Playing in the National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) is significantly different than playing in your “home” league. In your home league, there are probably a handful of good players, a few average players, and two or three players that you have to wonder why they keep coming back. Every league has to have someone lose, and those people fit that bill. Winning your home league gives you bragging rights and potentially some money. It’s fun.
The NFBC is fun, too, but there’s more to it. In each NFBC league, there are fifteen teams, each shooting for a first place prize of $5,000.00 and a shot at the overall $100,000.00 prize.
Odds are you’ve never played with at least twelve of the other fourteen owners in any league. You don’t know their tendencies, you don’t know who they like, you don’t know who historically punts a category, who the speed managers are, etc. You don’t know much about your competition, making preparation that much harder.
Next, these people are each plucking down $1,300.00 to play, plus more to travel to the site (Las Vegas, Orlando, Chicago, or New York). Many of these people regularly win their home leagues, and a number do fantasy sports for a living.
In Las Vegas league number 9, I was pitted against fourteen quality opponents, including one of the four men to win $100,000.00 in a single NFBC season, David DiDonato. Jeff Erickson of Rotowire and Seth Trachman of Fanball were in my league. I often visit both Rotowire.com and Fanball.com, respectively, to gain information as to how to manage my team. Let that one simmer for a bit. I go to my competitors’ site for player information. If these guys didn’t know what they were doing, there’s no way I would rely on their thoughts and insights. This league also included veterans Scott Jenstad and Mike O’Connor, as well as $8,000+ (in career NFBC winnings) Ron Kraus and a host of other great competitors. This was, clearly, not like a typical “home” league.
I had finished 2nd, 4th, 6th and 4th , respectively in my prior four NFBC leagues (they pay three places), so I had been close, but never over the hump. To compete in an NFBC league, you have to know your stuff. To win a league, I learned, you had to take some chances.
Go to any site, and you will read that pitching is impossible to figure, and that you can’t win a league (especially a star studded league like Las Vegas #9) by drafting pitchers early. I believed that for years, and in my home leagues, I did like the rest and avoided drafting pitching early. Going along with the flow in a home league works as long as you know more than the rest of the league players. If you are reading this here at CREATiVESPORTS.com, odds are that you do know more than your home league competitors.
What about an all-star league like the NFBC? Can a team survive drafting pitching relatively early? I didn’t want to find out, as I had hoped to get a pick in the top six. The Gods of fantasy baseball weren’t looking in on me, as I was awarded the 14th pick out of 15 teams. My initial strategy of getting a speed shortstop (Jose Reyes, Hanley Ramirez or Jimmy Rollins) was gone, and I had to revamp my strategy.
When the 14th pick in the first round came to me, I was left with a choice between, among others, Alfonso Soriano, Lance Berkman, Carlos Lee, BJ Upton, Albert Pujols and Johan Santana.
Yes, I had read all about Albert’s arm potentially falling off, or whatever, and needing mid-season surgery. I also knew that the National League was weak top to bottom, and no matter how average the St. Louis pitching was, that the Cards would be in a pennant or wild card berth race until, at a minimum, the middle of September. While I don’t know Pujols personally, I believed that he would do whatever was necessary to make it through the year. Drafting Pujols in the first round was pretty much a no brainer.
When it came around to the second pick, I went with the riskier, but potential difference maker Santana. This put me behind in offense. Not wanting Santana to be alone (what good is picking a great pitcher in the 2nd round, then waiting ten rounds to draft another?), I took pitching in the fifth round (Joe Nathan), sixth round (Roy Oswalt), eleventh round (BJ Ryan), thirteenth round (Bronson Arroyo) and the fourteenth round (Rich Harden). This meant that I had drafted six pitchers in the first fourteen rounds. Sacrilege, some might say.
Not only that, but Arroyo was coming off a bad year. Ryan and Harden were coming off injury years, and Oswalt had been less effective in 2007 than he had in recent years. None of this made any sense, did it?
Oh, but it did.
As I’ve written here and in the past, you can’t win a league like the NFBC by just taking the best available player. I’d finished four twice and sixth once doing just that. I was good, better than the majority, but never good enough to win by merely trying to take the best available. (My second place finish in the first year included a number of risks, but as the NFBC grew, I got more conservative). You have to look for potential and for guys who could either break out, or return to form. Oswalt had been a top five pitcher. Arroyo had been solid just one season ago. Harden needed to stay healthy and he would be a star. The same was true for Ryan. I needed some luck, but if things went my way, I might have a great staff.
I also drafted Mike Mussina in the 25th round, and as luck would have it, Mussina had a career year. This gave me four solid starters, plus a decent Bronson Arroyo on occasion. On June 1, a manager dropped Mark Buehrle. Buehrle had a tough start (5.20 ERA at the time that he was cut). On June 8, Buehrle became a member of my team, thus bringing my starting staff up to, at least, five reliable starters who would pitch for me every week, no matter the match up.
As other teams were mixing and matching and trying to find consistency, I was using Santana, Oswalt, Harden, Mussina, Buehrle, and often Arroyo, along with spot starts from Greg Smith, John Lannon, Brian Bannister (at home, only), and in September, Chris Young (who inexplicably got cut by his team).
When the season ended, my team won our league in ERA going away (3.42 to the second place 3.72), WHIP by a large margin (1.237 to the second place team’s 1.273), and Strikeouts (1291, enough to beat the second place team’s 1286). Add in a second place finish in wins, and a seventh place saves finish, and my team earned 68 out of a possible 75 pitching points. Pretty remarkable in a fifteen team league.
Overall, of the 390 total teams, my team finished fourth in pitching points. Did drafting pitching hurt my offense. The answer isn’t as easy as it may appear. My offense was average, but that we due in fact more to my poor drafting than it was in passing on offense to take pitching.
With that backdrop, I did indeed win the NFBC Las Vegas League #9. This is a bit amazing, as my draft didn’t exactly work out the way I would have liked. I took Derek Jeter in the third round, and Troy Tulowitzki in the fourth. Both underperformed. Add in the wasted picks of Todd Helton in the seventh round (Josh Hamilton was snatched from me on the pick before I took Helton), and Michael Bourn in the tenth round, and I can’t be proud of my drafting decisions. Four of my top six hitters (discounting Jason Bay and Pujols) were busts. Yet, I won the league and finished in the top twenty in the country.
Over the next few weeks, I will go in depth about the strategy behind this team. However, for now, keep this in mind. If everyone tells you that a certain strategy won’t work, think about it long and hard. They may be right, or they may be just too conservative to see things more than one way.
If everyone is drafting hitters, you might be able to win the league on, yes it’s possible, pitching. Just think if I had drafted a bit better on offense. Indeed, replace Jeter with Ian Kinsler, who was picked one pick after Jeter. Replace Tulowitzki with Brian McCann (drafted seven picks after Tulo). Replace Todd Helton with Hamilton, and replace Michael Bourn with Wily Taveras (drafted one pick after Bourn), and I would be writing on how I won $100,000.00, instead of $5,000.00.
Best of luck during the off season, and remember that it is never too early to get started on next year.
Buster