The Hardball Times Fantasy

Small strategies

by Paul Singman
August 24, 2010

As someone who writes an article a week for a fantasy baseball website and also plays fantasy baseball (imagine that!), I have a number of small strategies that I use in my leagues. Some I do subconsciously and all of them are too trivial to warrant their own post, but hopefully you find at least one you like as you read down the list.

No &#%$ing bench hitters!

The exclamation above is something I routinely would angrily say to my leaguemates when they would offer me a trade involving one of their bench hitters. Although it is illogical to automatically dismiss the potential value in a player simply because he is on another team's bench, this tendency of mine allowed me to realize something when sending trades myself.

If i am going to include a marginal hitter in a trade—usually as a throw-in or small piece compared to the main players in the deal—it is best to place that hitter in my starting lineup while my trade is offered. Theoretically this should not make a difference, but people will perceive your player much differently when he is in your starting lineup compared to when he is out.

Never been dumped

This is the most trivial of the group and to be honest I have not used it this year, but one of you may use it. First of all, it can only be done in daily updated leagues where free agents can be added and dropped indefinitely.

Lets say you want to add a player but are having a tough time finding a player you are comfortable dropping. What you can do to increase the chance the player you drop does not get added, is make a series of useless transactions after dropping the valued player, in effect pushing the transaction listing with his name further down the list of recent transactions.

Mondays and Thursdays

In baseball terms the days Monday and Thursday have significance in that there is not a full slate of games on these days. In daily leagues this means that in order to maximize your hitting, adding extra hitters on these days is optimal. On the other days of the week, you may then pick up a starter to spot-start or a reliever, ideally one who could possibly earn a save that night.

Open DL spots are roster spots

If you are lucky enough to not have all of your DL spots taken up at a point in the season by injured players, it is sometimes a good idea to add an available player who is currently on the DL since you won't have to drop anyone from your team for more than a day to do so.

I used this strategy this year with Coco Crisp, who has been insanely productive when healthy. Even though it was hard to justify even rostering him on my DL when he was hurt for the third time while barely playing, it was certainly worth the trouble looking back.

Paul has been managing fantasy baseball teams for many seasons and writing for THT Fantasy over the past three years. He is currently a student at UPenn welcomes readers' thoughts at his email here or in the comments below.


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