When asked about playing fantasy baseball, most knowledgable players and "experts" would agree that it's most similar to being a general manager in fantasy baseball, drafting players on draft day, making personnel moves, adding and dropping players, all for filling out a roster. Being a MANAGER of a baseball squad is less similar to this fine game we call fantasy baseball, because you don't make the in-game decisions required of a Joe Torre or Tony LaRussa, like inserting people into lineups, playing people in different positions, pulling starting pitchers, calling in the closer.......OR DO YOU?????
In this segment, I argue that (How I started my write-on essay, btw) managing starting pitching is a crucial element of fantasy baseball, and I show you want's the secret to starting, sitting, adding, dropping, and basically using your best judgment in your starting pitchers.
1. Always start your aces. If you drafted tim lincecum, johann santana, roy halladay, jake peavy, and other guys of the same caliber, put them in the SP slot and leave them there forever. You might think, "oh, look, he's starting in Yankee stadium today against a sick pinstripe lineup, maybe I should bench them." Nope.......you gotta start your studs, if only for the K's, which I will get to in a second.
2. Know the type of pitcher you want. In roto leagues, it is crucially important that you rack up W's and K's while keeping your ERA and WHIP down. These categories have degrees of "controllability," or variability is another way of putting it. W's is the least controllable of all 4 cats, cuz you might think a team is good and have them be a major flop, or even if the team is good they give no run support to your fantasy pitcher (ahem, Mets, I'm looking squarely at you in regard to Johann). What you want to do is look at the other 3 categories, which are roughly the same in terms of control.
3.) DRAFT THE STRIKEOUT PITCHERS!!!! Seriously, unless there's some strong deficiencies with them like they walk 5 batters a game (Joba 2009) or their career ERA is over 5.00 (Jorge De La Rosa). Not only do K guys rack up the totals for your category, their strikeouts are GUARANTEED outs, instead of balls put into play that may or may not reach a fielder. If Out of the roughly 18 outs a pitcher gets each time out, 8 of them are K's, that's a great percentage cuz u know you're not rolling the dice on every out. Make sense? Lemme continue.
4.) Given two guys w/ the same resume, go w/ the NL guy. AL guys historically get hit more because of facing a DH instead of a pitcher (not just a 9-hole guy vs. a pitcher because guys like David Ortiz are monsters that don't exist in the NL). A good trick is to pick up a hurler who just moved to the NL from the AL last year. Not only have most hitters not seen him in the new league, they have the pitcher batting. Exhibit A: Javier Vazquez 2009. And vice versa, don't pick up new AL pitchers coming from the NL. Exhibit B: Josh Beckett 2004.
5.) Know when to sub-in and sub-out your pitchers. This is most like what a manager does. Before every matchup, see who your pitcher is playing against. Look at the matchup. Make the smart play. If your pitcher has a career 10.00 ERA against a team in 7 starts, tread carefully cuz something is up. If your pitcher is an NL-pitcher pitching during interleague play going to an AL park, be cautious, cuz that's just another hazard right there. If your pitcher is a historic fly-ball pitcher going into a cavern like new Shea Stadium or Pro Player Stadium (Marlins' park), give them the benefit of the doubt. Many people don't even take these things into account and it costs them.
6.) If you make the statistically correct play all the time, it will work out in the long run. We've all been there, we make what we think is an absolutely genius start for a guy, and he gets shelled for 10 Hits, 3 walks, 7 ER in two and a third. Or we notice our guy is facing Boston who's on a 9-game winning streak at Fenway where our pitcher is 0-6 lifetime, and decide to take it easy, but he goes 8 innings of 1-run ball with 4 hits. My head is still dizzy from banging it against walls when those things happen. But every time one of the above happens, there's a smart play or two that worked out that I remember less. We always remember our failures better. However, baseball's a long season. A standard Yahoo! league has 1250 IP available for you, more starts than you can deal with. It balances out, and more to your favor. The worst thing to do is to get thrown off by a setback when we made the smart play, then make stupid plays at random and get off a pattern. Easy to fall into temptation, more rewarding if you lay off.
7.) Stream pitchers. Don't be afraid of signing pitchers to 1-day contracts. Take him in for one start, release the next. (Some leagues don't allow this, so make sure it's available in your league). Very profitable if you play it right and are low on innings due to injuries or just drafted more batters (which IMO is the correct move). Nothing feels better than having a pitcher w/ a 0.00ERA w/ a 0.50 WHIP and a W for the whole season cuz you streamed correctly.
8.) Don't ever start Livan Hernandez ever. This is sort of a cumulation of the lessons, plus the fact Livan is just bad. He's a junk pitcher.....not overpowering stuff, relies on getting people to make weak contact, stays in the game long cuz he eats innings. When you hear any of the above for any pitcher, stay away. The last one may seem weird, and some great pitchers do eat innings, but the last thing you want is a guy who consistently throws 6 or 7 IP, but gives up 6 ER's in the process. O, he's eating innings all right, but he's eating your ERA and WHIP hopes in the process. Guys like Livan walk a lot of batters cuz they nibble at the plate, can't get out of jams cuz they don't strike people out, and are at the mercy of their defense (of which the 2009 Mets coincidentally have none). NEVER have Livan, never. Except in a reverse league (you want the worst stats possible for your team- true story, people actually play it).
Use these lessons wisely.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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