Back when I was first playing rotisserie baseball in the mid-eighties, I quickly came to a fairly simple conclusion regarding offense: I would more or less ignore stolen bases. 

The theory was pretty simple. All of the other offensive categories were closely connected together. I figured that focusing on power was going to win me home runs, rbis, and runs (once we added that category). By the mid-nineties, guys hitting home runs were hitting for average too. So I didn't think about steals a whole lot.

The Bill James revolution also led a lot of people who study the statistics of the game to decide that steals generally weren't worth the trouble. Since a lot of those number-crunching types tend to play fantasy baseball, I began to find myself in leagues that tried to take some of the new thinking into account, focusing on walks and on-base percentage rather than steals.

This year, I tried a new strategy in two points leagues that, while they still give points for steals, tend to de-emphasize stolen bases.  I tried to acquire a team of speedsters.

Part of my new thinking was just a quirk of fate. In one league that allows both contracts and keepers, for the first time we went into the auction with literally none of the top power hitters available.  Except Adam Dunn, and I'm not really sure about him anymore.

Since my players under contract included Hanley Ramirez and Felipe Lopez, I already had a head start. Instead of trying to obtain power hitting outfielders, I went ahead and took Dave Roberts and Ryan Freel in the auction. Of course, the strategy worked better than I expected when I took Jimmy Rollins, presuming that last year's power surge was a mirage.

While I made the move out of necessity in that league, I gave the same strategy a shot in my other leagues. In general, I think I was able to get value a little cheaper than I could in other categories, at least in the points based systems.

As the year goes on, I'll let you know how it works out.