Last year I was forced to think out of the box a little bit and did a lot more streaming than I ever have before. In our league there is a limit of 1260 innings so you can't just do it willy-nilly or you'll just hit your cap way early. Last year I ended up winning my league for the first time despite the fact that I was sitting at 9th out of 12 after the first two months. My SP's of Lester, Latos, Hansen, Marcum, and a couple of other guys that didn't pan out were joined by only two RP's in Valverde and Nathan since I ended up with the loser in about every closer battle I threw my hat in the ring for at the start of the season. My ratios were crappy, my saves were near the bottom thanks to Valverde's craptastic season, and my team was floundering. I managed to right the ship utilizing a few different things, one of which was streaming. I ended up being very fortunate in that via watching things like a hawk I ended the season with 7 closers after getting Clippard, Frieri (nabbed him right after he was traded), Holland, Perkins, and Balfour before they eventually became closers and won saves by a mile while helping my ratios a ton. I dumped Lester and Latos (picked him back up after he started playing better) and started streaming pitchers. I ended up dropping my ratios by a huge amount to get them both in the top 3, ran away with W's, and finished 3rd in K's to end up winning the league by double digits. Part of what helped me was the streaming but a huge portion of it was getting lucky on the RP pickups and the other part was taking advantage of huge pickups in Medlen and getting Latos back for the second half as well as keeping some guys like Estrada for multiple good matchups in a row, keeping Brett Anderson for a good stretch of starts, and so on. I basically used streaming as a supplement to help my totals while allowing me to be more choosy in which starts I chose to play my middling guys in. Latos had some horrendous home/road splits that I was able to pick and choose from.

What I plan to do this year is to get a couple of solid starters to anchor my team and probably not waste picks on speculative pitchers later in the draft and focus more on speculative closers and sleeper bats since I feel I can do better streaming some pitchers than than wasting a spot on a 4th or 5th SP when I can stream with those spots and do better with them and also allow myself to be choosier with the starts I throw out my kept pitchers for. If I end up with a breakout guy that I don't want to throw out like Medlen was last year or someone like Dickey was then I can obviously keep them. Definitely want to end up with more speculative closers at the start than the last couple of years since the first two I pick typically end up at least 50% shitty.

This probably encourages you do follow this strategy as most of your closers and MR's have much higher K/9 than most starters can maintain. It just makes guys like Buerle almost unrosterable since they eat up innings without giving you any K's. These guys aren't advocating puntint SP's but you may have to adjust the strategy to your league. If you have daily transactions it is easy as you can get 5 GS with one roster spot in many weeks. If you have weekly transactions it is a totally different ballgame.

Rudy I am definitely contemplating how to deal with the streaming fever. I think a lot of it will be influenced by the draft. It'll become clear if folks are planning on streaming. Given the stream fever and the razzball advice about waiting on pitching, it's going to be very interesting to see how it shakes out in the RCL. I think it'll be important to see if pitching is falling too far and jump on the opportunities.

also, how many SP's do you plan to roster in RCL?

It definitely should be interesting. Doing a RCL for the first time this year so interested in seeing how that goes since I'm not sure if any of the guys in my main league read Razzball so its easier to implement the strategies discussed here. Don't think that draft is until the 26th though so have a while to think that one through, need to go check on there if the draft order is in so I know where I go. It was a west coast one so perhaps against some of your Oaktown brethren (north of you up in Redding area).

I love streaming because you can add Ws and Ks without doing much damage to ERA and WHIP. In some cases, you might even improve it. There is very little downside to a strategy that maximizes IP.

My concern with this league is that streaming is much better for bulk Ks than it is for K/9. Add in the prospect of losses and it makes it much more risky to stream. On the flip side, other owners might hold fewer SPs on their roster than usual giving better options for streaming. I'm thinking elite K/9 SPs are really really valuable in this format, but I'd love to hear some other opinions.