Yahoo! Roto Arcade invited us back to be a part of their 14-team Head-to-Head ‘Pro-Am’ league. They were so anxious to get things started that the draft was scheduled for February 23rd. Something’s wrong when draft day is closer to Groundhog Day than Opening Day.
Our team’s performance in this league last year mirrored our top hitter Justin Morneau’s season – a great start with plenty of 2nd half headaches.
The format of the league is 14-team H2H, 5×5 roto (1 point per category you win for week), weekly changes, auction draft, 2 C /1B/2B/SS/3B/5 OF/CI/MI/UTIL/3 SP/2 RP/4 P/4 Bench.
Grey wrote a recent post on H2H draft strategy. For this specific draft, our two main strategies were:
1) Draft at least 7 quality starting pitchers
H2H teams tend to throw more starts per week than in standard leagues. So the pitching talent on the free agent wire is weaker (because more SPs on rosters) and the impact of top starters is watered down by all the additional starts. We wanted at least 7 quality starters so we can take advantage of the pitchers with the best matchups (including 2 start weeks) and avoid having to compete too much with all the other teams over the free agent pitching crumbs. If that meant losing out on top tier starters, so be it.
2) Focus offense towards high R/HR/RBI.
Grey and I both feel that SBs are streaky where H2H rewards steady. So we focused our offense on the steadier R/HR/RBI stats with a goal of being just middle of the pack in SB and AVG. We wanted just enough in SB and AVG that we could break even on these categories while winning the other three the majority of the time.
Below is our roster. We spread the dollars around to a ridiculous degree – ending up with only two players above $20. This wasn’t our plan but our competitors went beyond our player values on the top tier players (including a ridiculous $62 bid for Hanley Ramirez). We felt that the player depth didn’t warrant such high bids and that our stinginess would be rewarded as the draft wore on.
Based on my calculations, we ended up with $306 in value on our roster for our $260 – more than any other team. That counts the 4 bench players. My rough estimates on just the top 23 players – based solely on starts and using standard roto – is that we’re a top 3 team that’s very strong in R/HR/RBI (top 3 in each) and weakest in ERA/WHIP (which we hope to improve by maximizing matchups).
Mike Napoli C $13
Kurt Suzuki C $6
Justin Morneau 1B $21
Adam LaRoche 1B $8
Kelly Johnson 2B $13
Ryan Raburn 2B $10
Starlin Castro SS $7
Neil Walker 3B $6
Matt Holliday OF $32
Mike Stanton OF $19
Bobby Abreu OF $9
Nick Swisher OF $9
Jose Tabata OF $7
Denard Span OF $4
Domonic Brown OF $6
Daniel Hudson SP $9
Matt Garza SP $9
John Danks SP $8
Gio Gonzalez SP $8
Edinson Volquez SP $7
Jhoulys Chacin SP $7
Ian Kennedy SP $5
Johan Santana SP $3 (to stash on DL until mid-year)
Heath Bell RP $11
John Axford RP $10
Drew Storen RP $7
Joe Nathan RP $5
NOTE: We still have about 10 spots available for Fantasy Razzball – the game where you try to manage the worst team possible. If you’d like to sign up, click here. If you would like more info on the rules/format, see here.
