Drafting no starting pitching??

[rotterdam_82]

Last I heard, and experienced, a balanced team wins 100% of the time. You wouldn't really stay competitive in wins and K's, like your vision is somehow giving you. You play roto? Not a chance. You'd be at the bottom of two categories, essentially throwing away points. A large error people make when cooking up these types of stretegies is that they assume everything always stays the same. Yeah, batters are pretty consistent year in year out, but they aren't always the same. Same goes for your RPs, their production isn't the same from year to year. Also, in taking offense first, you'll be missing out on some of the best RP's that there are.

Take starting pitchers. You'll need to balance out your team in order to win your league. If this strategy worked, it would have been figured out already and used heavily.

Absolutely. For everyone that has won using LIMA or some other similar strategy there are hundreds that win by simply drafting a nicely balance.

Very well written comment Thursday.

Waiting till completion of offensive draft until drafting SPs: Good Idea.

See I don't even agree with that. I rarely take a pitcher before the 4th, but I'll cirtainly have 2 or 3 on my team before my offence is complete. I've never liked the idea of having to rely entirely on 'potential'.

[j_d_mcnugent]

i have seen it tried a couple times in h2h but the teams didnt do too well. the best was about 5th or 6th place out of 12. most finished at or near the bottom. the problems are:

1) you think you are guaranteed a win in saves, whip, era but you arent. saves can be unpredictable. you dont know exactly when you will get them. some weeks you will end up with 10-12, other weeks 3-4. whip and era can vary significantly because you have a small amount of ip for the week. one or two bad outings and you are sunk. also, the opposing manager only needs to make a few starts that week. he will pick his best matchups and could actually beat you in whip and era even if you dont have any blowups.

2) you absolutely MUST win ALL hitting categories. one problem i have seen with this is that the teams doing this strategy arent nearly as good offensively as they think they are. maybe a better drafter can pull it off but most teams i have seen have good offense but not significantly better than everyone else. in h2h in any given week you cant be sure what is going to happen. no matter how good you think your offense is you are going to have a hard time sweeping the offensive categories.

over the course of the season this strategy just doesnt seem to work given the standard 5x5 category setup.

[garf112]

Even if all of your closers/relievers average a strikeout per inning, you will end up with about 800 or so (that's being generous), and about 54 wins (also generous); that sounds like 1s in those categories. This strategy won't work, but I will give you an alternative reason for why. But a big reason that you will not be able to use this strategy is that there will simply no longer be quality relievers for you to pick from. Most people shy away from runs on positions with the one exception every year and in every draft I am in being the closer position. Therefore, it will be nearly impossible for you to get more than 3 great closers (top 10 or so). You will then be stuck with the Travis Bowyers of the world. In order for this strategy to work, you would need to start drafting closers earlier, which would take away from your hitting. Bottom line is get a couple of the top 20 or so pitchers in the 4th to 8th rounds, get a couple closers with guaranteed jobs, get a Juan Rincon and a few others, get a couple more closers later in the draft, and then get starting pitchers late. You will still be able to focus on hitting in the beginning of the draft without giving up too much in the pitching categories.