Fantasy Rave: Exploiting the system

[Popeye_Card]

So I went into my fantasy draft yesterday with extremely low expectations. I hadn't prepared one iota. I didn't even print out a player list. I didn't really care about this league.

Then I got to the draft and started looking at the stat categories.

R, HR, 2B, 3B, RBI, SB, Avg., OBP for hitters.

W, SV, K, ERA, WHIP, K/BB for pitchers.

It's a 10-team, weekly H2H league. So I figure I need to win 10 out of 14 on the average week to win this thing. I'm drafting #5. You start one of each position plus Util, with 2 SP's, 2 RP's, and 4 P's.

The first few rounds, I just take the best players available, going a bit heavy on pitching, knowing there's fewer elite pitchers in the league than elite hitters for our categories. I take Santana and Beckett in the first two rounds, Ortiz falls to me in the 3rd, and I take Berkman in the 4th.

Then I look over the stat categories again and it dawns on me--4 of the 6 pitching categories are heavily tilted towards closers, who have excellent rate stats and rack up saves. So I take closers with my next 3 picks--Papelbon, Nathan, and Saito. 3 of the top 5 closers, when teams must start 20 relievers across the league, plus whatever they start for P's. With the rest of my P selections, I make sure no one is going to screw my K/BB ratio, WHIP, or ERA--so I take Hudson, Cain, and Maddux. With that staff, I should have little problem winning 4 of 6 pitching categories every week, with a good chance of winning K's and W's too. Right now my 8 pitchers averaged (weighted for IP): 3.25 ERA, 1.13 WHIP, 3.85 K/BB in 2007.

On the offensive side, I accept that I'm going to lose on the speed stats (3B, SB) nearly every week unless I get lucky. So I go heavy on high OBP, middle-of-the-order guys, which should rack up HR, RBI, Runs, OBP, and to a lesser extent BA and 2B. I end up with a 9 man lineup that averages 92 runs, 34 2B, 23 HR, 84 RBI, a .300 BA, and a .406 OBP. Just in case I match up against another plodder team, I can stick in Juan Pierre and Rickie Weeks off of the bench to get some steals, and I have enough excess OBP firepower that Pierre doesn't kill me. Do I feel some shame for having Pat Burrell and JD Drew on my team? Yes. But they're almost sure bets to give me .390+ OBP's, and over 50 XBH's. It's not often you can get guys with 15+ round picks who actually help you win categories.

I don't think this league knows what's going to hit 'em.

[clevername]

my main league has a similar setup. We use W SV K total bases ERA Whip as the pitching cat's.

I carry 3-4 high strikeout, low ERA, low Whip starters that get spot started, 3-4 closers, and excellent MR's and I still win K's more than half the time along with SV, TB, ERA, and Whip. I look at the rest of the league carrying all these starters racking up huge TB numbers and shake my head.

[Popeye_Card]

my main league has a similar setup. We use W SV K total bases ERA Whip as the pitching cat's.

I carry 3-4 high strikeout, low ERA, low Whip starters that get spot started, 3-4 closers, and excellent MR's and I still win K's more than half the time along with SV, TB, ERA, and Whip. I look at the rest of the league carrying all these starters racking up huge TB numbers and shake my head.

Yeah, with the TB category as well, you'd be crazy to post too many starts just in search of wins and a few extra K's.

Once they remove the IP category, relievers are the safer bet for almost everything.

I should have added that I'm praying for good health for my team. Injuries completely sank my fantasy teams last year.

[Fan_In_NY]

Thats exactly how you become a good owner, just understand the scoring system better than everyone else. Most people start with fairly similar cheat sheets, but they dont know how to apply it to their particular league. I am in a league similar to you that has SV and Holds as 2 of the categories. When people grabbed second tier closers early i waited and got top notcher setup men later, and figured also that a lot of the guys that were tops in Holds last year would never have been drafted at the beginning of the year. So I will just watch the wire for a bit. Similar with leagues that have OBP and OPS as 2 seperate categories. Thats a huge correlation for a guy who can walk for 2 seperate stats, so I made sure I grabbed guys like Youkilis.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

The only problem with this is that relievers have the most unpredictable performance of any position, and very good relievers pop up all the time for people to pick up, which isn't the case nearly as often for hitters/SP you could've taken in those spots.