Comments on: Reviewing a Mock Draft Team: Punting Power

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 03:20:16 +0000

I won a 12-team H2H league by punting power, but the league used an exorbitant amount of categories (10 offense, 10 defense). I also punted starting pitching, except I got Carpenter in the late rounds. Weird rules, but I found a strategy and made it work. Fangraphs was a big help.

By: Samuel Lingle

Samuel Lingle — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 22:16:08 +0000

I forgot to mention, this was an 8-team league, if my roster description sounded a little stacked… not ideal, I know, but the LM couldn’t find two more in time for the draft or something.

In a 10-team league, though, the strategy might be even better since you’ll get more production from your low average late round picks than the average late rounder for the other teams.

By: Samuel Lingle

Samuel Lingle — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 22:13:59 +0000

I won my league using this strategy, but it was H2H so that’s quite a bit a different. In terms of roto, I still would have topped the league based off the end of year standings, although strategy throughout the season would have been different and thus had different results.

I had Lincecum, Felix, Wainwright, Billingsley, Carpenter, Jiminez in my pitching staff, along with some others, and Fielder, Rollins, Roberts, Reynolds, Dunn, Uggla (who I traded for since someone took him one round too early for me), McLouth etc. as hitters.

My pitching was WAAAY dominant since obviously I hit on my pitching targets and spent a lot of good draft picks on them, and my hitting did not suffer much, although that could largely be because of an amazing year from a guy like Reynolds.

By: Tom B

Tom B — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 17:04:18 +0000

a team in our keeper league was 2nd in the league in HR’s and 2nd to last in RBI’s. he was also second to last in SLG.

categories are not mutually exclusive, you can easily have one without the other.

By: Torx

Torx — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 15:53:17 +0000

I tried a new strategy for one of my teams this year where I punted batting average. I went for the Adam Dunns, Ryan Howards, and a couple guys for SB like Willy Taveras & Chone Figgins.

At the time, I figured the advantage would be in getting undervalued players like Brandon Inge and Mark Reynolds (both great picks) in the later rounds and spending the earlier rounds going for upper eschelon mashers and pitchers.

Where the strategy didn’t work was in pitching. Higher draft picks included Brandon Webb (4), CC Sabathia (3), and James Shields (8). Without running the table on pitching, it didn’t matter that I finished with 12 points in 3 offensive categories, 11 in SB, and 3 in AVG. I finished with 103 points, but it wasn’t enough to overcome a very balanced team with 107.

Still, it was a fun experiment. I’d much rather punt one category over two, but the lesson remains that it’s tough to predict quality pitching from year-to-year.