I have over 100 saves, my strategy can work for you too

[josebach]

Yet I am dominating saves this year. Check out the standings:

103
66
62
57
54
54
53
50
35
29
21
12

Why don't you post the standings for Wins and Strikeouts?

[easygoing]

I even took it one step further...
I waited until the 15th round or so, when all the closers were gone, and took Mesa, Herges.... then spotted between valverde and riske, whom I picked up the first week of the season. I lucked out as well, but I hate wasting picks... Here is my team now

C - Tek
1b - Teixeira (had sexson)
2b - Soriano
3b - Chavez (traded Rolen)
SS - Renteria
LF - Manny
CF - Crawford
RF - Dye (off waivers)
U - D. Young
Bench - Figgins, Rollins, Trot

SP - Mussina (trade), Mulder, Wood (trade), Webb, Miller, Morris, Ol. Perez (waiver), Trachsel (Waiver), Eaton, J. Williams (waivers)
CL - Lidge (Waiver), Herges (Waiver, before season started), Mesa, Valverde (Waiver)

[Stunners]

Saves are important just because along with steals they are a very controllable stat with only using a handful of roster spots. I consider them free pts.

[ramble2]

Uh...Why are saves so important again....It's just one category ????

Agreed, but it's a category that I hate to do poorly in. It's also one of the few (if not the only) category that you can win even if you ignore it in the early rounds of the draft.

Here are some other reasons why saves can be so important in fantasy:

1. Saves is often a category in which you can pick up points in relatively easily. My league's a good example. Only 16 saves separate 8th from 2nd place.

2. Having extra saves you can trade away can be the grease that makes other trades go through. Being able to throw a closer into a deal often helps you make that 2-for-1 for the superstar (or upgrade). Not to mention that closers are trade bait in and of themselves.

3. When you draft and pick up as many saves as I did, you can, to a large extent, control the saves market. By strategically and selectively sending closers to others teams in trades you can take points away from your biggest competitors. This has worked very well to my advantage this year. (For this to work, you have to actually trade away your saves, and do it early enough that you keep the demand for them up.)

I point to my Isringhausen trade as an example of all 3. It was a 3-way deal, but it landed me Dunn (who I later packaged in a trade for Halladay). The guy who got Izzy is in 2nd place in saves, with 66. Izzy's given him 14 saves. That's the difference between 11 points and 6 points. That trade has also taken an overall point away from my biggest competitor - he's in 3rd place in saves, behind the guy I traded Izzy too.

[Json959]

Well this is all just great stuff :-° but the fact remains that if you took Benitez, Graves or Cordero in the draft you got LUCKY, very lucky. Those guys weren't given a prayer to put up these numbers in a whole season let alone at the all-star break.

[Mookie4ever]

yeah, last year my strategy was to draft Loaiza, Podsednik, Crawford and Baldelli in the last round. Looks like we have the same strategy.

[ramble2]

Yet I am dominating saves this year. Check out the standings:

103
66
62
57
54
54
53
50
35
29
21
12

Why don't you post the standings for Wins and Strikeouts?

Okay, but keep in mind that I've used less innnings than most of the rest of the league. My league uses a 1450 max IP. I'm at 729 IP right now (projected to be 40 under), and the range of IP so far are from 729 - 917 2/3. I've just landed Halladay, and Wood is coming off the DL, so I'll make it to the 1450 mark. The point is that I have latent points here, as I'll be passing people in both Ks and Wins who are way over their projected IP. To reflect this, I'll also post the K/IP, W/IP and IP/W ratios, as they will be a good indicator of year-end standings.

My position will be in bold:

Wins (tied for 7th): 61, 54, 50, 49, 48, 47, 46, 46, 46, 44, 43, 42
W/IP (tied for 5th): .071, .067, .067, .066, .063, .061, .060, .059, .057, 0.56, .053
IP/W (tied for 5th): 14.1, 14.8, 14.9, 15.4, 15.9, 16.0, 16.4, 16.7, 16.9, 17.6, 18.0, 19.0

Ks (5th place): 694, 680, 679, 665, 628, 626, 610, 593, 587, 581, 547, 530
K/IP (3rd place): .95, .92, .86, .85, .84, .79, .77, .76, .74, .73, .73, .67

On a side note, it took about 15 minutes to figure this all out. I just plugged the data into an Excel spreadsheet. But WOW is this helpful. I've got about 4 latent points, and my closest competitor only has 2 latent points. It also tells me that it's a good thing I've got Wood and Halladay to add into my rotation, as I'd like to up that K/IP and W/IP ratio.

[josebach]

Not too shabby at all.

[ramble2]

yeah, last year my strategy was to draft Loaiza, Podsednik, Crawford and Baldelli in the last round. Looks like we have the same strategy.

Fair enough that it probably sounds like I'm just bragging about being lucky.

I'm not denying I got lucky, I'm just advocating a saves drafting strategy that was up for debate pre-season. It's nothing groundbreaking or novel, but there was disagreement about this pre-season. I'm just trying to show that the strategy I used can be a successful one. Saves are precarious, risky and hard to predict, but a category that a good fantasy player should do well in (i.e., top 3 finisher).

Here's the strategy again: 8-12th round, grab two 2nd tier closers who you can count on (in my case, F. Cordero and Izzy). In the later rounds grab the risky guys people don't like to touch (e.g., Mesa, Graves) and hope you get lucky with one of them. Don't use your 4th, 5th, 6th, or 7th round picks on closers. Get guys like Santana, Berkman, Giles, G. Anderson, Huff, etc. instead of guys like Wagner, Foulke, Rivera or Smoltz. (Not to mention Gagne.)

This year I got lucky with all three of the late-round closers I drafted. That's unusual. But even if only one of them panned out I'd still be in first place in saves (and easily in the top 3 - which was my goal). I'm 37 saves up on 2nd place, and traded AWAY 34 saves.

[Mookie4ever]

Not to be overly critical or anything but your strategy could very well have landed you Kaz Sasaki, Justin Speier, Aqualino Lopez, Chad Bradford, Mike MacDougal, Lance Carter, MArte and Hasegawa.

I am in favour of buying/drafting at least one good closer to ensure that I don't crap out completely on a cat. There is nothing better than having a guy in the chase begging for a closer after the AS break because they crapped out. These guys either don't get one or get taken to the cleaners in a trade because they cheaped out and bought/drafted Speier and Bradford.