Thoughts on "H2H - One Win" leagues?

[Maris09]

I'd want to know the league cats and rules before making too much of a judgement on this. If it's a typical 5x5 league, I'd worry that too many teams would try and punt categories. Why make a balanced team when I only need to win 6 categories each week? Draft a ton of hitting, punt closers, and get a bunch of medium tier starters to run out there each week.

No dude it's not even that. Draft a ton of hitting, five closers, and save your last 5 or 6 rounds for crap tier filler SPs on good teams.

Kind of my thinking... but honestly, if it's a 5x5 league... why wouldn't a team draft 5 top notch closers, and all hitters? Leave the other pitching spots open so not to blow up the ratios. Win saves, and have a great shot at winning ratios with elite relievers and then pound the other team into the ground in hitting categories. That leaves you with 3 pitching wins (likely anyways) and with a team of all hitting no pitching a likely lock at winning at least 3 of 5 hitting cats. This does not sound like a league format I'd have any interest in playing in.

I thought the same thing, but after trying it a few times, you can just as easily get screwed on a given week with that strategy.
A closer could get blown up (era and whip screwed), someone else can add a bunch of closers over the course of the year and just have a better closer week than you, your hitting has a bad week, their hitting has a great week. A combo of those.
I'm not sure I'll try it again.

[oscar15]

Don't most h2h category leagues have a minimum innings pitched requirement? Don't know if you could reach it playing a bunch of closers.

We switched to h2h last year and used the win per category method. This year, we are using the points system from cbs. Cbs even wrote a detalied article explaining their reasoning for the point totals. We shall see

[Ajax]

Something that's always annoyed me a little bit in standard Yahoo H2H leagues was that the playoffs essentially were 'one win' matchups, while the rest of the season wasn't.

While 'one win' does seem to have some drawbacks, at least the regular season matchups are played the same way as the playoff matchups.

[mkultra]

H2H points leagues work this way. You accumulate points strictly based on various counting stats (as opposed to ratios like ERA/BA), and whomever has the highest total wins the week. Our league breaks ties within the division this way (I think this is Sportsline's standard):

1)Head to Head record against (when 2 teams are tied)
2)Division Record (for Division 3 way ties only)
3)Total Points (to break ties for multiple teams deadlocked)

I'd have a really, really hard time seeing this kind of thing carry over to 5x5 play. Points leagues inherently factor in the different "weight" of things in a way that categories don't- in our league, and RBI is worth 1 point, but a Win or Save is 10.

[RAmst23]

The reason I said punt closers and take late round high upside pitchers is so you could spend all of your early, mid-round picks on hitting.

Top notch closers go too early if you're looking for an all offense approach. According to the wonderous MDP spreadsheet, top closers are going in the mid 60s. Then the next set goes in the 90's. That's using too many middle picks on RPs.

[AquaMan2342]

PLAY ROTO

[Maris09]

PLAY ROTO

Tough to find 12-14 other people who want to.
Fantasy football has created the mentality that H2H is more fun, so it's tough to get a group to go down the Roto route.

That said, I like doing at least one of each in a given season.

[swyck]

Kind of my thinking... but honestly, if it's a 5x5 league... why wouldn't a team draft 5 top notch closers, and all hitters? Leave the other pitching spots open so not to blow up the ratios. Win saves, and have a great shot at winning ratios with elite relievers and then pound the other team into the ground in hitting categories. That leaves you with 3 pitching wins (likely anyways) and with a team of all hitting no pitching a likely lock at winning at least 3 of 5 hitting cats. This does not sound like a league format I'd have any interest in playing in.

Because no matter what you do there is no guarantee that you will

pound the other team into the ground in hitting categories

, no matter your drafting strategy. Many if not most managers are drafting mostly hitting early, its just a matter of when exactly they transition to pitching.