Strategy: Bench Players
By: Matt “The Real” Diehl
A common challenge that any fantasy baseball manager faces is how to best utilize his bench spots. Though bench spots aren’t the most pivotal positions on your squad, they can and frequently are a deciding factor in determining a league winner. There are all types of strategies for these roster spots which include but are not limited to: all hitters, all pitchers, half and half, rookie-dominated, favorite player/team (even minor league) dominated, and DL hopefuls.
While having a group of your favorite players is good fun and players on the DL and rookies offer your team the potential for a shot in the arm down the road, these are far from the best strategies if your goal is to win the league. The main dilemma when it comes to these extra spots is how to distribute them between pitchers and hitters. When it really comes down to it, your main goal from these bench spots is to get as much value as possible.
The value that you get from players is determined by two things: how much they play and how well they do when they play. Bench hitters will only be able to start on your roster in at most 20-25% of their team’s games. If you’ve got a hitter on your bench that hits .300 with 20 HR and 80 RBI in a season, you’re only going to see .300 5 HR 20 RBI with average luck. You also have to consider that his average is affecting your team ¼ of that of a regular player.
In most fantasy leagues your team is allowed 200IP per each pitching spot on your roster. Starters are the only pitchers that eclipse (or really even come close to) this mark, meaning that if you’re playing (3-5) relievers as you should you are going to have at least 300-500 innings that you’ve got left over without even counting the DL stints and missed starts that you’ll inevitably run into over the course of a season. What’s more is that there’s no need to play starters when they’re not scheduled to pitch which leaves even more spots open every day. If you want to be near the top in your league in the cumulative stats (K’s and Wins) it’s essential that you use up every last IP that your pitchers are allowed.
This isn’t to say that you should simply rid yourself of the more valuable hitters on your bench, but there is no need to have more than one or two hitters riding the pine unless your league has a very extended bench. If you are allotted 1800IP (as in ESPN leagues) I suggest keeping 7 quality starters (but don’t just grab Joe Blanton or Daniel Cabrera for the sake of having another pitcher) and filling your bench with 4 or 5 relievers while starting the relievers every day and rotating starters in when it is their turn to pitch. There’s a good chance that you’ll run out of innings at some point in September, but it’s better to use all of your innings than to have some remaining. In mid-late August you can afford to trade away some of your better starters to improve your hitting for the quarter of the season in areas that you need help with in the standings.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 10:24 pm and is filed under Fantasy Baseball, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
