Archive for Strategy

Directly related to this comment from Mike Podhorzer and his piece on the Cheapest Pitching Staff Possible, I often use a term to describe the process by which a manager reacts, in my estimation, incorrectly to the developments of his or her respective snake draft.  As Mike pointed out, “zigging” when your fellow managers are “zagging” may allow you a degree of competitive advantage, and failure to do so is what I call ‘chasing the draft’, and while it’s hard to avoid sometimes, it frequently requires that you wad up your draft strategy and toss it in the rubbish bin.

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This advice, of course, depends on the size of your league. If you’re in a 14-team NL only league, you are almost certainly going to have some middle relievers on your team. However, in most 10- or 12-team mixed leagues, you generally are best off avoiding middle relievers altogether, with two exceptions: 1) you expect that they will become closer soon, and 2) it’s late in the season and you can gain ground in ERA or WHIP. Other than that, however, middle relievers should be avoided.

Why? Because they really don’t add much to your team. If a middle reliever gets a win or save, it’s usually a fluke – it’s almost impossible to predict how many wins a guy like Rafael Betancourt will have in 2009, for example. And even the best middle relievers usually only pitch 60-70 innings. So even if you stumble onto a fantastic season by someone like Betancourt, his impact upon your team is minimal, because he’s only pitching 60-70 innings. It’s a very rare middle reliever who is worth having on your team – someone like Mariano Rivera in 1996, or Octavio Dotel in 2001 or 2002. These pitchers are few and far between, and “typical” middle relievers just don’t help you enough to justify a roster spot.

Again, it’s not that someone like Betancourt or Scot Shields isn’t a good pitcher; rather, it’s that their roster spot can be better spent on someone else. In many leagues, you can manipulate matchups so that the roster spot is occupied by a rotating assortment of waiver wire starters who have favorable matchups (in pitchers’ parks and/or against bad offenses). These pitchers may not be particularly good, but if you manipulate their matchups they can provide a heck of a lot more value than even a very good middle reliever.

As mentioned above, middle relievers are generally acceptable when you have reason to believe that they will become the closer very soon. They are also acceptable down the stretch run (generally August and September only), if your team is in the position where you stand to gain points from even a small improvement in ERA or WHIP. In this situation, the small amount of innings that a middle reliever will provide is particularly beneficial. However, in all other situations, middle relievers are almost always a waste of a roster spot.

WHIP is a silly thing. Some people like to refer to it as a newfangled Moneyball stat, alongside VORP and tRA. But WHIP is old-fashioned, and not particularly indicative of player skill. Of course, pitchers who don’t walk anyone and don’t give up hits tend to be better pitchers, but we don’t need WHIP to tell us how good these pitchers are. WHIP is a byproduct of many other stats, and therefore should essentially be ignored when assessing pitchers.

That’s right: ignore WHIP. Because if you draft good pitchers, they are almost certainly going to have good WHIPs. In fact, there are very few pitchers whose WHIPs differ dramatically from their ERA and strikeout ability. And often times, when there is a significant difference between WHIP and other statistics, it’s a fluke, and unlikely to be repeated the next season.

It follows that pitchers with low ERAs tend to have lower WHIPs as well. Pitchers who have low ERAs tend to either get a lot of strikeouts or a lot of ground balls – or, failing this, they at least drastically limit their walks. Having a good WHIP is a byproduct of these three other skills: avoiding balls, missing bats, and inducing grounders. If you look for pitchers with these skills, their WHIP will follow.

The only exception for this is the mid-season tweak rule. Somewhere around July 1 (there’s no exact date, but the later the better), all bets are off: you need to tweak your roster accordingly, and most of what you read before the season can be thrown out the window. If there is one pitcher who has a particularly good WHIP and your WHIP is very high, there is nothing wrong with trying to obtain that pitcher – just be careful that the WHIP is for real, and not the byproduct of unsustainable luck.

In general, though, if you acquire a pitcher who avoids walks, gets strikeouts and induces grounders, that pitcher will have a more than respectable WHIP as well. And you won’t even have to look at that category.

A lot of highly touted prospects begin the year in the minor leagues, but make an impact by the end of the season. If you know where to look and you are willing to be patient, you can take advantage of prospects.

For example, Jay Bruce was very highly touted coming in to 2008, but the Reds didn’t call him up until late May (probably to prevent him from becoming a Super Two player down the road). However, when he did come up, he made a big impact, smacking 21 homers. Those of you who were patient with Bruce received an infusion of power starting in late May – almost as if you acquired a power hitter for free.

Francisco Liriano is another (rather extreme) example of when patience pays off. Back in 2006, Liriano began the season in the bullpen, and many fantasy players gave up on him, despite his solid performance out of the pen. Those who were patient were rewarded with 16 phenomenal starts down the stretch. Of course, most youngsters aren’t able to perform at the level that Liriano did, but many of them can make a positive impact on your team.

The key to prospecting is figuring out what players are likely to be called up, and what players are not. For example, Jason Heyward is one of the best prospects in the game, but is very unlikely to make it to the majors this year. Meanwhile, Matt LaPorta is on the brink of a call-up, and could provide immediate value once he makes it to the show.

Furthermore, unless you play in a particularly deep league, you should understand that very few prospects may a huge impact in fantasy leagues right away. Often times even highly touted prospects fail in their first stint in the majors (remember Cameron Maybin in 2007 with Detroit?), and just aren’t worth stashing away. You have to find guys who are both on the cusp of major league action, as well as likely to have some impact when they do make it. Players like this for 2009 include LaPorta, Jordan Schafer, Tommy Hanson, Colby Rasmus, Michael Bowden, Andrew McCutchen and Dexter Fowler.

Prospects can add a lot of value to your team, but don’t get caught up in overvaluing what could be rather than what actually is.

Let’s say you’ve signed up for a fantasy baseball league – either with your buddies, or a public league with people you’ve never met before. Let’s say that you’re in a league with prizes – a league in which you probably had to pay some sort of entry fee. You plan on spending a lot of time fine-tuning your team throughout the season. Obviously, your goal is to win this league.

If you want to win, don’t get caught up in being a fan.

I don’t care if you passionately hate the Yankees – if Alex Rodriguez is available in the second round, you had better take him. I don’t care if you bleed Cubbie blue – don’t draft Kosuke Fukudome in the 8th round. If you really want to win, you have to remove your own fandom from your fantasy team.

This is often more easily said than done. Some people just can’t stand the sight of players they hate manning a roster spot on their beloved fantasy team. Others can’t stand seeing their favorite guys wasting away on an opponent’s roster. But if you’re going to pay money and dedicate all of this time you building a winning fantasy team, don’t undermine your own efforts. Just because you have Arod on your team doesn’t mean you have to become a Yankees fan, and just because you don’t have your own guys on your team doesn’t mean you can’t root for them. Separate fantasy from reality.

You just have to get over it, or make the decision that rooting against Arod is more important than winning the league. There’s nothing wrong with deciding that, either – to each his or her own. But you had better understand the consequences of such a decision, and be okay with it. You can’t decide against drafting Arod and then complain if you don’t win your league – you had the chance, and you decided you that your hatred of Arod was more important than winning. So don’t be surprised if you lose.

You can be a fan and be a fantasy player at the same time. Just make sure to keep them separate.

The season is long. Players go through peaks and slumps. BE PATIENT.

Too many times fantasy players get worried or frustrated and make stupid decisions. For example, last season I traded Adam Wainwright for CC Sabathia, straight up, in April. Wainwright was pitching well and I had high hopes for him, but CC was CC, even though he had been terrible. CC’s owner panicked and dealt him for a solid pitcher, but I was able to take advantage and Sabathia pitched extremely well for me during the rest of the season.

Of course, this is a rather dramatic example. Often times, the more telling examples are knowing when to drop decent players who are in slumps, or knowing when to pick up mediocre players who are hitting well. In general, the best piece of advice is to ignore how a player has performed over the last few weeks, and instead focus on how they have performed over the last few years, as this is a far better predictor of future performance. Bad players can be very good over a few weeks or months, and great players can be very bad. Occasionally a player will come out of nowhere to have a fantastic season – Ryan Ludwick, for example – but this is the exception, rather than the rule. You may miss out on Ryan Ludwick, but it’s worth it to avoid the flash-in-the-pan guys who will fizzle the instant you add them to your roster.

Similarly, there are certainly players who go through season-long funks – like Nick Swisher – but most of the time people with established track records bounce back in the midst of what appears to be a disappointing season. For example, AJ Burnett had a 5.42 ERA on June 19. Many people may have dumped him at that point – but smart players understood that his peripherals were still good (90/46 K/BB ratio in 91 innings), and that Burnett had a track record of success. Owners who held on to Burnett were rewarded, as he had a 3.12 ERA (and 141 strikeouts) over the rest of the season.

When in doubt, defer to a player’s established track record, not their most recent success or failure. And read Rotographs, as we’ll attempt to help you decipher whether a player’s recent play represents a true never level of ability (for better or worse), or is just the fluke of a small sample size.

By now, many fantasy players are familiar with park effects. It’s easier to hit a home run in Colorado than in San Diego. Seattle is tough on right handed hitters, but Texas is great for lefties. Etc.

Even though park effects are widely known and considered, they can still be exploited in many fantasy leagues. For example, I can count on one hand (okay, maybe two) the pitchers I’d be willing to start in Colorado. Meanwhile, I’d probably be willing to start half of the guys available on the waiver wire if they had a two-start week in San Diego and San Francisco.

Know your matchups, and know when to bench players – especially pitchers. Fly ball pitchers are going to have good starts in big ballparks. Even decent pitchers are going to have good starts against the hapless Nationals. Pitchers with control problems won’t necessarily have a problem with the Angels, but will really struggle against the Red Sox (then again, most pitchers will struggle against the Red Sox). The general rule of thumb is that several awful starts are difficult to overcome (especially in head-to-head leagues), so unless you have one of the best pitchers in the game, you want to avoid most matchups against the Yankees and Red Sox (especially in Fenway), as well as games played in Colorado, Chicago (mainly the southsiders), Arizona, Texas, Cincinnati and Philadelphia. Again, use your judgment, but many times the best decision is avoiding a potentially dangerous start.

And if you have the time/desire, you can often exploit matchups as well. Perhaps that last spot on your rotation is best served by rotating between pitchers on the waiver wire, depending on who is starting against whom. Perhaps one pitcher is slightly better than another but has a far worse matchup – bad offenses and certain ballparks can make some pitchers look a lot better than they actually are.

While it is easier to rotate pitchers than hitters, you can exploit hitters’ matchups too. In daily leagues it is sometimes worthwhile picking up a decent hitter if he has a roadtrip that sends him to Colorado and Arizona for six games, for example. Or it might be worth benching or dropping someone who has a road trip against the top two pitching staffs in baseball. Possibilities for exploitation abound.

Yes, most people know about park effects, but not many of them attempt to take full advantage of these effects. If you do take advantage of park effects, you will have a rather significant competitive advantage.

Every league is a little different. Some have 8 teams, some have 12. Some are NL Only. Some have daily lineup updates, some weekly. Some have three day waiver periods, others have one day periods. Some have two catchers; others have four utility spots. Knowing the intricacies of your league is extremely important for success.

For example, let’s say you play in a league with daily updates. Assuming you have the time and energy, it may be possible to take advantage of this in a number of ways. First of all, you can draft players who may struggle against left-handed pitchers, because you are generally able to bench them when they face lefties and play someone else instead, thereby extracting maximum value. Or you may be able to stock up on relief pitchers, knowing that you can simply rotate the several starting pitchers on your team only when they take the hill.

Or let’s say that you play in a league with two catchers. That means that there are going to be some seriously bad catchers on peoples’ rosters – therefore, you may want to use some of your earlier round picks on two of the better catchers. Not only does this assure you of solid production from your catching position, but it somewhat corners the market on catchers, causing other teams to have to settle for very minimal production from their catching spot.

Or let’s say that your league has an unusually high amount of utility or DH slots. If this is the case, you may want to stock up on as many outstanding offensive players early in the draft, since you don’t have to worry about their position. A team with Albert Pujols, , Mark Teixeira, Prince Fielder and Adrian Gonzalez as their first four picks normally wouldn’t seem very smart, but if you have the utility spots to cover those players, it may be worthwhile.

In a 10 team league without a middle infielder position, you may want to wait to draft a second baseman or shortstop (or both), because you can get a decent player at those positions very late in the draft. But in a 12-team league with a “middle infield” position as well as SS and 2B, you may not want to wait as long, because the remaining players who qualify at those positions will be terrible.

Every league is different. Before you draft, take the time to understand the intricacies of your league, and think about what they mean for you. There is almost always a way to take advantage of small things in a league – and the best players figure them out before everyone else.

This may be the single most important piece of fantasy advice I could give anyone: everything about your draft depends on the other owners – how they value players. Therefore, you should try to enter your draft with as much knowledge of how everyone else is thinking as possible.

How do you do that? Well, it depends on the league. Some of you are probably playing in leagues with people you’ve known for a long time. You know that your friend is huge Red Sox fan, and is probably going to overvalue Kevin Youkilis. You know that another friend absolutely hates the Red Sox, and would rather lose the league than have Josh Beckett on his team. Another person has a thing for no-name starters, and someone else always likes to punt saves.

The more information you have on your leaguemates’ tendencies, the better you will be able to draft. You’ll know that you’re probably not going to get Kevin Youkilis; you’ll know that one person is unlikely to steal any closers from you; you’ll know that the no-name starter you’ve had your eye on may get taken sooner than you think. All of this knowledge will help you get the most value from your draft.

But for most of you, you’ll be playing in a league with people you barely know or have never met. In these leagues, the best way to gauge what other people are thinking is to read up on fantasy baseball as much as you can. Imagine that everyone else is reading similar things as you – and forming their opinions based off of what they read. Everyone else is seeing the same list of “sleepers” and “busts,” and forming their opinions accordingly. Everyone else is reading mock drafts to see what players tend to be taken where, and they are making judgments about whom to take in what round.

Okay, now you know what everyone else is thinking. The key is then to find out how to exploit it. How does your own opinion differ from “conventional wisdom?” Do you agree about all of the potential sleepers or potential busts? Do you have a source for information – like, say, RotoGraphs – that you particularly trust? Do you have a source that you think many of your less statistically inclined leaguemates avoid? If so, use this information to find out how to extract maximum value from the “conventional wisdom.”

As with everything else in fantasy baseball, this is not a fool-proof plan. There is inevitably going to be an owner who doesn’t think along the same lines as conventional wisdom – perhaps there’s even a player or two who has read this article and is taking the same tact. However, the best way to gauge how other people value players is to see how they are being valued in general, and then adjust your own strategy accordingly.

Before your draft, you should understand what players you think are going to be undervalued by others. These are the guys you want to target. For example, if you think Jonathan Sanchez is going to be valued as approximately an 11th round pick*, and you think his talent is worthy of a 7th round pick, it’d be a mistake to draft him in the 7th round. Most likely, no one else is going to be thinking about taking him for another three or four rounds. Therefore, to get the most value out of Sanchez, you should take him in the 10th round (or 9th, if you’re worried). By doing this, you are in essence getting two 7th round picks – the one you actually choose in the 7th round, and Sanchez, who you believe was worthy of a 7th-rounder but you didn’t take until the 10th round.

This strategy also works particularly well for position players, although it’s a little more complicated. Let’s say that you think Rickie Weeks is going to be undervalued, and you’d be perfectly fine with having him as your starting second baseman. Let’s also say that for your first round pick, you are debating between Chase Utley and Jose Reyes. Who should you take? There’s not a huge difference between Utley and Reyes in overall value. But you think that Weeks is going to be undervalued, and that you can “steal” him very late in the draft. If that’s the case, it makes sense to draft Reyes in the first round, rather than Utley. If you drafted Utley, you’d be getting a fantastic player, but you’d also be negating a competitive advantage – namely, your belief in Rickie Weeks being undervalued. By drafting Reyes and saving second base for Weeks later in the draft, you have extracted maximum value.

This strategy is not without risks – it only takes one other person to value Weeks as highly as you for him to be snatched from under your fingertips. Thus, you need a backup plan, a “worst case scenario” plan. If you lose Weeks in the 12th round, are there any other second baseman who are going to be available that late that you think are somewhat undervalued? If so, then they are your backup plan. Or perhaps you’re willing to “punt” second base, and essentially hope to trade for someone or find someone on the waiver wire.

If you can’t possibly think of a backup plan, then you need to be wary of putting all of your eggs in Weeks’s basket. Yes, he may be undervalued, but if you miss out on him your team may be in deep trouble. This is something to keep in mind when thinking about sleepers. However, it’s very rare that your team won’t be able to overcome something like missing out on Rickie Weeks. The advantage of getting a player who is much better than where he is drafted almost always outweighs the risk of missing out on that player and ending up with a scrub instead.

*Note: I am not necessarily endorsing Sanchez as an 11th round pick, or a 7th round pick. I am merely using Sanchez and these numbers as an example, to demonstrate a point.