This article is part of our The Z Files series.
Know thy rules. It's the first commandment of fantasy baseball, yet it's surprising how many don't know them. Furthermore, those that do know the rules fail to take advantage of quirks. Granted, most leagues are vanilla, but some add nuanced toppings, sweetening the taste for unique and satiating strategies.
Earlier in the week, I was invited to join the SiriusXM Hosts 2 League. The commissioner reminded everyone it's a standard 5x5 league with 12 teams. No problem I thought, I can draft this in my sleep.
A little while later, we were informed it's a daily moves league.
No! I hate daily leagues!
It's not so much the work, that's not a problem. My beef with daily leagues is they provide a safety net for risky players, especially pitchers. Eric Lauer has a two-start week, on the road in Colorado and at home versus the Giants. Hmm. Do I start him in a weekly league, crossing my fingers he survives the Coors tilt? In a daily league, there's no such difficult decision.
The other issue is the managerial control that so many champion as a "strategy" is just common sense. Is it really next-level thinking to sit Ryan O'Hearn against Chris Sale while activating C.J. Cron facing Matt Moore?
Then it hit me. While I prefer playing in weekly leagues, since more emphasis is placed on the season-long player evaluation where you need to endure both the good and the bad, participating in this league allows me to dust
Know thy rules. It's the first commandment of fantasy baseball, yet it's surprising how many don't know them. Furthermore, those that do know the rules fail to take advantage of quirks. Granted, most leagues are vanilla, but some add nuanced toppings, sweetening the taste for unique and satiating strategies.
Earlier in the week, I was invited to join the SiriusXM Hosts 2 League. The commissioner reminded everyone it's a standard 5x5 league with 12 teams. No problem I thought, I can draft this in my sleep.
A little while later, we were informed it's a daily moves league.
No! I hate daily leagues!
It's not so much the work, that's not a problem. My beef with daily leagues is they provide a safety net for risky players, especially pitchers. Eric Lauer has a two-start week, on the road in Colorado and at home versus the Giants. Hmm. Do I start him in a weekly league, crossing my fingers he survives the Coors tilt? In a daily league, there's no such difficult decision.
The other issue is the managerial control that so many champion as a "strategy" is just common sense. Is it really next-level thinking to sit Ryan O'Hearn against Chris Sale while activating C.J. Cron facing Matt Moore?
Then it hit me. While I prefer playing in weekly leagues, since more emphasis is placed on the season-long player evaluation where you need to endure both the good and the bad, participating in this league allows me to dust off a favorite ploy in the format.
What follows is more the thought process behind plotting a game plan than it is the execution of same, with respect to the players selected. It may seem late in the spring for a piece of this nature, but the first weekend of the season remains the most popular draft time. Plus, if you've already drafted and are intrigued with the concept, it's quite possible to make some trades, ending up in the same place.
Big-picture wise, there are several considerations in a league with daily moves.
1. Innings or games limit
Leagues with restricted moves require some extra planning since there's a finite number of activations. For example, if strikeouts is a category in a league with an innings cap, the category is essentially K/9, rendering hurlers with strong ratios but lower whiffs less useful.
2. Frequency of waiver or free agent pickups
This feeds into the grinding element of daily formats. Some are first come, first serve. Others run a nightly FAAB. Sometimes, released players are placed on waivers for an extended period, then made available to the claiming team with the highest priority. The point being, a strategy entailing frequent moves requires a process lending itself to easy acquisition of available players.
3. Size of reserve and IL
While more reserve and IL spots avail more players to stream from your roster, they also thin the available player pool. How relevant this is folds in the first two considerations. If there's a games or innings max, shorter reserve lists aren't as much of an issue. Similarly, if players can be acquired on a daily basis, small reserve lists aren't a problem, assuming you're willing to drop someone for each pickup and not stash them for later in the season.
To frame the SiriusXM Hosts league, there are six reserves and five IL spots. Non-rostered players can be acquired once-a-week via FAAB. There are no games or innings limits.
With that as a backdrop, the decision was a no-brainer. My first foray into a host league was going to feature an out-of-the-box approach, though one others deploy. That is, I'm not claiming to be the originator.
As valuable as Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom are, they're useless five or six days a week in a daily league. At the time they're likely drafted, the board will be stacked with hitters expected to play nearly every day. This screams pass on early pitching while focusing on big bats.
Here's the key. If ace starters aren't as useful in daily leagues, since they only pitch once or twice a week, why not load up on dominant middle relievers who work multiple times a week, providing a plethora of whiffs and ratio support? In addition, if arms from good teams are targeted, there's a chance for some vultured wins along with the possibility of the occasional save. Not to mention, some of the setup men may evolve into a closer.
Repeating the disclaimer, the names aren't as important as the concept, I drafted David Robertson, Chad Green, Josh James, Seth Lugo, Richard Rodriguez and Dellin Betances as dominant relievers. Betances starts the year on the IL, but that's OK since the league has a separate IL so I'm not tying up a valuable reserve spot. Robertson is included since I have a pair of closers in Aroldis Chapman and Felipe Vazquez, so if Gabe Kapler goes with a committee approach, it's fine.
To flesh out my personal bias, averaging four projection sets (Mastersball, RotoWire, Baseball HQ and The Bat, this sextet is expected to provide the following:
| IP | W | SV | ERA | WHIP | K |
| 452 | 24 | 28 | 3.27 | 1.16 | 553 |
Looking at the four sets, some of the pitchers in this range include Carlos Carrasco, Gerrit Cole, Trevor Bauer, Walker Buehler and Zack Greinke. In other words, I drafted two-plus top-15 pitchers without expending the commensurate draft picks. Instead, I concentrated on bats, most of which are bell cows at their position, requiring fewer reserve hitters to make sure the lineup consists of as many active batters as possible. As alluded to, this ploy also enabled the rostering of a couple of dominant closers. Chapman and Vazquez provide a plethora of punchouts, along with more ratio support, to facilitate the streaming of starters.
Speaking of which, let's do some more math. This is the sort of thing you can do in your leagues to help identify contrarian strategies. The typical staff in a league of this nature will accrue 1400 innings, meaning I'm about 950 short. This means I need about 35 frames a week, equating to streaming six or seven starters between FAAB runs. This is quite manageable. I'll have the aforementioned six middle relievers, plus two closers active. That leaves a spot for a starting pitcher. Since five or six are needed each week, four or five reserve spots will be occupied by a starting pitcher. This hinders hitter replacements, more on that in a minute.
With respect to pitching, hopefully, a couple of the starters will have two favorable starts each week, availing a reserve spot for a bat. The key is not getting married to fringe starters, thus dropping them without consternation. It's OK to carry a couple guys every week, but by and large the starters should be fungible. To that end, I drafted Rick Porcello, Yusei Kikuchi, Ross Stripling, Rich Hill, Jakob Junis and Tyler Skaggs. Hill, along with Betances, opens the year on the IL, in essence lengthening my reserve list. Porcello should help with wins and whiffs, with the middle relief foundation buffering his volatile ratios. Kikuchi, Stripling and Hill were all discounted since they're not assured of 32 starts. With this approach, that doesn't matter. I'll gladly take the discount to add a arm better than his draft spot. Skaggs and Junis are the guys with good matchups this week that will likely be drops come the first FAAB. There's a well thought out method to this madness.
Circling back to hitting, there will be many weeks with only one or two bench players to float in on Mondays and Thursday, the typical MLB travel days. To help minimize the negative effect, hitters almost 100 percent assured of playing should be the focus. Additionally, as many batters with multiple-position eligibility should be rostered, to facilitate finding a spot for the reserves. Examples of this type of hitter are Javier Baez, Whit Merrifield and Asdrubal Cabrera, all of whom are able to cover several positions. They're soon to be joined by Daniel Murphy. J.T. Realmuto and Mike Zunino were the backstops, in large part because they'll be among the most used receivers. Isiah Kiner-Falefa is currently a reserve since he can slide in at more than just catcher.
As the season wears on, I'll adjust the composition of the reserve list as dictated by the standings. If having fewer hitter bench players is a detriment to counting stats, I'll drop a middle reliever. If the pitching plan isn't working, I'll deal for an ace. Admittedly, this approach takes work, but winning isn't supposed to be easy, right?
For those interested, the entire draft board is located here.
Again, please don't view this as the standard review of a so-called expert's team, but rather an idea on how to study the rules and design an attack to maximize points potential within those boundaries. As always, I'm happy to answer questions on this thinking, the team or anything fantasy baseball in the comments.
