Proposed solution to the "start a million pitchers" problem

[brock middlebrook]

for H2H

everybody is familiar with this issue. A guy is trailing in ERA and Whip and then decides to pick up and drop pitchers everday so that he can "steal" K and W.

I understand both sides of the argument -- on the one hand picking a good waiver wire pitcher can be an art and part of the fun; but on the other hand, it's not really indicative of the quality of a team if a guy can indiscriminately throw guys out there.

Some leagues have trx limits - this is unfair to a team that has more injuries.

Some leagues have IP limits - this can be unfair in H2H.

My idea is this.
1. Set a cap of say 10 games started (or 7 or whatever).
2. any starts over the max get averaged in. Ie if I start 11 guys and get 5 wins, credit the person with 4.5 wins (10/11 * 5)
K's would work the same way.

This would allow those who like the work the wire a chance to do so, while being fair to those who have a good pitching staff.

Thoughts?

[bryan1327]

To stop this in our league we voted on a max of free agents moves per year. We can only pick up 40 off the wire all season. That really does the stopping of churning pitching. make an owner think.."do I really want to pick this guy up and use one of my 40 on him?"

40 might seem low but..it has worked now for 3 years. and we have had no problems with it. And the league is a H2H daily league changes.

Hope this is an idea to think about.

[cloverhurstdawg]

We do the 40 trx limit in my league as well, it works great. Trades are unlimited, only waiver wire pick ups and drops are counted. As for DL issues, two players can be DLd and held onto for any length of time, and with 25 man rosters in our league you should have backups for everything other than C or 2B usually.

[Mercer Boy]

I suggested something similar to this last night as a solution to the whole 2 start pitcher thing in H2H weekly scoring. It could surely work in this format also. It's sort of like making it H2H hitting with Roto pitching. I don't see anything wrong with it.

A forced pitching transaction limit would also work...you really shouldn't have to cycle your staff more than 2 or 3 times in a year to improve on the bust pitchers you may have drafted.

[asumikey222]

40 in my h2h league too. For me it's a little difficult b/c I love to fiddle with the back of my rotation and hitting a lot (and this league has a relatively deep bench) so it kind of sucks to have to worry about picking up someone like Victor Diaz, e.g., b/c it has nothing to do with cycling at all, but at the same time I understand the problem it's trying to address and I'm more than happy to live by the rule. I think maybe it would be fairer to have a lower limit on Ps you can pick up, but I don't think you could do something like that on Yahoo.

I also generally like your approach brock, as long as you could implement it properly in your league and everyone knew the rule clearly beforehand I think it could work out well with just a few tweaks.

[dannahann]

So long as you only have 5 pitching cats I've found that you can have it both ways if you simply change K from a counting cat to a ratio cat...ie K/9 or K/BB. That way the guys who like to mess with the end of their bench, can (like adding a Diaz), as there is no transaction limit. You'll find that by 3 of the 5 pitching cats being ratios (ERA WHIP K/9 or K/BB) it's foolish to 'churn' pitchers. In fact any decent starter who won't kill you on the ratios will have a home on somenone's roster. One caveat tho, there must be a realistic MINIMUM IP weekly limit in place.

[t2green2]

We instituted a FA SP pickup day of Sunday. Thats the only day you can pick them up. But you can use your waiver on those dropped so it makes some think about dropping certain SP. ANyway it sees to work so far.

[j24jags]

we also use a pickup limit. this is better. now guys can pick up 1 or 2 pitchers but not 20 a week which is what one team was doing.

[duckbillgates]

So long as you only have 5 pitching cats I've found that you can have it both ways if you simply change K from a counting cat to a ratio cat...ie K/9 or K/BB. That way the guys who like to mess with the end of their bench, can (like adding a Diaz), as there is no transaction limit. You'll find that by 3 of the 5 pitching cats being ratios (ERA WHIP K/9 or K/BB) it's foolish to 'churn' pitchers. In fact any decent starter who won't kill you on the ratios will have a home on somenone's roster. One caveat tho, there must be a realistic MINIMUM IP weekly limit in place.

This seems like a great idea. Even if you get your minimum innings in with a high K/9 and decide to bench your pitchers for the rest of the week, you cost yourself a chance at wins.
Seems cheater-proof to me.

[9er Fan]

Putting a cap on yearly WW transactions helps, but you might also want to have a weekly cap. One poster was mentioning a couple weeks ago that people in his league were 'saving transactions' then reverting back to the WW pitcher rotation strategy once the playoffs started.

Weekly max on innings pitched solves both problems.