LIVE Fantasy Baseball — Initial Strategy Hypotheses (Head-to-Head Points League)

 

After the fantasy football season ended, I realized I was going to be missing fantasy sports. Once the summer comes around, baseball is the only major sport on the calendar, and since I’ve been trying to follow baseball more closely again the last few years, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to try to play fantasy baseball. So I signed up for a public fantasy baseball league on ESPN. This is the first time that I’ve played fantasy baseball of any sort since I played on Sports Illustrated for Kids’ website when I was younger.

Given that I haven’t played fantasy baseball in a very long time, and I only did a brief amount of research before joining the league and drafting my team, I realized that I have some initial hypotheses about the strategies that I’m going to employ throughout the fantasy baseball season. Given my lack of playing experience and research so far, many of these could end up being off-base, but I wanted to document some of them so that I can check back during the season and see how some of the strategies turned out and outline new strategies that I picked up that worked better.

League Rules

I already drafted my team (I had the 7th pick in the first round of the snake draft) and here are the rules and format of the league:

• 10 team, weekly head-to-head points league, with 22 regular season games
• 10 pitching starts max per weekly matchup
• 19 player roster, comprised of 16 starters, 3 bench players, and up to 3 injured list spots (IL), with the starter requirements outlined below:
• 1 catcher, first baseman, second baseman, third baseman, shortstop
• 1 utility player (any position, including DH)
• 3 outfielders
• 7 pitchers (can be starters or relievers)
• Lineup changes can be made daily
• Waiver claims can be made daily
• 4 teams make the playoffs (top 2 from each division), with 2 weeks per matchup round in the playoffs.
• The scoring system is shown below:

League Scoring System

My Initial Strategy Hypotheses

My Draft Strategy

• In the draft, I focused on selecting the best player available, as long as it was not at a position that I had already reached the starting lineup limit for.
• I drafted starting pitchers with my first 2 picks (Spencer Strider then Zack Wheeler), since I feel like the league scoring system gives you a greater chance of piling up large point totals with starting pitchers compared to batters, even though the starting pitchers will only start once, twice max, during each weekly matchup. If a starting pitcher completes 6 innings, gives up 2 earned runs on 6 hits/walks, records 6 strikeouts, and earns the win, they accrue 16 points. I compared that 16 point pitching performance to a hitter going 2 for 4 with a double, single, 1 RBI, and 1 run scored and accruing 5 points. I know that the hitter has the benefit of having the chance to play about 6 games in a weekly matchup, but I feel like starting pitchers give me a greater chance of scoring large amounts of points. And as I’ll discuss below, to take advantage of this, I plan on streaming as many starting pitchers as I can each week to maximize the amount of pitching starts that I have in each weekly game.
• I think I should have been more focused on selecting players with high home run ability. A solo home run is worth 6 points, which feels significant. As the season progresses, I’ll keep an eye out for any surprise power hitters that are on waivers.
• I aimed to draft players on good teams, as the starting pitchers will have more opportunities to record wins, relievers will have more opportunities for holds and saves, and batters will get more at bats as their teams’ cycle through their lineup more often.
• I only drafted 2 relief pitchers (Raisel Iglesias and Evan Phillips), but the ones I did draft, I wanted to make sure that they were closers, since saves are worth 5 points. I will keep an eye on new closers for teams that come up on waivers as the season progresses, especially since these days the closer roles can be very fluid for teams.

My Initial In-Season Strategy

• While doing some research, I read that on ESPN standard leagues, if you have 9 of your weekly allowable pitching starts completed at the end of one day, then in the next day you can start as many starting pitchers as you can, which would allow you to go over the weekly maximum of 10 pitching starts. The article said that this is the only way that you are able to go over the starting pitcher start limit in a weekly matchup. This seems like a huge advantage, so ideally, I will end a day with 9 completed pitching starts, and then the next day I will start as many starting pitchers as possible that are due to start that day in my 7 pitcher starting lineup spots. To do this, I will look to pick up any starting pitchers expected to start that day on waivers as my current roster composition will allow.
• Then, if I go over the 10 pitching start limit in a week with any extra days left in my matchup, I will drop any starting pitchers that I picked up for streaming purposes and pick up relief pitchers to put into the pitching spots in my starting lineup, since they have a chance to score points if they pitch and they do not count towards the pitching start limit.
• To maximize roster flexibility to ensure that I can deploy my strategy to get as many pitching starts as I can, I will make sure I’m utilizing the 3 IL spots I have (which seems very valuable, since I’m used to only having 1 IR spot in fantasy football), and to make sure I’m being creative about which position I start position players at. If players are eligible to play multiple positions, that gives me more optionality in my lineup and roster construction, which is always valuable in fantasy sports.
• I feel like it will be challenging only having 3 bench positions and 16 starting lineup spots. I’m used to having a larger bench in fantasy football (7 bench spots and 9 starting lineup spots). Given the small bench, and my strategy to get as many starts from pitchers as I can in each matchup, I see my bench being primarily made up of pitchers and not position players. If I have a player that is not playing a game one day, and they are not essential to my team, I envision dropping them to pick up a position player that is playing that day and could be used in my daily lineup, or a relief pitcher for a chance at some points if I am over my starting pitching limit, or a starting pitcher if I am under my weekly start limit, as I discussed above.
• This is a small thing, but something that I see as a clear edge. The week one matchup runs from March 20 to March 31, and the two game Dodgers Padres series in South Korea that starts on March 20 counts towards the week one matchup. The Dodgers and Padres will be the only teams playing on March 20 and March 21. Then, all other teams begin their seasons on March 28, and the Dodgers and Padres also start playing again on March 28. Dodgers and Padres players will play 6 games in the week one fantasy matchup, while other teams will only play a maximum of 4 games. Given this, I will aim to have as many Dodgers and Padres players in my daily lineups for their March 20 and 21 games as I can, as these are essentially free bonus opportunities for points for your team. To take advantage of this, I moved a pitcher to one of my IL spots and I picked up a Dodgers starting outfielder, and then I dropped a pitcher that I drafted in the last round that I don’t need immediately and picked up another Dodgers starting outfielder. I put both of these Dodgers outfielders into my March 20 and March 21 daily lineups so that I can take advantage of these bonus games. After these first 2 South Korea games, I will reassess my roster to see if I will still keep these Dodgers players, but I will most likely drop them to pick up more pitchers (starters or relievers), to play out my pitching strategy that I discussed above. After the South Korea games, all the teams will be playing a maximum of 4 games to finish out the first weekly matchup, so the Dodgers and Padres players no longer have any bonus value.

My initial bottom line strategy hypothesis is that I see fantasy baseball as a volume and opportunity driven game, with a focus on having good starting pitching to pile up large point outings. The more at bats your players get daily, the more starts from pitchers you get in a week, and then the more innings you get from relievers in a week after you reach your starting pitcher limit, I think the higher likelihood that you win your weekly matchup.

I’m looking forward to Opening Day and I’ll check in during the season to see how my initial hypotheses and strategies are playing out and what I’ve learned along the way!

Share this post