Winning Fantasy Baseball Strategies — Weekly Head-to-Head Points Leagues
Part II: Maximizing Volume in Daily Lineups
Welcome to the second deep dive into fantasy baseball strategies to win your weekly head-to-head points leagues.
Previously, I wrote about my initial fantasy baseball strategy hypotheses. That article can be found here.
In the first article in this deep dive series, I focused on how to maximize points from your starting pitchers. That article can be found here.
In this article I will expound on strategies to deploy to successfully maximize your volume of at-bats and innings pitched in your weekly head-to-head matchups.
Maximizing Volume in Daily Lineups
After you identify your starting pitchers that you will use in each weekly matchup and formulate your plan for starting pitchers that you will acquire on waivers and when you will acquire them, you then should focus on maximizing at bats and innings pitched for relief pitchers in your daily lineups.
For every day in a matchup week, you should attempt to have as many lineup spots filled as possible. This is most important on days such as Thursdays, where many Major League teams do not play. On days where not all teams are playing, if you have a free roster spot that is not being used by a player that you want to keep on your team long-term or by a pitcher that you acquired for the week to use as a starter, you should go on waivers and acquire a player that is playing that day to start in your daily lineup.
By doing this, you are giving yourself a chance at that player accruing a couple of points, and maybe even recording an extra base hit or homerun if you’re lucky. Then, after you use that fill-in player for a day, feel free to drop them to open that roster spot back up to maximize your roster flexibility moving forward in order to pursue acquiring your starting pitchers or your next fill-in player.
By following this strategy, I oftentimes outscore my opponents on Thursdays during the matchup weeks, just by giving myself more opportunities than my opponents to accrue points by increasing my starting lineup’s potential number of at-bats and innings pitched.
When looking for a fill-in batter to populate a starting lineup spot, I focus on finding players that meet as many of the following criteria as possible:
· I look for a player that has had a good performance the last few days, and a player that is in his team’s lineup every day to ensure that I will pick someone up that will most likely end up playing the next day. I want to make sure that the player plays against both left and right-handed opposing pitchers.
· I will look at his team’s starting lineups for the last few games to look for batters that hit towards the top of their teams batting order in order to maximize their potential at-bats.
· Since I am looking to use the fill-in batter for one game, I am trying to take a shot at finding and starting a player that will record an extra base hit or a homerun, so I will look for players that display the ability to hit home runs and extra base hits.
· I aim to avoid left-handed hitters that would be going up against a left-handed starting pitcher. Even if they were going to be in the starting lineup and facing this matchup, they may have a lower possible points ceiling in this situation due to the disadvantageous matchup.
· I look for batters that will be facing a weaker starting pitcher and playing in an advantageous hitter’s park that day.
Additionally, if one of your relief pitchers that you typically start is not playing one day, you can also look to acquire a fill-in relief pitcher on waivers. To do this, I will go onto waivers and sort the available relief pitchers by saves. In a competitive league, there most likely will not be any dominant closers available on waivers. Your available options to pick up will most likely be a few of the poorest performing closers in the league, or closers that are members of a closer-by-committee approach.
By pursuing the fill-in reliever strategy, you are hoping to secure a save for the one fill-in day, compared to hoping to pick up an extra base hit or homerun with the fill-in batter approach. But when pursuing the fill-in reliever strategy, you must be aware of the potential for the fill-in closer to yield a few earned runs and blow a save, thus resulting in negative fantasy points.
I very infrequently look to utilize the fill-in reliever, as I feel like the potential points ceiling of recording a save and one inning pitched, does not outweigh the potential for negative points from the reliever yielding earned runs and blowing a save.
Compared to a fill-in reliever, a fill-in batter has a lower chance of recording a significant number of negative points, but they also have a lower chance of recording a higher number of points that you would receive if your fill-in receiver earned a save (about 8 to 10 points).
For the fill-in starting lineup spot, I prefer utilizing a fill-in batter, as their expected points are closer to zero, but they really only have upside points potential if they record an extra base hit or a homerun, compared to the wider range of potential positive and negative point outcomes for a fill-in reliever.
Every day you should assess your roster and identify any players that can be dropped. The bottom few spots on your roster should be fungible players that can be dropped any time after you use them in your lineup in order to acquire future starting pitchers, fill-in batters, or relief pitcher/starting pitcher hybrids, which I will discuss in the next article in this series.
Check back here soon for my deep dive into the next strategy to deploy in winning your weekly head to head points fantasy baseball leagues — overall roster construction!
