Chasing Every Last Point (9/10/08)
With just 2 1/2 weeks to go in the baseball season it’s obviously a lot harder to make up ground in your league’s standings than it was just last month. While the early stages of the baseball season can give rise to seismic shifts in the standings (seemingly on a daily basis), daily swings in the standings at this point in the season are usually confined to a couple of points in either direction.
However, that’s no excuse for throwing in the towel at this point. Everyone has something to play for at this point in the season. Maybe you’re running away with your league and want to see if you can break your league’s record for best single season. Maybe you’re in a tight race for first or to finish “in the money” or to avoid last place. Whatever your motivation, there’s still a lot of baseball left to be played and time to move up in the standings!
Here’s the process I go through at this point in the season in an effort to maximize my points in a rotisserie league:
- Start with a current copy of your league’s standings. Go through the standings category by category and determine how many points you can potentially gain or lose in each category (it’s very important not to overlook the latter possibility!)
- Determine your potential point swing in each category - at this point in the season I’d suggest using a one-week timeframe (i.e. - how much ground could I realistically gain/lose in the next week?). For instance, if you could potentially gain 1 point and lose 3 points in a given category, then your potential point swing for that category is 4.
- Identify the 1-2 Hitting categories and the 1-2 Pitching categories with the biggest potential point swings.
- Evaluate all potential roster moves by gauging their impact on the priority categories you’ve identified in Steps 1-3.
One caveat - be aware of correlations between categories when identifying your priority categories and evaluating your potential transactions. If you decide to prioritize a counting category (e.g. - AVG, OBP), be sure that you’re not benching your 3 best home run hitters for the upcoming week. Conversely, if you decide to prioritize an average-based category (e.g. - ERA, WHIP), make sure that you’re not benching all of your Starting Pitchers and giving up more ground than you’d anticipated in Wins and Strikeouts.
I’d suggest repeating these steps weekly, shortly before your league’s weekly transaction deadline (if applicable). By following this straightforward process, you’ll know that you gave yourself the best possible chance to maximize your points at the end of the season. Who wants to spend all Winter kicking themselves about the points that got away?
Until next time,
The Sherpa
Tags: The Sherpa