Year in Review: LIMA Pitching

Last week, fellow RotoGraphist Mike Podhorzer reviewed a $9 fictional pitching staff he created earlier in the year. I did something similar in my home league and the industry league Blog Wars. The success of the strategy was mixed, so let’s delve into the details.

Mike’s fictional approach differed from my real draft strategy in that I didn’t focus on selecting nine $1 players. Both were auction leagues, but I ponied up more than $1 on about half my starters. I’ve also included the cost of my relievers to show the somewhat unconventional approach I took by focusing on relief.

Welcome to my home league. It’s a 12 team, 29 player draft with a $350 budget. The $8 Gray was a keeper, one I would not have picked had I been bidding in the draft (presumably, he would have cost more). I entered the season with a devastating quantity of offense. I planned to reinforce my advantages on that side of the fence with my draft budget. I targeted a perfect 60 score in the offensive categories and came pretty close with a 54.

I picked inexpensive starting pitchers for a couple reasons. First, as I already intimated, I believed I could sweep offense with a little additional investment. If I also managed the saves column to a score of 10 or better, I would be hard to beat. I’ve also had a lot of success streaming in this particular league. I saw no reason why I couldn’t improve my rotation later in the season. Typically, there is an opportunity to trade a decent but non-elite keeper for a Felix Hernandez type down the stretch.

My pauper’s rotation actually performed excellently through mid-May. There was about a month long period where I was within one big day of a perfect 120 point score. Then, regression hit my starters like a bus, and I wasn’t able to scramble fast enough to save the season. My pitching staff finished with 42 points, giving me a 96 point total. Most years, I would have had a shot to win. Unfortunately, three owners failed to eclipse 40 points, which meant that two owners crossed the 100 point threshold. I finished a disappointing third despite my success.

Blog Wars is a much more difficult league with 13 owners, deep rosters, and a standard $260 budget. Below are my pitchers.

Here, my attempt to avoid starters in favor of offense backfired terribly. I ended up punting steals when guys like Jayson Werth and Shin-Soo Choo failed to contribute to my totals. A down season from Miguel Cabrera did not help my overall offense (or budget). The result was a total of 33 offensive points.

Hubris may have bested me in this league. Like my home league, I planned to stream all the pitching I needed. Of course, I underestimated the waiver hungry nature of the league. Trapped into a strategy of Kluber and nothing, I floundered for much of the year. My 31 pitching points was almost a mirror image of my offensive mediocrity.

Overall, I drew a few lessons from the experience. While the strategy itself is fine, it relies on seriously outperforming the competition on offense. As such, you better not come up short. Last season was also my first on the west coast and as a full time baseball writer. Between work and a later start to the day, I was always left picking the scraps off the waiver wire. I’m back on the east coast now, so that problem should be resolved. I’ll also be sure to take industry types more seriously, especially when it comes to streaming. While I performed well in other industry leagues, Blog Wars was the deepest and most diverse.

I’m likely to eschew spending on pitching in 2015, but I do plan to budget more than the $17 and $10 I spent on starters in these two leagues.