Okay there has to be a reason people dont do this, but I have been playing FBB for about a dozen years and always wondered what if I did "this" next season, but then never have. This year I am really considering trying this out going into my draft.

My league is a 16 team H2H 6x6 Auction draft

HR - Runs - SB - RBI - OBP - SLG Offensive

W - K's - SV - ERA - WHIP- QS

My plan is to only buy 3 very good relievers right off the bat, and then a few very cheap set up men.
Week by week I only start the closer slot on my team and try and win
WHIP, ERA,and SV I will completely punt the other stats
then I will spend 80% of my money on offense and try and win 5/6 stats ever week.

Is this crazy?

I mean the way I see it, at worst I would win Saves every week and then even if I didn't sweep offense I could eek out a tie winning 5/6.

Do you know anyone who has tried this, and how bad of an idea is this?

I saw a dude try this in a league in 2010. I told him he would not succeed. He did not succeed. He finished in 7th or 8th place in the 12-team league. Six teams qualified for the playoffs.

If you succeed it will be because you get great hitting, your relievers stay healthy, and you pick up some good starting pitchers during the season.

I have seen this before as well with mixed results. Problem is that relief pitching is so volatile year to year so those the relievers aren't guaranteed to be great this year. Kind of like punting saves, sometimes it works usually it doesn't. Worth a shot if you are up for a different challenge.

Yeah, I assume the problem is exactly what you said,its very volatile.I mean when you start 7 pitchers you can absorb a bad start or two. With the three closer only one bad outing and there go WHIP and ERA. Thats why I thought to add a few locked on set up guys to the mix. Like a lefty specialist with a killer WHIP, you know just to add a buffer. its very high risk I know but in my head it has a shot to work.
Last season I was playing against a team that was essentially punting saves, while I had 2 great closers. Going into the week (we are weekly not daily) I realized he had 5 full starts more than I did since he had (RP/SP) eligible players in his RP slot, so I realized I had no real shot at Wins, QS,or Ks, so I benched everone but Chapman, Casilla, and Nathan. Sure enough I won WHIP/ERA/Saves and took 4 of 6 Hitting stas and won the week.
Clearly this wouldn't happen every week, but I feel like I may give this a go.

The other issue with that strategy is that with using so few innings, any blow up by one pitcher throws off all of your ratios. I think pitching is deep enough that you can still spend most of your $$ on bats and come out with a decent staff. There is a big bunch of similar guys who will probably go for much cheaper than some of the lower end studs and put up similar numbers.

I would never go into a draft/auction planning on punting any cat, but have adjusted mid-draft if needed.

Is there a weekly innings limit? How high is it? The lower the better for you. Also helps if it is a daily line up league. And of course, it’s better in 5x5 where you don’t have the QS which favors starters.

I've used this strategy before successfully and made a couple of refinements. What happens is that you can get sample size problems. That's always true, but it's particularly true with this because if your offense has a down week, you can't be picked up by your pitching. And of course there is the problem you mentioned with otherwise reliable relievers having blow ups. What I generally did to combat this was to try and be pretty active in adding starters over the course of the season. Because you have no starters you can try on a lot of hats and hopefully you catch a couple of the undrafted breakouts.

So what you do is if get an ERA/WHIP meltdown early in the week, you mix your starters in and possibly even stream hard. This allows you to potentially get a correction to your ERA/WHIP and it also forces your opponent to keep using his starters which raises the chance of his having a couple of horrible starts. Otherwise what generally happens is if your opponent gets a couple of good starts early in the week and locks in a good ERA/WHIP he might shut it down for the week if he feels like he can coast to the W/K/QS categories, so you want to be really tactical day by day. If you get to the point where you've hit the min innings and you've got a solid ERA/WHIP lead you shut it down, using only enough to hopefully keep ahead in saves (the nice thing about closers is that they rarely have massive meltdowns because the game just ends before too much damage can be done). If you’re opponent has bad luck in the wins or QS category for a week, sometimes you can spot an opportunity to attack that later in the week.

On the flip side, if your opponent has a couple crappy starts early in the week you can again mix your starter in and stream really hard and hopefully steal a couple of the starter centric categories and still win saves and the rate stats.

I enjoy playing this way because I think it gives a chance to play very tactically and exploit what actually happens intraweek and force the issue.

@OaktownSteve -

Do you recall what strategy you employed at the draft? Did you go hitters for, say, 10 rounds and then fill in relievers, or did you perhaps grab a top closer early and then get the rest later?

I'm thinking of giving this a try in my 12-team H2H league this year. We count Holds too (as well as having a very low weekly innings limit), which means that decent 8th-inning guys have to be in the mix too. Used it a few years back too, and made the playoffs with it.

Just want to try something different - sick of drafting a standard team and losing in the playoffs because some other guy's crappiest play got hot for the wrong week of the year. Going relievers-only isn't going to prevent that, but you know what I'm saying...

Mine is an auction draft, so no rounds per say.

Oh, yeah. I forgot to differentiate, though I guess the theory is *kinda* the same...

@Steve

It's good that it's a holds league. Makes the strategy all the more effective. I filled offense until the run on the mid-tier closers started and got two of them seperated by a couple of rounds and then I finished my offense and took closers in waiting and other power arms. In hindsight, I might have waited a little longer still on closers as you can count on a couple of your guys getting promoted to closer during the season. Uf there were guys I liked at other positions I didn't get too attached to the middle relief as it tends to be a group where the quality takes shape during the season. Eighth inning guys and other hold guys tend to be somewhat unreliable so you need to have a quick hook and be active on the wire, which is the one way that a holds league will actually kind of hurt you as there will be a market for the better non-closers.

Go for it. Was a lot of fun.