I've been thinking of a easy to execute strategy where if there are no designated SP spots you just use relievers to dominate the categories Era Whip and Saves. You could pay more at the draft for reliable hitters and less for arms like verlander and strasburg. What do you think.
There's all sorts of strategies you can use. I use a similar to your idea, but ours is a keeper league with auction value. I move for the top-tier holds guy (Adrolis Chapman) or guys like Joe Nathan coming off an injury, and kept both of them for a dime this year. What they've done has garnered me a great return, while spending the money on my SP's and Hitters. I'll flip Chapman and Nathan this off season because their prices will now be through the roof and research young kids with talent (like Jake McGee) and repeat the process. I've gone in the past two season's without a reliable closer and ended up in the top 5 in saves both times.
C-Doumit, Lucroy 1B- Fielder 2B-Pedroia SS-Castro 3B-Longoria CI- Lawrie MI- H. Rameriz OF-Cargo Jennings Heyward U-Morneau Markakis Brown
SP-Price Greinke Zimmerman Moore Anderson RP-Nathan McGee Doolittle Grilli
I still like the no RP strategy. You can't really cycle in/out relievers since they are due to play on any given day, like you can with starters, so you can keep as many starters as you want but can only keep the 8 RPs or however many your lineup allows for.
Man On First wrote:I've been thinking of a easy to execute strategy where if there are no designated SP spots you just use relievers to dominate the categories Era Whip and Saves. You could pay more at the draft for reliable hitters and less for arms like verlander and strasburg. What do you think.
Terrible plan. No need to argue the point except to say go look at the closers who were 'safe' at the beginning of this season and then look at the situation now. If your top 3 closers go down, your whole strategy falls apart. Whereas if you adopt the approach of drafting good solid SPs after round 5 and looking for RP value after round 10-12, your risk is spread out over numerous players and hence you're more likely to win.
I've used the RP only approach before and it can work, but it works best in a situation where there's more stats like Holds and K/9.
It can work, but you end up basically punting the starter counting stats (wins and strikeouts). I'll often concentrate on hitting, go after higher risk starters middle/late, and if that collapses, go to the relievers-only approach late in the season. But if it works (think someone like Chris Sale this season), you have the hitting and all the pitching. In a standard-size league, you can usually pick up those sp-eligible relievers when you need them (Furbush, Ogando, eg).
Man On First wrote:I've been thinking of a easy to execute strategy where if there are no designated SP spots you just use relievers to dominate the categories Era Whip and Saves. You could pay more at the draft for reliable hitters and less for arms like verlander and strasburg. What do you think.
Terrible plan. No need to argue the point except to say go look at the closers who were 'safe' at the beginning of this season and then look at the situation now. If your top 3 closers go down, your whole strategy falls apart. Whereas if you adopt the approach of drafting good solid SPs after round 5 and looking for RP value after round 10-12, your risk is spread out over numerous players and hence you're more likely to win.
I've used the RP only approach before and it can work, but it works best in a situation where there's more stats like Holds and K/9.
In a league with IP limits, K is effectively K/9 since most people will use all of their available innings. And middle relievers typically have similar Wins/Inning ratio as mid-tier starting pitchers (~12% less). So as long as you have enough roster spots, you can compete in W as well, even if you have a ton of relievers. Wouldn't hurt to focus on a couple cheaper starting pitchers on teams that win a lot of games.
And yeah RP have a lot more volatility from season to season, so it's a risk, but the benefit is that your team can be supplemented easily from the waiver wire and you have the flexibility to add a lot of the "hot new RPs". I wouldn't go entirely RPs, but grab enough cheap reliable starters in order to reach the innings limit.
there would have to be a really low IP limit and a lot of roster spots even if you had a couple of cheap starters to compete in K's. The way I see it you are giving up 2 categories. You better be sure that your offense is dominant because it's going to be hard to compete if you miss at all.
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by Man On First » Sun Aug 26, 2012 10:29 am 
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