A: Make a plan.
Like I said in the intro, last year I finished second in the Ugueth League (which I'll abbreviate as "UL" from here on out because I'm tired of seeing the red squiggle under Ugueth.) Before I go into what strategy got me there last year and how I intend to match or better last year's results, let's delve into the innards of the UL.
The Ugueth What U Pay For League is composed of 20 teams that draft the following roster positions through an auction draft ($260 budget per team): Catcher, First Base, Second Base, Third Base, Shortstop, three Outfielders, one Utility player, three Starting Pitchers, two Relief Pitchers, three additional Pitchers, six bench players (either batters or pitchers), and up to four players on the Disabled List.
We play head-to-head weekly with a 6x6 scoring category format. Batting categories are Runs, Home Runs, Runs Batted In (RBI), Stolen Bases, Batting Average and On-base Plus Slugging (OPS) Percentage. Pitching categories are Wins, Losses, Saves, Strikeouts, Earned Run Average (ERA) and Walks + Hits/Innings Pitched (WHIP.)
Teams may make daily transactions and there are no limits on the number of transactions a team may make over the course of the season (the median number of transactions made by a team last year was 40, though the league champ made a whopping 324 transactions. I made 86.) There are no games or innings pitched limits, though each team must reach a minimum of 25 innings pitched per week, ostensibly to keep teams from activating only relievers so they can take the Losses, Saves, ERA and WHIP categories without much investment.
At the beginning of the 2010 season, I decided to punt steals and saves. If this were a roto league I'd be signing my own death warrant, but in head-to-head where each category counted for a win or loss, I was basically saying that I'd be content with a potential for 10 wins and 2 losses per week instead of 12 and 0. Overly optimistic, yes, but let's examine the logic behind the idea.
Steals end up being a very expensive commodity, but the players who provide the the biggest returns in the SB column tend to be very one-dimensional. Let's take the player who led MLB in steals in 2009, Jacoby Ellsbury. His 70 steals drove his auction price up to $34, and indeed only 30 players were drafted at a higher price, a testament to how Ellsbury could single-handedly deliver a win every week. In addition to the steals, he scored 94 runs and hit a respectable .301, but without much power (8 homers and .770 OPS) and a weak 60 RBIs.
Let's not even consider his injury-riddled 2010 campaign, but focus on the 2009 numbers. A player like Ellsbury (substitute Juan Pierre, Michael Bourn, Rajai Davis, or even Ichiro) is unmatched in the steals category, and is generally helpful in runs scored. However, batting average is usually hit or miss (Ichiro = .315, Chone Figgins = .259, both had 42 steals in 2010) and they are usually detrimental in the three power categories, with the notable exceptions of players like Carl Crawford ($39) and Hanley Ramirez. ($55)
So is it worth it to spend $34 on Ellsbury, $30 on Ichiro, $25 on B.J. Upton, $23 on Figgins, $18 on Nyjer Morgan, $17 on Bourn, or even $11 on Davis when you're only paying for one or two categories? Let's look at how helpful base stealers are in the runs category. Of the top 25 in SBs in 2010, the average number of runs scored is 82.8. By contrast, the top 25 home run hitters scored an average of 94.64 runs while contributing to a significantly greater degree in RBIs and OPS. So a non-thrilling power hitter like Nick Swisher - drafted for just $12 - scored 91 runs in 2010, higher than the speedsters' average. He also hit 29 homers and drove in 89, while posting a .288 batting average with an .870 OPS. Compare those to Nyjer Morgan's 60 runs, 0 homers, 24 RBIs, .253 average and .633 OPS. Are those numbers plus 34 steals (compared to Swisher's 1) worth $6 more on draft day?
The scoring categories in the UL favor power hitters and marginalize steals, yet these guys routinely go for higher dollar values than they end up being worth. There are always exceptions, of course: Juan Pierre was drafted at $3 and returned 68 steals. Coco Crisp went undrafted because of a broken finger and didn't see regular game action until late June, but I picked him up from the free agent pool for free and he got me 32 steals in the second half of the season. On the whole, however, I don't see a reason to spend money on steals unless they come attached to other categories. Due to the nature of head-to-head, a couple of 15-20 steal players can be more beneficial in a specific week than a player in the Ellsbury/Pierre mold due to matchups. Plus, there just aren't enough of those guys out there for one team to dominate the category in a 20-team league.
I'll cover saves tomorrow, as that's a little more complex.
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