LIMA’s hidden costs
by Derek AmbrosinoApril 13, 2011
In any market defined by buyers having fixed total resources, whether auction dollars or draft picks per round, buyers will be forced to sacrifice some goods for the opportunity to hold others. In some ways, these sacrifices are fairly straight forward—if I choose to build a low-budget pitching staff, I largely sacrifice the chance of owning expensive, top tier pitchers. However, other implications of certain strategies may not be so self-evident at the outset. Today, I’d like to explore some of the concentric effects of building a pitching staff on a budget, the hidden costs or opportunity cost of the LIMA plan.
Like many of our readers, I often spend most of my purchasing power on elite hitters as opposed to elite pitchers. In one of my home-leagues, a simple 12-team mixed, snake draft league, my co-owner and I have been traditionally successful at pulling off competitive rotations on the cheap, and this season we were at it again.
We often agree that taking one elite starter is a good move, should such a true stud fall far enough for us to really perk up. This season we were both gaga for Clayton Kershaw and were happy to select him in the fourth round, at 42nd overall. We waited nearly 100 picks to select our second starter, grabbing Gio Gonzalez at pick #138. After that, we were really bargain shopping, picking up six more starters between picks 199 and 306. (I should note that one of those picks was a flier on the disabled Brandon Webb, who has since been jettisoned because our DL is suddenly crowded with Rajai Davis and yesterday’s punch to the gut in the form of Josh Hamilton).
Sometimes these patchwork late-round motley crews can give their owners bouts with agita, but we feel that we’ll get enough production out of our guys to compete in most pitching categories. At the same time, we’re hoping to mop up a disproportionate amount of offensive points, largely on the backs of an extremely potent roster of outfielders. This is a pretty standard approach to roster construction, but sometimes it doesn’t work out as well as planned, and I think this is because of some of the more subtle sacrifices you make when you build your team this way. Here are some other issues to keep in mind for those of you who built teams in the LIMA model.
Offensive games played
Last year, in this same league the winning team took 52 of 60 possible offensive points. Part of his success was due to the fact that he had 90 more games played than the average team in the league, and almost 200 more games played than the last place team. Such a disparity is tantamount to having additional offensive roster spots. Over the course of the season, this owner was ostensibly playing 14 on 13 against the lower half of the league. And, guess who one of those teams short on offensive games played was? That’s right, us—and it’s no coincidence.
Though I often preach heavy rotation of players in your last few roster spots to maximize ABs and usage, doing so can be a bit difficult with the type of pitching staff you often assemble when operating on a shoestring budget. There are a few reasons for this.
One such reason is that I often find myself drafting more starters than mathematically necessary when I operate from a LIMA-esque platform. More affordable starting pitching options are less reliable and more flawed, so LIMA owners often have to mix and match pitchers, sitting them against tough match-ups and the like. You can still get great production out of a staff this way, but it is more roster-space-intensive to do so. In the case of this league, I probably want somewhere in the neighborhood of 1150 – 1200 innings from my starters. To achieve that, I’m probably taking 95-100 percent of my first through third starters' innings and then trying to mix and match the best 60 – 70 percent of innings my remaining four or five starters will throw this year. All things considered, I’m using seven or eight roster spots to hopefully accrue six starting pitchers’ worth of innings.
This leaves less roster flexibility to take advantage of all the potential Monday, Thursday, and Sunday ABs. If the starting pitching depth on the wire is prime, then perhaps I can roll over my last two starters more often and wring out some extra ABs, but this is not something I can count on. The way hay can really be made with this strategy by getting a great year or a breakout from a back-end pitcher. If one or two of those pitcher emerge as guys from whom I want 90 percent of their innings, it allows me to shave my staff and add get additional ABs. This goes into how I draft, but you never know exactly what you’ll get, and of course you don’t have to be a LIMA owner to benefit from cheap pitchers breaking out.
Offensive depth
Continuing on the theme of subtle offensive sacrifices caused by the LIMA plan, those of you who go LIMA on a snake draft may remember still filling out your starting rotation while other teams were stocking their benches with extra bats.
In the league I’m using as a springboard for this article, one of the other things we sacrificed by having to fill out so many starting pitchers in the late rounds was the chance of drafting a bench bat that is meaningfully above replacement level. This makes your team a little less prepared to accommodate a key injury.
In our case, we compounded this dynamic by also drafting Chase Utley, before drafting a bench bat. We DL-ed him after the draft, but that meant that our active Utley replacement was destined to be a replacement level player, barring a Jose Bautista pull on the waiver wire slot machine.
With the Hamilton injury, our roster is really feeling the squeeze, as not only do we have to accommodate our part-time pitchers, but with two injured starters in addition to Utley, who we aren’t ready to cut loose, we have to use an active roster spot to keep a third inactive player.
Competing priorities
One other roster construction dynamic often put into motion by a cheap pitching staff is the complimentary nature of elite middle relievers. Middle relievers who efficiently rack up wins and Ks, and help anchor rate stats are a great compliment to staffs that are set up to rely on the likes of rate-dangerous starters on good teams (e.g. John Lackey), and/or potentially wins-starved cogs (e.g. Michael Pineda).Some owners also like to use the few spots on a roster speculate on saves futures.
Concluding thoughts
Theoretically, there are a number of ways you’d like to be able to use your bench. You’d like to be able to have a plus bat, to rotate players to maximize ABs, to roster efficient and productive middle relievers, and to speculate on saves futures. The more you rely on the deeper, cheaper, mix-and-match starting rotation, the more you may sacrifice your ability to use your last handful of roster spots. This does not mean that the LIMA-esque pitching staff strategy isn’t a good one. In fact, I still think it’s still the most straightforward way to maximize value in a draft. This discussion is just to reiterate that no plan is without its more subtle liabilities.
If your pitching staff is like ours, your offense is probably similarly formidable, but at the same time you may not have the most room for error. Luckily, no matter how competent your league, there will always be a handful of unwise, out-of-frustration drops of slow-starting batters, who have reliable track records. LIMA plan owners would be wise to monitor the waiver wire closely early in the season, because this is potential lamp from which your genies will emerge. Above replacement-level bats or higher end starters off to poor starts may find themselves there, and with a little luck and discipline, you might be able to fill your holes and recoup those hidden LIMA costs sooner than later.
Derek Ambrosino aspires to one day, like Dan Quisenberry, find a delivery in his flaw, you can send him questions, comments, or suggestions at digglahhh AT yahoo DOT com.
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