuff. More of this please.
there could be a ton of these on trading strategy and how to best build a team. for instance i build my teams around pitchers with strong k/bb ratios and batters with some positional flexibility. i also don’t overpay for pitching. but every team is different and i think there is a plethora of research and writing that could be done on this topic.
Do strategies change with league size. For example, would stars and scrubs work better for a 12 team league then a 18 team league due to the lack of decent scrubs in the later rounds?
Yes. League size, and more importantly league rules and draft structure. My strategies in two keeper leagues are fairly distinct because one of them is a keep-forever snake draft league and the other has a limited keep window with escalating salaries and an auction draft. It makes being in the two leagues interesting, but would also, I imagine, make writing about strategy for a general audience a bit more difficult. Interested to see if this goes anywhere, though — the strategy (and tactics) are what make fantasy baseball so enjoyable.
Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.
I do know the difference between strategy and tactics! (Thank you chess lol).
When drafting, I like to be as flexible as possible and take what value is available. I like to analyze the player pool, league settings, other owners etc. and try to predict where the value is. Then adjust on the fly.
A more specific strategy is I try to grab the last player in a tier.
Yeah, I’ve found the value-driven approach leads to a much happier end result. You may not land the sexy sleepers or many of your big targets because there’s a more boring, but reliable and valuable, name that slips to you that the room happens to be down on.
This approach has yielded significantly better results in the past 4 years for me. Leave target-based drafting for Fantasy Football. Baseball projection systems know what they’re doing, for the most part.
I am glad you agree. 🙂
The only thing is this strategy requires a ton of preparatory work and you must be good at adjusting on the fly.
Agree with this one also. I often find that I’ve finished a draft with a surplus at a couple of positions and perhaps a hole at another, or in a category (usually speed), because I drafted “best available player” in almost every round. Inevitably, however, the vagaries of chance and injury make all that depth pay off. Either to fix my own team’s flaws or to trade away to another owner to fix theirs. I will never, EVER, draft a sub-optimal player earlier than I value him just because he’s the only halfway decent shortstop, for example, left on my board.
As you reach the end of your draft, I think it is worth it to give up some value to fill a need.
Often you will have to give up value later in the draft if you are missing a certain position.
Trading is always tricky depending upon the other owners. Usually, you will have to give some of the value in the trade to get what you need.
That being said, if you are good at trading then this is a good strategy.
in shallow leagues, gamble often because the wire will allow you to take such risks. over the course of a season, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to find a replacement if they disappoint/get injured.
Strategy is to read daily the opinions like this one. Tactic is to take it with a grain of salt.
My #1 priority is avoiding players with injury history. I’ve also in the past drafted based on positional scarcity with the thinking that deeper positions are easier to stream if needed. The positional scarcity worked fairly well.
This year I drafted power power power early. That worked well, but I did need to make more adjustments than I wanted to shore up other categories.
Next year, my first five rounds or so will be pure power (maybe 3 guys), pure speed (maybe one guy), and one boomer pitching ace. Or maybe 2 power guys, one speed guy, one ace in the first four rounds. Only after that will I start looking for the well-rounded, the value guys, the prospects/rookies, the multiposition guys, etc. I’ll probably draft one closer in the first 10-12 rounds as well.
I mostly finish well in standard leagues but can’t help but notice that people can be near the top with one blow-out league leader. Guys with Dee Gordon and Billy Hamilton did well last year because they didn’t have to worry as much about speed in other positions. Same, to some extent, with power.
Well-rounded guys in the first few rounds make sense from a “bang for your buck” standpoint, but I might just go for pure power/speed/ace guys early to goose those categories.
Forgot to add/mention that my thinking on the first 4-5 draft picks are tactics. The tactics support a strategy of trying to boost a few categories by getting a league leader early even if the guy doesn’t have much in other categories.