General pitching strategy

[Berge20]

This is my first year of fantasy anything, but loving it a great deal (too much probably)

We're playing a standard 5x5 H2H in yahoo and I've only been using closers and starters. Would it be useful (assuming I have a spot or two) to add a middle reliever or two who consistently has an ERA below 1.5 and Whip around 1? Assuming they get reasonable workloads....

[godallahstar]

they could lower your ERA, WHIP, give you more strikeouts,
and possibly even some wins.

the only downside is, taking up your alotted innings.

[Berge20]

In this particular league, there are no max inning (only minimum) so thinking of picking up someone like Mota (LA) or Otsuka (SD)

[agchris02]

how the hell do you have a 5x5 H2H league???

if its 5x5 league, then yeah middle relief can help you with K's, era, and whip...in a H2H league theyre worthless, dont get pts on a regular basis at all

[KolbSaves]

how the hell do you have a 5x5 H2H league???

if its 5x5 league, then yeah middle relief can help you with K's, era, and whip...in a H2H league theyre worthless, dont get pts on a regular basis at all

Quite simple, there are the 5x5 catagories to match up in h2h, each catagory win is a point. That's how the hell.


In h2h leagues I've employed middle relievers rather effectively. When they vulture a win it's such a bonus too.

[d18Mike]

I've never done nor have I seen the math associated with using Middle Relievers. I usually keep one on the bench (Gordon) as a safety valve when I want to avoid a bad match-up but need to fill the roster.

Sure MRs may produce low WHIP but based on a rather limited # of innings, so the aggregate impact on the category is pretty low versus what you may lose in other departments.

Someday I'll sit down with a spread sheet on this one ... but intuitively I've never been sold on using MRs as a "winning" strategy. I use them to "avoid losing" in some cases. There's a differnce.

In a 10-team, I'd never use MRs. There are usually too many good spot starts available on the wire. In 12-teams, I'd use them as safety valves.

[Amazinz]

I think MRs are actually more effective in H2H than in roto. You are really just playing roto one week at a time and you are dealing with a much smaller amount of IPs.

If you have a stud MR you are basically getting a free start every week normally with no ERs, K/9 better than most starters and you get the vulture wins and the occasional save.

And 5x5 H2H is pretty standard.

[KolbSaves]

I've never done nor have I seen the math associated with using Middle Relievers. I usually keep one on the bench (Gordon) as a safety valve when I want to avoid a bad match-up but need to fill the roster.

Sure MRs may produce low WHIP but based on a rather limited # of innings, so the aggregate impact on the category is pretty low versus what you may lose in other departments.

Someday I'll sit down with a spread sheet on this one ... but intuitively I've never been sold on using MRs as a "winning" strategy. I use them to "avoid losing" in some cases. There's a differnce.

In a 10-team, I'd never use MRs. There are usually too many good spot starts available on the wire. In 12-teams, I'd use them as safety valves.

http://www.fantasybaseballcafe.com/foru ... hp?t=39496

[George_Foreman]

heh. friend of mine had an incredably awful auto-draft in my 5x5 h2h league. he ended up using 5 of his first 6 picks on pitchers, 4 of which were closers (top closer, like gagne, smoltz, etc.)

what we did was to corner the saves, era, and whip categories by only playing closers, and good ones at that. since the minimum innings was 7, all he needed was 1 or two innings from each guy each week.

it's worked pretty well, too. once he decided to completely forego starters (he'd been playing one a week to make sure he got his innings), he would just play gagne, smoltz, rivera, kolb, someone else, and graves in a 'sp' slot (what a GREAT waiver pickup!).

he usually ends up with about 18 innings if he plays all his guys the whole week, so even if someone gets rocked for 6 runs, the week's era is still 3, which wins often enough.

also, sometimes you get 4 saves the first two nights of the week and bench everyone else. you end up with weekly lines looking like this:
0 w, 4 sv, 8 k, 0.00 era, 0.65 whip

this basically assures that you'll win three pitching categories, meaning you only need two hitting ones for a .500 week.

it's really funny, actually. at the cost of 3 top 5 picks and some clever waiver work, he can concentrate all of his time and attention on hitting for the whole year. and by focusing on a few low-rent guys who steal and hit for average in addition to big average guys like pudge, casey, and mora, he's been able to do relatively well considering how poor his draft was. his team is one of the ones that i fear the most, simply because if he has an above-average week hitting, he can probably tie me and win in the playoffs, since the tie breaker is era. my helton, rolen, arod, and berkman can homer all they want and it might not matter. :-/

note: this will only work in h2h. while you might win three categories in a roto league, the '1's in wins and ks will virtually assure that you won't win the league.

[Madison]

how the hell do you have a 5x5 H2H league???

if its 5x5 league, then yeah middle relief can help you with K's, era, and whip...in a H2H league theyre worthless, dont get pts on a regular basis at all

Quite simple, there are the 5x5 catagories to match up in h2h, each catagory win is a point. That's how the hell.

I think he is confusing 5x5 with roto.

You have roto and h2h. 5x5 just describes the scoring catagories. You can have 4x4 roto and 4x4 h2h all the way to 20x20 roto or 20x20 h2h or whatever combination you can come up with.