Possible strategy, should I try it?

[Mills13]

Would it be worth trading all my good starting pitchers for hitting so I can dominate the hitting categories and will lose two pitching categories (strikeouts and wins). I would win saves, ERA, and Whip. Smart strategy or risky and not worth it?

[mtarail]

Punting categories is a strategy that never works in fantasy baseball.

[NZF]

Punting categories is a strategy that never works in fantasy baseball.

I would not say never. I have won roto leagues by punting saves before. I know a lot of people in here disagree but by doing this you can improve all your other pitching cats. Punting 2 cats doesn't sound sensible though.

Maybe you could do it with Stolen bases. I don't know. Every other hitting category tends to assist the others and it is similar with pitching (saves excluded of course).

Last year you could have won the saves cat with Mesa, Biddle, Julio and co but God help your ERA and Whip

[bost0n]

it works 10 fold better in h2h than in roto. if youre trying this in roto you will lose no matter what. if you try in h2h there is a small chance you could win, but the thing is you wont win all the hitting categories every week because of inconsistancy.

[Zito is God]

It sometimes works. You could try it in a casual league but don't depend on it too much...

[perlick29]

it works 10 fold better in h2h than in roto. if youre trying this in roto you will lose no matter what. if you try in h2h there is a small chance you could win, but the thing is you wont win all the hitting categories every week because of inconsistancy.

Couldn't have said it better myself. some people actually prefer to do that in H2H because it is a way of being an annoying winner.

[zEli173]

Mills13, your strategy is exactly why many leagues have a minimum innings requirement. I was going to use the strategy in my 6 x 6 league and was sure it would succeed as we have 4 ratio cats for pitchers. Instead our league instituted a minimum.

It's not as much a lock to work in 5 x 5 but it at least worth doing the math to see where it takes you. First though, it's important to recognize that there's an important difference between punting saves or steals and punting wins and k's. That is, in punting wins and k's you are locking up wins in the other three pitching cats. Punting steals or saves is done to make a team generally stronger in other areas, but guarentees nothing.

So with your approach in a 12 team league you should earn 38 points in pitching (12 in era, whip, and saves; 1 in wins and k's), or 7.6 points per pitching category. Above average, but probably not championship claliber. The 12 points in saves however, might be a dubious assumption. But you can do this and have a very strong offense. If you can average 10 points per hitting cat you'd project to 98 points total.

I think to succeed you really need to do very well in saves. If you don't finish first, it should at least be top 3. That may mean investing some of the starting pitching you'd trade away in closers.

It would be a very big advantage if you can have more closers in youlineup than other teams. that probably means acquiring danny graves or shawn chacon because they're closers that are eligible at SP.

If all that's possible, however, I think you should consider the idea very strongly.

[Mr. Winslow]

I've won roto with punting both wins and ks, however, it had a VERY good draft and picked some GREAT sleeper closers. Its tough to do, only do it if you are very confident you will have an amazing draft amongst batters and making sure you grab closers with low ERAs and WHIPs.

In head to head, however, punting is the only way to go. You either punt wins and ks and focus on ERA, WHIP and SAVS, or you punt HR, RBI, and R and draft all pitching, steals, and hopefully average. The later strategy is the stronger strategy, essentially an automatic win in a head to head league EXCEPT when facing a team that has punted wins and k's in favor of batting, ERA, SAVS, and WHIP.

If you are in a head to head league with a bunch of douchebags not smart enough to specifically tailor their draft towards particular categories, either of these strategies should easily get you the win.