Pitching strategy question

[swyck]

You make some good points, TheYanks04. However, my main point still holds. It does not matter in the least when the innings, or games played, are used. It just matters that they are optimized. If you are way ahead in pitching cats, why would anyone catch you in those, given that IPs are maximised?

I can see that there may only be a few teams willing and able to deal for pitchers late in the season. However, this should not matter, as long as the deals you get are better then what your current players are worth!

I would rather try to optimize my team now, rather then later. THis is not a strategy that I would use, but IMO it is feasible.

[Big Pimpin]

Think of it like this: if you use up all your innings in, say, August, you're WAY ahead of all the others in Ks, Ws, and (hopefully) ERA and WHIP. ERA and WHIP, maybe those are safe, unless you deal your good pitchers to teams that then use them to catch you. Ws and Ks are another story. You may think you're "uncatchable" but you forgot that you won't be striking any more guys out and your opponents still have 200 innings with which to work. And wins are so unpredictable that you never know what will happen there.

I'm not saying that the strategy has NO chance of working, just a small chance of working. It's too hard to predict what others are going to do over the last couple months of the season to ever think you have all categories locked up. Plus, like said before, you lose all your bargaining power by not having any innings left. If the other guys are smart at all, they'll speak with each other and come to the agreement that they won't pay a ton for your pitching knowing that you can't use it.

Just my two cents.