In our last faceoff, Chris and I both talked about evaluating our teams early in the season and making adjustments as you see fit. In an 18 team H2H 6X6 dynasty league, I’ve done just that and will discuss my strategy in this league given the team that I have fielded.
Before we get started, here is a little more information about this league. The hitting categories are R, HR, RBI, SB, OBP, and SLG and the pitching categories are W, SV, Holds, K, ERA, and WHIP. I consistently punt saves in this league (this is its fourth year of existence) and have finished 6th, 2nd, and 2nd respectively in each of the first three years. We have 23 active roster spots and 5 reserve spots. I’ve included the number of years left on each player’s contract, and the effective cost of each player after the player’s name. We have a soft $260 salary cap (my cap this year is $272 due to trades).
Roster as of 4/7/08
C- Geovany Soto (5, $2)
1B- Albert Pujols (1, $63)
2B- Dan Uggla (1, $9)
3B- David Wright (2, $32)
SS- Derek Jeter (4, $19)
LF- Jack Cust (4, $16)
CF- Andruw Jones (4, $16)
RF- Bobby Abreu (3, $18)
UT- Conor Jackson (4, $4)
P- Chien-Ming Wang (1, $7)
P- Derek Lowe (3, $12)
P- Tom Gorzelanny (3, $6)
P- Edinson Volquez (5, $2)
P- Kevin Millwood (2, $2)
P- Joba Chamberlain (5, $2)
P- J.C. Romero (1, $2)
P- Scott Proctor (1, $3)
P- Ross Ohlendorf (1, $2)
BN- Bengie Molina (1, $5)
BN- Mark Ellis (3, $2)
BN- Austin Kearns (3, $12)
BN- Melky Cabrera (3, $3)
BN- Paul Maholm (3, $2)
PL- Cliff Lee (1, $2)
PL- Randy Wolf (1, $2)
PL- Jonathan Sanchez (5, $2)
PL- Homer Bailey (5, $2)
PL- Eugenio Velez (1, $2)
Looking
first at my hitters, I feel comfortable in my ability to compete in
every category on a weekly basis. In fact, I’ll be pretty upset when I
lose anything but SB (I, of course, was swept in every hitting category
last week!). When you look closely, though, you
can see that I have no help at SS or 3B if Jeter or Wright were to be
injured. And in an 18-team league, waiver wire options are not pretty
(Christian Guzman anyone?).
Looking next at my pitching, I am obviously not going to compete for saves and will likely never win that category. I understood this heading out of the auction and have no concerns about punting a category in a very deep H2H league. When I look at my starting pitching, one word comes to mind: mediocre. The most strikeouts I could hope for out of any of my five established starters on my active roster would be 160 or so (Millwood) and Maholm and Wang will probably strikeout a total of 175 batters. Gorzelanny and Lowe could each strike out just shy of 150 batters each, but this is certainly not earth shattering. Losing Kelvim Escobar to injury this season really hurt the strikeout potential of my pitching staff (I normally have six starters active compared to the five that most managers use) and has me gambling on a big season from Edison Volquez. I like his upside and think that he’ll strike guys out, but I don’t feel confident in a great season. My team ERA and WHIP will likely depend on Millwood, Volquez, Maholm, and Gorzelanny as Lowe and Wang are pretty consistent. In a weekly H2H league, I figure that I’ll have a few good weeks and a few bad weeks and a lot of mediocre weeks, and will hope to steal as many categories as I can by protecting early weekly leads in ERA and WHIP by picking and choosing matchups later in the week, or by throwing every starter out there to get wins and strikeouts (I am starting more guys than they are!) if my ERA and WHIP are awful early in the week. If I can average winning two out of these four categories every week (W, K, ERA, WHIP) I’d be happy. I suspect that this is fairly reasonable, actually. Finally, regarding holds, I’m very, very comfortable with Joba Chamberlain and J.C. Romero (and Chamberlain will give me strikeouts), but am disappointed with how Scott Proctor and Ross Ohlendorf have been used thusfar (in non-hold situations). I feel that if I can average winning five hitting categories per week, I hope to address other concerns with my team as the year goes on, but for today, I’m focusing on addressing my holds situation.
I
like to dominate holds in a league that uses them, and I tend to employ
very specific strategies to do so: I prefer quantity over quality, and
I never, ever want to overpay for my holds. In the past few years, I’ve
scoured the waiver wire and added the likes of Heath Bell, Manny
Delcarmen, and J.C. Romero and have been very successful without
spending significant auction dollars on top-tier holds guys (each year,
at least one middle reliever exceeds $10 in our league). The most I
have ever paid is $3. If I were in a more shallow league, I’d probably
modify my strategy some to pursue more high profile relievers, but my
strategy in this league is to get four holds guys and six starters
(remember, I punt saves) and hope that it does the trick. As my roster
sits today, I have two new holds guys that I have obtained via free
agency, and I have released Proctor and Ohelendorf. I grabbed Brian
Bruney when it became obvious that his role was improving in the Yankee
pen. A good holds guy on a team that will win a lot of games can be
pretty powerful. I also like to stack a couple of guys on the same team
(only a good team though!) because I can grab two holds in one game
(like I did just a few days ago with Bruney and Chamberlain) or get
them on successive days (if fatigue plays a factor in the bullpen). The
other guy I grabbed is Leo Nunez, who got off to a fast start, but is
now starting to disappoint me.
In
pursuing holds, I tend to avoid situational guys, and latch on to the
standard seventh and eighth inning guys. I also like guys that have
high K/9 ratios (don’t we all?) because you never know when those extra
strikeouts will come in handy. I constantly check my free agent pool
for holds and am never satisfied with who I have. I treat these guys as
disposable players. I only keep them as long as they are doing good
things (I’m talking to you, Jamie Walker!). Obviously, I won’t be
dropping Chamberlain anytime soon, but if Bruney, Romero, or Nunez
doesn’t pan out, I’ll try someone else. There are no loyalties in my
bullpen! You are officially on notice, Mr. Nunez!
Finally,
you must stay vigilant. If these guys were good enough to be closers,
they’d generally have that job already (there are some obvious
exceptions to this: Chamberlain, Okajima, and Broxton come to mind).
Today’s ace set-up man is often two consecutive blown saves away from
being buried in the fifth inning of a 14-2 blowout loss. Keep aware of
your players’ usage (inning and game situation), and don’t be afraid to
make a move when you need to (they’re only coming in non-hold
situations).
Well,
it’s simple, but that’s my strategy on holds. Until next time, keep
vigilant, and keep checking back for more baseball faceoffs!