8 years in a row, guy with best p wins my leagues

[IllinoisBandit]

Ya, like your original post said he got Braun and Hart as well. Id' say the strongest correlating factor with winning leagues is identifying who "that guy" or "those guys" are going to be. Last year offensively it was definitely Braun, Maggz, Byrnes, Holliday, Pena and BP IMO. If you drafted or picked up a couple or more of those guys you had a hard time NOT winning.

This board is pretty helpful for that a la Shields last year. Very few of us would have caught that train if it weren't for this board I wouldn't think.

[MTUCache]

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.

I understood a lot of the things you mentioned in your post... but this I did not understand.

You can always pick up sb/hr in FA??? Exactly how? In most leagues you'll be lucky to pick up a player off FA who hits more than 20 HR ever. This might happen a half a dozen times per year, and you'd need to pick up just about all six of them early in the season to benefit from it. Almost all 20+HR hitters are drafted (unless their avg is just so god-awful you can't play them). Same goes for SB... just about anybody worth owning (who can contribute in at least three cats) is drafted.

Pitching is always the deepest, always the most volatile, and therefore it makes sense to my logic that it would not be the thing that wins championships.

I will give you that by spending four out of your top five picks on pitching, you should dominate all the pitching categories... barring an injury (which is devastating to pitching). Doing the same in hitting does not guarantee you that dominance.

For me, I would say that it's a calculated gamble to put all your eggs in the pitching basket during a draft. If it works out, and all your pitchers perform as you expect, it is quite easy to dominate a league. But, that's not a very likely scenario. For it to happen 8 years in a row would be quite a strange occurance. I think that in the case of your league it was a combination of those gambles working out and those teams also having very above average hitting (either because of dumb luck or very savvy FA/drafts).

My strategy is to play the much "safer" way, and draft a solid, balanced hitting team, and then use moves during the season to keep my pitching above average. I certainly won't "dominate" any of the leagues I'm in, but I won't finish in the bottom half of any of them either.