March 2, 2010

2010 Draft Prep: Building a Rotisserie winner

By Scott White | Fantasy Writer
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These strategies apply specifically to Rotisserie leagues. For Head-to-Head strategies or auction strategies, check out the guides specific to those formats.

What if you began the season with Prince Fielder, Ryan Howard, Aaron Hill, Jason Bay, Adam Dunn, Dan Uggla and Carlos Pena all on the same team. You'd like your chances of winning, right?

Maybe if you played in a Head-to-Head league, where all those homers would lead to mad, mad points. But in a Rotisserie league, you might have some lingering concerns.

And you should. Scoring is entirely relative in Rotisserie. You get points based on where you rank in each statistical category, which puts a limit on the number of points you can score from any one statistic. And that limit, assuming you play in a standard 12-team league, is 12. All the home runs in the world won't change it. You could lead the category by three or 300 -- you could even set an all-time record -- and you'd still get only 12 points.

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Hey, you can't rank any higher than first. Try as you might, you can't.

That seemingly fundamental idea is important because it changes the way you construct your team. Every statistic comes with a cost, and that cost doesn't change no matter how much of the statistic you have. The change comes in the way you allocate your resources: It's not just a matter of how good a player is, but what he does. If you invest too much in one thing and not another, you'll end up treading water.

It's about balance -- an even distribution across the board. Getting eight points in two categories is better than getting 12 in one and one in the other. The juggling act sounds tricky and in some ways backward from the straightforward get-as-many-points-as-possible approach of Head-to-Head play, but when you look past the gimmick and separate the few worthwhile considerations from all the distractions, you'll end up appreciating Rotisserie for, above all, its simplicity.

Maintaining the delicate balance

If nothing else, Rotisserie gives you the opportunity to zero in on just a handful of stats, eliminating all the peripherals that still matter in Head-to-Head leagues.

For hitters, you can restrict your focus to batting average, home runs, RBI, runs scored and stolen bases (for pitchers, it's wins, ERA, WHIP, strikeouts and saves), at least in 5x5 leagues. Sure, other stats come into play in 6x6 leagues, 9x9 leagues and everything else in between, but generally speaking, only the five categories matter, meaning no doubles, triples or walks.

Which is good news for Michael Bourn.

Bourn, of course, has added value in Rotisserie leagues because of his domination in one particular category. His 61 steals ranked second in all of baseball last year, which makes a difference when so few stats have an impact on the standings. In fact, I'd argue it's one of only two stats that really does make a difference.

You heard me right. I've found a way to narrow your focus even more, as if the 5x5 structure didn't do it enough already. Not all stats were created equally, even if they have an equal impact on the standings. Players have more control over some than others.

I'm talking about the ability-driven stats, the home runs and stolen bases -- the ones you can predict better from year to year and the ones that, in an indirect way, determine the opportunity-driven stats like RBI and runs scored. As long as you balance those, everything else will fall into place.

Think about it. Players who hit home runs generally bat in the middle of the lineup and drive in more runs. Players who steal bases generally bat at the top of the lineup and score more runs. The exceptions are few and well-documented and probably not the kind of players you'd want anyway because they'd throw off that delicate balance you hope to maintain.

Hey, if you can juggle RBI and runs scored along with everything else on Draft Day, more power to you. But in the heat of the moment, with the clock winding down and the beads of sweat collecting on your forehead, why make life harder on yourself? Players who hit home runs will drive in runs, and players who steal bases will score runs. It's practically mathematical law. The only thing standing in their way is opportunity, which shouldn't be an issue for the ones you'd consider drafting in mixed leagues. Any expected loss of at-bats would show up in the rankings.

Of course, that mathematical law doesn't incorporate batting average, which I see as a special case. If I had to categorize it, I'd obviously put it with the ability-driven stats, but to me, it's a distant third on the list because of its unpredictability from year to year. The typical player has the capacity to hit within 20 points of his career batting average any given year. That number can vary based on strikeout rate -- or contact rate, to put it a more telling way -- but even Ichiro Suzuki has fluctuated from .310 to .350 during his career. That's a big difference. Why invest highly in a statistic that can vary by so much?

You might as well focus on home runs and stolen bases and let the batting average come naturally. Let's face it: The best players, the ones you'd consider drafting in the early rounds, pretty much all have the capacity to hit .300 anyway, and a .285 mark is usually all you'd need to win the category. As long as you don't load up on a bunch Ryan Howard, Mark Reynolds, Adam Dunn and Dan Uggla types -- players with low contact rates, essentially -- you have a good chance of ranking in the upper third of the category.

Again, no need for overkill. You wouldn't want to deprive yourself in other categories by drafting all the Chris Coghlans and Todd Heltons of the world. As long as you don't get stingy with the high-end talent, you'll accidently come away with a good batting average.

OK, but what about pitchers?

And how do you get stingy with high-end hitters? Well, you go after pitchers instead, which might explain why I've so conveniently overlooked them until now.

Look, I can scream about the dangers of early-round pitching until I turn blue in the face, but in Rotisserie leagues, I don't have to. People have already caught on. Only five of the first 30 players off the board are starting pitchers compared to 11 of the first 30 in Head-to-Head leagues.

Why the difference? Maybe Fantasy owners recognize starting pitchers can help in only four categories, with saves exclusive to relief pitchers. Maybe they've always heard starting pitchers should go later in Rotisserie leagues and don't want to break with tradition.

Or maybe they've noticed the difference in roster distribution -- you know, the fact a traditional Rotisserie lineup uses five more hitters than a traditional Head-to-Head lineup.

Granted, it also uses two more pitchers, but that uneven ratio is a backbreaker. With so many hitters in play, the talent thins out faster than you'd believe, meaning if you don't stock up on hitting early, you might have to resort to a part-time player.

And that's how you fall behind in those opportunity-driven stats.

But to me, that reason is secondary. The unnatural demands placed on a pitcher's arm make the position susceptible to slumps and injuries. By drafting an early-round pitcher, not only do you expose yourself to that unpredictability, but you also forfeit the relative predictability of a high-end hitter, the kind that will keep you competitive in batting average and possibly give you both home runs and stolen bases instead of forcing you to rely on one-category specialists later in the draft.

Besides, with all the busts that develop from that inevitability, you want to take advantage of the reciprocal breakouts -- the surplus of middle-round hurlers who go on to finish in the top 20. They emerge every year, and you can find them, as with hitters, by focusing on the ability-driven statistics.

For pitchers, strikeouts take the cake as the rawest, purest indicator of dominance -- the one Rotisserie stat completely removed from outside influence. WHIP comes in second, though more by measuring walk rate than anything else. Because a pitcher achieves those numbers independently, they shouldn't change much from year to year, meaning if you target them, you can pretty much guarantee you'll finish high in those two categories. And it's not like you won't finish high in wins and ERA. If a pitcher with the right ability-driven statistics -- meaning a high strikeout rate and a low WHIP -- gets a little luck along the way, his wins and ERA will follow suit, which explains why I like Matt Garza, Ricky Nolasco and Gavin Floyd so much this year.

Go ahead. Compare them to Josh Beckett. They don't need much to close the gap.

Could someone else in your league scoop up Tim Lincecum, Zack Greinke and Johan Santana, miraculously avoid injuries with all of them, and beat you in those four categories? Sure, it could happen. But that would mean he overcompensated in one area, costing himself in another. Hey, you'd probably beat him by a bigger margin in the hitting categories. Again, it's not like you need to finish first in everything. All you can do is take care of what you can control and let everything else fall into place.

It usually does.

You don't get style points for saves

Of course, no discussion on opportunity-driven stats would be complete without mentioning saves, a stat so dependent on opportunities that the opportunities themselves become a stat.

Ability couldn't have less to do with it. A manager decides to go to a certain reliever with a three-run lead in the ninth inning and decides to keep going back to him. No matter how well or how poorly he pitches, only the player the manager chooses has an opportunity for saves.

Naturally, the manager's choice could change if the reliever fails in enough of those opportunities, so ability does have some indirect impact on saves. But generally speaking, if a reliever doesn't have the ability to survive the opportunities, he won't get the opportunities.

So knowing that, knowing how little control a closer has over saves, why would you invest so much more in one than another?

Some people will. No matter the format, Jonathan Broxton, Jonathan Papelbon and Mariano Rivera will go off the board early. They have big names. They have big ratios. They play for some of the best, most-publicized teams in baseball.

But how much better are they really?

Let's not kid ourselves: You draft closers for saves. The best ones might have stellar ERAs and WHIPs, but your starting pitchers will more or less spell your fate in those categories considering all the innings they pitch. Besides, just about any closer will improve those ratios even if not quite to the same extent.

So if the elite closers won't carry you in those categories, what else separates them from the rest of the pack? You could argue they get more saves, but do they? Rivera ranked third with his 44, but Broxton ranked 12th with his 36. You could argue they get more consistent saves, but in Rotisserie leagues, where only the final tally means anything, why would the timing of the saves matter? You could argue they more often record a high number of saves, and that may be true, but is the difference enough to make Broxton a sixth-round pick and Andrew Bailey a 13th-round pick? I don't think so.

And even if it is, even if Broxton, Papelbon and Rivera rank one, two and three in saves and finish 10 ahead of everyone else, couldn't you negate that advantage just by starting an extra closer?

Rotisserie affords you that opportunity. You get nine pitcher slots and can use them on however many closers you want. And guess what? With only 30 closers available in the majors, not everyone gets to have three.

To a certain extent, quantity matters more than quality at the position. A Fantasy owner could invest in Broxton and Papelbon early, forfeiting two elite hitters in the process, and still rank behind the guy who drafted Joakim Soria, Billy Wagner and Rafael Soriano in the middle to late rounds.

Why make the sacrifice when you don't have to? As long as you end up with three closers who stay healthy and keep their jobs, you'll compete for saves. You might even win the category. It's that easy.

Then again, so is the rest of Rotisserie play if you properly direct your focus. You might not guarantee yourself victory, but you'll have a distinct advantage over the owners who get lost in all the categories.

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