Well, this should be interesting

[ILLZ]

Next year in one of my head-to-head leagues, I'm attemping a "pitching and steals" strategy. It's a 4-keeper league, and I just made a bunch of moves to keep Felix, Haren, Lester, and Ellsbury. I'm going to draft pitchers pretty much exclusively in the the first 8ish rounds, and then grab a bunch of steals late (like Gradner, Fowler, Bourn, Andrus, Morgan, etc.). By doing this I'll dominate all the pitching cats plus SB's, while still winning my share of Runs and AVG. I should theoretically win every week 6-4 or maybe 7-3.

Any thoughts on this strategy? It's going to be hilarious if I can win this league with an OF of wily taveras, dexter fowler, and emilio bonifacio.

[BillyHallDisciple]

Many folks have tried these types of strategies but they seem to fail a lot more often than they succeed.

The risk you're taking is that you're automatically punting four categories, so essentially you're making yourself go into a 4-0 hole every single week which is a gift for your opponent... you're also not always guaranteed to win those categories you're talking about, even though I understand that you're greatly increasing your chances of winning them.

Also, I'm of the mindset that if your roster is gonna tilt top-heavy in one direction, it's better that you go with offense. Reason being that quality pitchers are much more plentiful on the waiver wire than hitters, so it's always much easier to assemble a good pitching staff after the draft.

I wish you luck, but I just don't see why you wouldn't want to more evenly distribute the talent on your team so you give yourself a shot in every single category rather than experimenting with this kind of approach.

[briane]

I agree with the previous poster. If you are going to do such a strategy (and it frequently fails - I've tried one myself), you need to dominate in 4-6 and compete in another 2-4 categories.
What you are doing here is going to backfire some weeks. If ONE pitcher has a 9 ER, 2 IP game, you could lose ERA and WHIP for the week, putting you into a hole. Wins and Saves also fluctuate much.
If you are going to go with this strategy, I would prefer Offense and Saves, ERA, and WHIP.

It's worth trying in a non-money league to see if it can work, though. Good luck.

Edit:
If your true strategy is to ignore HR and RBI, that is different than just going Pitching and SB. You can't think you can just think about SB, and the other categories will follow, but you can overweight those categories at the expense of HR and RBI, and that might be a winnable strategy if you get lucky.

Help with mine:
viewtopic.php?t=396106

[ILLZ]

What 4 categories am I automatically punting? AVG and Runs are winnable. My entire offensive base is steals, and with steals many times comes batting average and runs. So I'm going to take those caregories some weeks as well. I figure I'm going to mostly win 6-4, occasionally swinging it one game either way (7-3, 5-5). There will definitely be 3-7 weeks for sure, but I'm sure I'll grab a few 8-2's as well. In the end, this league sends 6 out of 12 to the playoffs, and this strategy should at least get me there.