Keithwcaniano's Blog

To those who think sports, especially fantasy sports, is stupid, I rebut:

Two Epic Weeks in September 2007:

I play one fantasy baseball league a year.  I won my leagues in 2005 and 2006, was unlucky and finished second in 2004, and I am not going to comment on 2008.  While statistically the best team I ever assembled was my 2006 squad, my 2007 championship was certainly the most satisfying.

I finished one game over .500 and 34.5 games out of first place in my league in 2007, meaning I barely qualified for the six team playoff in a head-to-head league.  This meant, to win the championship, I had to defeat the 3rd, 1st, and 2nd ranked teams in successive weeks.  To win, the players on my team need to statistically outperform my opponent’s in the ten categories at the end of the week.  That my team finished 34.5 behind the top team meant my team was not very good at doing this.

Of the ten categories, five are for hitting and five are for pitching.  The hitting categories are fairly straightforward.  Every team can start up to nine offensive players every day.  The goal is to accumulate more runs, runs batted in, stolen bases, and home runs over the course of a week while producing a high batting average.  As four of the categories take a total, rather than a mean, it makes sense to start nine players every day and hope for the best.  How a team performs in hitting usually reflects a combination of skill and luck on the part of the owner.

Pitching is different.  The five pitching categories are wins, strikeouts, saves,  ERA, and WHIP.  Wins and strikeouts are fairly straightforward, the more you have, the better you are.  To get saves, you need specialists who close baseball games, and these are usually very hard to acquire, if you lack them, in fantasy baseball leagues in September.  You are allotted seven slots for pitchers, meaning, in theory, one could start seven pitchers a day, everyday, and be guaranteed the wins and strikeout titles.  This would render fantasy baseball pitching categories contingent upon who had the fastest internet connection at 12:00 a.m.  Yahoo prevents this from occurring by imposing a cap on total innings pitched for the year while also including two categories that offset this plan which reflect quality of pitching rather than quantity: ERA and WHIP.  ERA is earned run average per inning while WHIP reflects the number of walks/hits a pitcher allows per inning.  The fewer baserunners and runs you allow, the better pitcher you are.   A fantasy owner who grabs marginal pitchers off the scrap heap every day will invariably lose these categories to an owner who devoted attention and resources to the position in the draft and trades.

In other words, a team lacking good starting pitching is probably fated to lose WHIP and ERA.  A team without superstar closers risks losing saves every week as well.

Such a team was my team in 2007.  Injuries and bad luck left my fortunes in a terminal condition as the playoffs loomed.  Surprisingly, I made it to the championship game by edging out my first two opponents.  Unfortunately, two days into the two week championship round, I was struggling.  My ERA and WHIP were probably irreperably high, given the quality of my opponent’s starters, and my offense was not stalling.

I am many things, but I am not a quitter.  I realized I could guarantee myself a victory in two pitching categories by signing three or four starters every day for the remainder of the playoffs.  This would mean he would have a 3-2 edge going into the hitting, where I would have to hope my crappy team could take at least three categories, including batting average, which is the tiebreaker.  Not outside the realm of possibility, and certainly more likely than standing pat and hoping for the best.

After several days of signing/releasing marginal starting pitchers, I had a lead in wins and strikeouts, much to the consternation of my opponent, who voiced his objections on the discussion board, claiming this is not how fantasy baseball championships should be played.  Well, he got lucky that his starting pitching stayed healthy, I reasoned, and the league permits me to pursue this strategy, which offered me my only chance at winning.

In a fit of stupidity, my opponent surrendered his insurmountable advantage in ERA/WHIP to take me on in Wins and Strikeouts.  Rather than enjoy his 3-2 advantage in pitching, my opponent went all in hoping to sweep the field.  In other words, four categories were soon up for grabs, and, more or less, dependent upon luck.  As he signed marginal starters who suffered terrible losses, his ERA and WHIP crept higher while mine steadily lowered until, by the middle of the second week, we were virtually tied in four pitching categories.

I ended up winning WHIP, ERA, Ws, Ks, Rs, and SBs that week, for a 6-4 triumph and my third straight championship.  My awful pitching actually won me  my league because I neutralized my opponent’s advantages there and scared him into an arms race where he sacrificed his control over the outcome.  Had my opponent not gotten greedy, he would have won ERA/WHIP, and the title, as he would have had the tie breaker in batting average.

Ahead to 2009:

After an embarassing showing in 2008, I returned resolute to recapture my league this year.  I went into a draft with a plan.  My team is only going to win six categories a week, but we will win them EVERY WEEK, or put up a good effort trying.  Those cateogires are stolen bases, runs, batting average, wins, strike outs, and saves.   Ten of my first twelve picks were hitters.  The other two were closers.  The hitters were not chosen arbitrarily based on what position I needed, but were picked for consistency in stolen bases, runs, and batting average, in other words I had a team of speedy lead-off hitters: Jacoby Ellsbury, Chone Figgins, B.J. Upton, Derek Jeter, and high average guys like Hunter Pence, Bobby Abreu, Albert Pujols, and Russell Martin.  I drafted a few starters in the closing rounds, but built up my bench with high average guys with multiple position ellgibility, meaining players who I could start at different spots rather than fixed ones, which are hard to find.

In my first week, my starters tanked and my closers were awful and I abanoned any hope of winning ERA and WHIP.   I decided to abandon any attempts at attaining these wins, save by chance, and put my faith in my capacity to sign pitchers facing the Padres, Nationals, and Pirates or a slumping team, every day, and shoot straight-up for wins/strikeouts every week.  I have won those most weeks, as well as stolen bases every week save one, (the goofy postall star half week which is a grab bag) and runs/batting average most weeks.  Home runs and Rbis are harder to come by, but I got lucky Pujols is having his best season ever and several of my lower draft picks, like Robinson Cano, Felipe Lopez, and Brandon Inge are exceeding expectation.

One of my trades has gone badly this year.  Having too many outfielders, I traded Bobby Abreu straight up for Carlos Guillen.  Guillen has been hurt all year while Abreu has hit over .300 with high marks in SBs, RBIS, and Rs.  That said, I would have had nowhere to play him, had I retained him.

I recently made a controversial trade, sending Chone Figgins and an underperforming Alex Rios to an opponent for  Mark Teixiera and Clint Barmes.  Teixeria is strong across the board save in stolen bases while Barmes is quielty having a solid year, and is elligible at all the infield positions save 1b.  Figgins, of course, is solid for runs, average and stolen bases, as is Rios, who also has displayed power in the past, but not this year.

The knock against Teixiera is that he only plays 1b, which is currently occupied on my squad by Albert Pujols, which means Teixiera is locked into my “utility” spot.  While this is not bad in and of itself, the benefits Teixera brings me might not be enough when faced against a team that is strong in RBIs and HRs, which could prove fatal to my chances if my stolen base guys all slump that week in the playoffs.  A hot Chone Figgins can carry a team in stolen bases for a week, and in losing him,  I jeopardize my master plan.

Another Teixiera problem is that he plays for the Yankees.  One third of my line up is now composed of Yankees, which means if they slump as a team in September, I am in trouble.  This probably won’t happen as the Yankees will be in the playoff hunt and play in a hitters park and have the best line-up in baseball, but its still a worry.

On the plus side, I am more competitve with Pujols and Teixera in my line-up, especially if one goes on a tear for a week in September, which both are prone to do, in categories I should have no business winning.  I am also better off having Barmes than Rios on my team as Rios was deadweight who barely contributed while Barmes can spell a slumping player at a number of positions and plays in Coors Field, which is the best hitter’s park in the country.

Also, Figgins only outperforms Texiera in runs and stolen bases, two categories I almost always have sizable wins in each week.  While getting 12 stolen bases a week is nice, I can usually win with 5 or 6, so Figgins does little more than run up the score, provided my other players are not slumping.

On the pitching side, I have five closers pitching every day and almost always win saves, as well as wins and strikeouts, so I feel I am well positioned for a run at the title, provided the Yankees do not slump and neither does my stolen base department.

I am confident I can win in September in this league and look forward to implementing more fully my strategy in the 2010 draft, especially as I am actually following baseball closely this year and will have a good sense of who is good and who isn’t.
Oh yeah, I have a thesis to finish.  Fantasy baseball is infinitely more interesting though.

One bad inning from a closer and one bad start can cripple a team for the whole week.