Fantasy Baseball Manager of the Year

2009 Subscriber Q&A: Pitching, Speed and MOTY

March 24, 2009 — Subscribers are always encouraged and free to submit questions, thoughts or anecdotes to MOTY Talk. Periodically, when we feel a subscriber’s email would be helpful to other fantasy baseball fans, we’ll post it and MOTY’s response for all to read.

This one was submitted by Zach L., who has a pretty unique strategy and wants to know …

Q: “Can you help me perfect my strategy with the MOTY System?”

I’m playing in 5X5 Head-to-Head league, and my feeling is (since each category is essentially worth 1/10th of equation), for the most part the guys I play against overvalue offense (specifically HR / RBI), and undervalue pitching … here’s my strategy:

I’m drafting all pitching and SB’s. My thinking is, unless you focus on it, having 5-6 great SP’s and 3-4 great closers is tough, and anything you add to the equation that isn’t great waters down the overall product. So, my goal is to draft stud SP’s and closers at the expense of the elite offensive players (since they get evenly disbursed for the most part).

For offense, I focus exclusively on relative SB’s. I always make sure I get Chone Figgins and Russell Martin, because the gap between them and their peers (at their positions) is huge. I usually miss out on at least a few of the premium offensive players that happen to steal bases (Reyes, Sizemore, Upton), but I find that the highest projected pure stealers are often available very late, allowing me to focus on pitching. The one exception is Reyes – if I can get him in the 1st round, I do, and slot my picks down accordingly.

End result, I crush everyone in SB’s before they know what hit them, and my pitching projects out at best a runaway #1 and at worst a dead heat for second in all 5 categories.  I’m always 10th in HR’s and RBI’s, about middle of the pack in runs, and low in avg. But, if I’m virtually assured of 4 of the 6 categories I focus on, and I get the fifth one pretty often as well, all I’ve got to do is compete in my other category of strength, and try to steal away runs or even avg. once in a while.  Also, makes free agents easier for me, since I don’t have to weigh giving up HR or RBI production, and can just focus on upgrading SB’s.

If nothing else, it’s fun doing it different than everyone else does it.

Here’s how my last draft went (ESPN Money League) — team is projected over 400 steals (216 more than second place team), and 1st in all 5 pitching categories in my league:

Sorry, it’s (the question/set up) so long — so can you help me perfect my craft with your system?

Zach L.

A: Does the Pope wear a funny batting helmet?

Ahh, great question. And as I told Zach, did he ever come to the right place. (Same goes for you, now).

Although, I will add a caveat here I didn't offer Zach — I’m not a huge proponent of punting categories. Especially the power categories, the way he does (very unique). Or cornering categories to such a dominant degree that he wants to. Not that he’s wrong. Just different. Keep in mind though, especially in Head-to-Head play, you only have to win each category by “1”. Winning, for example, sb’s by 25 each week doesn’t earn you any bonus points. Though, it does put you in a position of strength when it comes time to wheel and deal.

But, it is Zach’s strategy. And like any strategy you might follow, the MOTY System can help you generate ranked draft lists based on the categories, and combinations of categories, you prefer.

The two MOTY features you want to use for finding such narrowly focused skill players are the MOTY Scope™ Advanced Stat Filters and the My Rosters watch lists. Using the combination of the two, you can quickly craft cheat sheets for your strategy.

For example, to find the best base stealers, set the MOTY Scope filters to the following settings:

Tabs:  Projections,  “MLB” (league)
Basic Filters:  “All Batters” (pos.),  “All Teams and Saved Rosters” (team)
Advanced Filter 1:  “sb greater than 14”
Advanced Filter 2:  “ab greater than 300”*
Advanced Filter 3:  “obp greater than .349”**

* (min. 300 at bats helps you avoid role player/pinch runner types).
** (you can’t steal bases if you don’t, first, get on base).

Next, hit “Apply Filter” and you’ll instantly get every player fitting all three criteria. Obviously, you can fiddle with the filters to your heart’s desire.

Once you have the results, you can sort them by any category header. Say, you’d like to not totally punt on hr’s — sort by homers to see all your “base stealers” who are projected to hit double digit bombs. Instantly, you see that result.

All good and fine if you have a great memory. But you don’t need one. You can save all the guys from your filtered/sorted results to a My Roster watch list. Just click the box next to each player’s name in the rankings, go up to the “Add Selected Players To” dropdown bar, select “A New Roster” and click “Save.” You’ll be asked to name the roster when you first create it, after which it’ll always appear in the dropdown until you delete it.

Keep filtering, sorting and saving until you have that cherry-picked watch list filled with all the guys you like.

Then “reset” the MOTY Scope filter and start a new filter — doing so by the roster you just created — from the “All Teams and Saved Rosters” dropdown in the MOTY Scope.

You instantly get rankings of every player you added to your watch list. You can then filter it even further, sort it any way you like, make a new, more-narrowly focused roster from the second round of filtering/sorting … the possibilities are limitless.

But the key is, at any point in time, you can print a cheat sheet of your results. Just click the little printer icon in the top right corner of the rankings table.

And you’re ready to go for your draft.

Just for the sake of argument, and curiosity, here are the stat totals of the team Zach drafted above prior to our discussion about using the MOTY Scope and My Roster options (stats based on MOTY Projections, updated 3/17/09):

Definitely, a powerful pitching staff. Though, Zach might want to find a few more wins down the road just to be safe. And he’s definitely going to run away with the stolen bases category. Pun intended.

Using the MOTY site tools as I describe them above, though, it should be pretty easy for Zach to draft some more power for his next team, forgoing just a few dozen steals — and being more competitive in one or two more offensive categories.

And, again,it’s not a strategy I myself would take. But if we all followed the same approach fantasy baseball wouldn’t be half as fun as it is. And in the end, no matter what strategy you use, you’ll get the most out of it using the MOTY System.

That’s it for this Talk. Be back soon with another.

Shawn

Questions, thoughts, cool stories of how the MOTY System has helped your fantasy baseball team? Drop us an email. Your comments might show up here in a future MOTY Talk.

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