As you can tell by the banner on the front of the CREATiVESPORTS webpage, I won the 2007 Strat-O-Matic Baseball On-Line Experts league by sweeping my opponents. After limping into the playoffs, I went 7-0 in the post season. It was certainly an exciting finish after going home early from the show disappointed two times before.
I will tell you my strategy.
Earlier this year, the Sporting News sponsored a demo of their 1969 Replay league. Most of the members of SOMBOE were invited with a few extras including Ron Shandler of Baseball HQ and Peter Kreutzer of Ask RotoMan and MLB.com. As this was a retro league, I decided to play it retro. I dusted off my old feast or famine strategy of Goons in the Corners. Basically, the strategy allows for the use of heavy hitting poor defenders at first, third, left and right and DH. I then put good defenders in center, second, short and catcher. Idea was that I would over power my opponents by sticking poor defenders where it wasn't as likely to hurt me. With the saving I accrued, I would spend more on pitching.
I gave up that strategy because it was too difficult to do in keeper leagues. A poor defender with a poor card is useless, where a good defender with a poor card still has some intrinsic value.
That old strategy worked like a charm in a draft league with no keepers. I won the World Series.
With that level of success, I figured I'd do the exact same thing again. Guess what? It worked again. Well, the competition was top shelf. If this strategy worked twice in a row, I guess it is a keeper. Let's go over how it works.
Five Starting Pitchers for $22.63 Million
The rotation consists of four primary starters and an emergency starter. My rotation was Johan Santana ($7.55 million), John Lackey ($5.86 million), Randy Johnson ($4.44 million) and David Bush ($4.28 million). I use a four man rotation due to a fluke in the game. Pitchers do not have injuries on their cards. They can only get hurt if the DH rolls a 6/12. Well that is not very likely. Just in case, I carry one more pitcher capable of starting every four days in Jason Marquis (League Minimum of $500,000). To give you an idea of how unlikely a pitcher is to get hurt, Marquis made a total of zero appearances!
Surprisingly, my best starter was David Bush who went 21-9 with a 3.64 ERA. Johan Santana (16-18 4.01) and John Lackey (13-23 4.25) were disappointing, but not terrible.
Closer and Setup Relievers for $9.63 Million
I spent quite a bit on J.J. Putz ($5.56 Million) and Fernando Rodney. J.J. went 2-3 with a 1.79 ERA and 53 saves. He blew 10 saves and lost three. A good closer is key to this strategy as I would find myself in many one run games. Fernando Rodney was hit hard early but finished the season 11-5 with a 3.78 ERA and four saves.
Rest of the Bullpen for $5.36 Million
The rest of my bullpen consisted of Will Ohman ($2.28 million), Roberto Hernandez ($630,000), John Wasdin ($750,000) and Eddie Guardado (League Minimum). Eddie Guardado was my lefty to get out lefties. He pitched a total of 8.1 innings, all against left handed hitters. He had a 3.25 ERA. John Wasdin was my righty to get out righties. He finished 1-0 with a 4.67 ERA and two saves. If I needed a second emergency starter, Wasdin would be the man. Will Ohman went 1-2 with a 3.48 ERA and Roberto Hernandez went 2-1 with a 2.83 ERA and a save. Cheap and effective.
The Defensive Players for $13.78 Million
The defensive aspect of the team consisted of Gary Matthews Jr. ($5.74 million), Ramon Hernandez ($4.36 Million), Adam Kennedy ($2.29 million) and Juan Uribe ($1.39 million). All four players had defensive ratings of two or good. Ramon Hernandez was nice because he had only one injury chance, very rare for a catcher.
Matthews was my leadoff hitter. He had an on-base of only .330, but he hit 51 doubles and 19 homeruns. Ramon Hernandez batted sixth, but hit a disappointing .224 after a late season slump. He did hit 23 homeruns. Adam Kennedy hit .239 with little power, but he was my #9 hitter. Juan Uribe hit even worse (.205) but did hit 31 homeruns in my hitting friendly stadium.
The Offensive Players for $22.63 Million
The hitters were led by Justin Morneau ($7.52 million), Garrett Atkins ($7.25 million), Carlos Lee ($5.15 million), Michael Cuddyer ($5.32 million) and Craig Monroe ($2.31 million). These were the meat and potatoes of the lineup.
Morneau and Atkins were worth every penny. Morneau hit .299 with 45 doubles and 40 homeruns. Atkins hit .306 along with 40 homeruns as well. Carlos Lee was somewhat disappointing. He did have a hot streak at the end of the season to bring his average up to .260 and he also hit 40 homeruns. Michael Cuddyer hit a measly .225 with 29 homeruns and Craig Monroe hit .206 with 25 homeruns. Monroe put up the same numbers as Cuddyer for half the price.
The Bench for $2.25 Million
The most important person on the bench was Jose Hernandez who was the defensive replacement for Garrett Atkins terrible 2b-4 e20 rating. For a measly $750,000, I had a decent backup for both the infield and the corner outfielders. Miguel Ojeda (League Minimum) was my backup catcher. He got a total of 10 at-bats. Jerry Hairston Jr. (League Minimum) was my pinch runner and #2 utility player. He ended up getting 56 at-bats due to injuries to Michael Cuddyer and Craig Monroe. Finally, Brendan Harris (League Minimum) was supposed to platoon with Adam Kennedy against left-handers. He hit a whopping .195 against only left handed pitching, although he did hit six homeruns. For the playoffs, I dropped the platoon.
Regular Season Tally
Our pitching excelled overall, even though my #1 and #2 starters were not that great. We led the league in pitching, giving up only 670 total runs. Our hitting was disappointing. We finished ninth in the league with 717 runs scored. Using the Pythagorean Theorem, we should have won 89 games, but we only won 85. Still, it was good enough to take the division and be the #2 overall seed.
Playoff Tally
It was a different story for the playoffs. My hitting carried the day as I scored an average of 7.7 runs per game. Justin Morneau led the team with a .517 average, four homeruns and 11 RBI. Garrett Atkins hit .393 with 4 homeruns and 11 RBI. Finally, Craig Monroe hit .296 with four homeruns and 11 RBI. On paper, that looks great, but there is another part of the story.
My first opponent, Rob Hurtt, had sacrificed the ability to hit left-handed pitching. He could hit right-handed pitching very well and that made up for the weakness in the regular season. If you can't hit left-handed pitching, you are in trouble against me. He hit .153 for the series. It is no wonder I won.
My second opponent, Dennis Crowley, had a similar strategy to mine. He had a good rotation, strong bullpen and lots of power in a hitting friendly stadium. His team led the league in hitting. I can't explain why I hit him so hard, but good pitching beats good hitting.
I spent $37.62 of $80 million on pitching. He spent $32.45. The difference of $5.17 million is the price of Carlos Lee, a good hitting poor defensive player.
It may be that his stadium hurt him. While my team didn't hit for average or get on base very well, they could hit homeruns. If the dice went my way, which they did, I would win.
Conclusion
There are endless combinations of players one can use to assemble a team. The fact that my strategy of giving up defense in the corners worked two times in a row against excellent managers tells me that there is something to this strategy that works. Give it a try. See if it works for you.
JP Kastner is the winner of the 2007 Strat-O-Matic Baseball Online Expert League World Series. In five seasons of SOMBOE, JP Kastner has five winning seasons, four playoff appearances, three World Series appearances and now one World Championship. He is in his second season in the Tout Wars mixed league.