One thing I notice in my daily reading is that there are many many sites and blogs devoted to tactics, but very little devoted to strategy. There is a distinction between the two that I think many people miss, and i is why we hope that this blog will be valuable to its’ readers.

The term “Tactics” pertains to the everyday moves that you make. It could be the trade of a player, moving guys up or down, taking advantage of roster moves and news etc. Most of what you read on fantasy baseball pertains to tactics. Anything that helps you in the management of your team in the short term is basically an issue of tactics. These are obviously of vital importance, and we do address tactics here on occasion, though not to the degree of most fantasy sites of blogs. This is because there is no shortage of this information.

Strategy, on the other hand, pertains to your long term view of your team, and the overall plan that your tactics are meant to put into action. Here, there is a decided dearth of information and assistance. There are many truisms that you can find that are strategic in nature; such as “don’t draft pitchers in the early rounds of a draft,” or “you must exercise patience in auctions and await bargains.” While these can be helpful to the Fantasy General, they are no substitute for a real strategy. The only way to become accomplished at developing a real strategy is to do it and see how it works.

If you are in a 12 team mixed non-keeper league, here is an example of a strategy that might work, depending on the owners in your league:

1. draft the first three players based on positional eligibility and scarcity,
2. draft two other hitters in the first five picks,
3. draft three starters in the next five rounds but remaining flexible if a favorable hitter is on the board;
4. leaving closers to the last two picks;
5. Using the reserve round to pick up pitchers that others in your league will let fall through the cracks; and
6. Using the weekly transactions to only target good pitchers that are left unprotected or who are unknown, but not to pick up any pitcher that is available and has two starts.

I mention this because it was the strategy that I used in my 12 team mixed league this year. The individual choices I make, and my weekly roster management are the tactics that are used to enact my plan. I might pick up Sergio Mitre for example, but won’t pick up Robinson Tejeda merely because he has two starts. Or, as I discussed in a previous post, I might cut Mark Teahen to pick up Chris Young. These are tactics, they are not strategies.

As usual, let me give an example from history. When the Prussians were attempting to make a move on Napoleon’s army, they used such general military truisms similar to their fantasy baseball cousins mentioned above. The Prussians designed a plan based on their tried and true methods of warfare; maintaining tight order, moving troops at the beat of a drum, travelling with large wagons of support etc. Napoleon had other ideas; his army only carried packs so they were astoundingly mobile, they hid in trees and houses and essentially used guerilla warfare on the Prussians. It was a rout.

The lesson is one that the Fantasy General should heed. Tried truisms of strategy do not substitute for a well thought out plan. I bring this up, because in my high stakes league there has been a flurry of trading activity, in which I have been a very active participant. When making one trade, I was taken to task because I wasn’t “getting full value.” The trade is discussed in an earlier post, the Upton trade. It looks especially bad after Lidge promptly blew his first save.

However, getting full value is sort of a mirage; executing the overall plan is of much more importance if you want to win. The point of the trade was not to get value for value, it was made to knock my closest competitor off of a trade that would give him an opportunity to catch me. I may not win the league, or I might; only time will tell. But execution of the plan was more important than ekeing out full value.