not just one but all of them. In a league draft in 3 hours the guy that won last year did have arod, but after arod he drafted krod, nathan, putz from 3-5 and then drafted 3 sp in a row and dominated the league because he drafted c hart and r braun, in 12 team roto he won by 15 pts.
year before the guy that won drafted 3 sp in a row. year before the winner drafted 2 sp and 2 closers with first 4 picks. No this is not a dumb league with kids.
ive come too the conclusion that winning wins, era, strikeouts, whip, saves is just too hard to overcome. You can always pick up sb, hr in free agency, keep your waiver at 1 and pick up the next studd rookie hitter not listed.
But here i go again with a draft strategy of not drafting a sp or rp until rd 7 or 8 or even later. Am i gonna wonder why im losing era, whip, again? Not saying im gonna take johan but i think people arent' giving saves their credit. 2 top closers can help you get over the top in era , whip, strikeouts, saves, instead of drafting the closer of the cubs, giants, orioles, rays and wonder why your a losing idiot.
For me - some years strong pitching wins - some years it doesn't. It all depends on how well you draft your offense and how well you play the waiver wire.
Two years ago I had Santana, Verlander, Hamels, Bedard, Kazmir, Zito (Before he was really bad), Harden, Anibal Sanchez (Had a no hitter that year) Krod and Huston Street. I did not make the playoffs.
My offense had Mauer, Howard, Sizemore, Atkins, Rios, Cuddyer (who had 100 RBi's that year) actually looking back I don't understand how I didn't make the playoffs.
A lot of people argue that it is easier to find quality starts of the wire than quality hitters. I'd have to agree with that because guys like Chris Sampson can go on a run of 5 to 6 great starts - and if you play matchups you can frequently do well. Any kind of consistency from an unknown hitter is unlikely.
yeh alot of luck involved, im assuming he wouldnt' of won if he didnt draft braun and cory hart. Im hoping i can get longoria late so i can get a quality closer or sp early but not real early.
It isn't about what positions you pick, it is about getting players at the best value. The value at pitching is usually in rounds 6-12 and not round 1-5.
how deep is the league? how many teams and how many players on each team? in really deep leagues, it can be tough finding decent pitchers to plug in throughout the season, but then the same can be said for hitters. it's all about balance; pitching is only 50% of the categories, i'm sure he also had great hitters in his team. maybe his strategy is to draft reliable stud pitching, and he is really good at finding value picks for his batters.
He stated 12 team roto, I'm guessing standard cats?? Well the point isn't really that drafting the best pitching CAN'T win a league, certainly it can. You CAN win a league by drafting David Eckstein in the first round, it's just not highly recommended.
The reason alot of fantasy players do not draft pitchers early in a draft is because ERA and W's are typically pretty volatile (Not even considering that pitchers get injured more often.) The #1 drafted pitcher last year and this year won 15 last year, good enough to tie him with 10 others for 18th-27th place. While Johan also did fine in ERA last year (11th overall), guys like Brad Penny, Fausto Carmona, Dan Haren, and Erik Bedard finished higher than him. Key stats for starting pitchers are in many people's opinion too risky to use a high round pick on.
I think it certainly is possible to win by spending high picks on pitching, it just means you need to really be accurate on your late round "guesses" (IE it is riskier). Last year drafting Carlos Pena, picking up Ryan Braun, and Hart like you said help. There are always suprises every year (Pena, Magglio Ordonez, Mike Lowell) but there tends to be great volitality in the pitching market.
...Boston papers now and then suffer a sharp flurry of arithmetic on this score; indeed, for Williams to have distributed all his hits so they did nobody else any good would constitute a feat of placement unparalleled in the annals of selfishness. -Updike
ttwarrior1 wrote:everyone says that and wonder why they lose
I say it and almost always win or come in top 3 at least in every league I play.
One year I drafted pitchers in the first 8 rounds and then all SB/AVG guys and dominated the league I was in. It was a crappy league and I probably could have just auto picked and won. There is no magical strat that will win your league for you. As long as you pick players at a good value you should do well, it does not matter which players or what order you pick them in. To pick guys at value takes a combination of good projections, understanding positional scarcity as it pertains to your own league and not reaching for positions/stats but just taking what the draft gives you.
ttwarrior1 wrote:everyone says that and wonder why they lose
I say it and almost always win or come in top 3 at least in every league I play.
One year I drafted pitchers in the first 8 rounds and then all SB/AVG guys and dominated the league I was in. It was a crappy league and I probably could have just auto picked and won. There is no magical strat that will win your league for you. As long as you pick players at a good value you should do well, it does not matter which players or what order you pick them in. To pick guys at value takes a combination of good projections, understanding positional scarcity as it pertains to your own league and not reaching for positions/stats but just taking what the draft gives you.
YES, thank you Ender. Excellent point. In the end the stat that is going to win your league for you is whatever your league is undervaluing. Every league is different and so there is no way you can say "pitching wins" or "hitting wins". You may find it easier to draft one strategy or the other but at the end of the day if you grab the best value player you're going to be successful...
Dont go into a draft with some sort of blue print. Dont buy into the "pitching wins" or "hitting wins" strategies...
Pitching tends to have be higher risk than batting. And guys available later often have high upside. Fortune smiles on you and your late round hitters break out, and your early round pitchers don't tear rotator cuffs, then you have a great shot of winning your league. That said if a pitcher is the best player available, you take that pitcher.
"I do not think baseball of today is any better than it was 30 years ago... I still think Radbourne is the greatest of the pitchers." John Sullivan 1914-Old athletes never change.
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by ttwarrior1 » Sun Mar 16, 2008 4:19 pm 
