“Those who excel at defense bury themselves away below the lowest depths of the Earth. Those who excel at offense move from above the greatest heights of Heaven. Thus they are able to preserve themselves and attain victory.”

This is one of my favorite Sun-Tzu quotes and has surprisingly profound applications. But since we are Fantasy Generals, we must look at how this applies to fantasy baseball.

The import of the quote is clear; the road to success lies in knowing yourself and then taking advantage of your strengths in the best possible way. One who excels at defense will bury themselves below the earth; from what better position can such a person defend themselves?? You avoid defeat and disaster by taking advantage of your peculiar skills. One who excels at offense moves from the heights of Heaven; how better to take advantage of your offensive skills. The army that moves like this will be like a ton against an ounce.

How to take advantage? Well, as a Fantasy General you must of course know your strengths and weaknesses. When I was playing poker regularly, I was constantly engaged in probing my play for strengths and weaknesses. What I found was that I was skilled at playing a medium sized stack in No-Limit Holdem, and made that a centerpiece of my overall strategy. You can rest assured that tough opponents are doing the same.

In Fantasy a similar process must be done by the General if he ever has pretensions at winning serious money or winning against tough competition. What do you do?

1. You must assiduously examine your past performance. Examine your team at the end of the year and see what went right and what went wrong. If you have played this game for a number of years you have no doubt figured out some of your strengths. Some may be astute at discerning value in young developing pitchers; some may be good at Minor League evaluations, some may be great at auctions but terrible negotiators. This is all useful information.

2. This takes a lot of effort. It is not easy to do and you may not be motivated. But even slight effort here can have tremendous gains. Winning isn’t easy unless the competition is easy.

3. You must be willing to look at yourself and your decisions critically. We here value process versus results, but that doesn’t imply that poor performance is merely the result of bad luck. If you routinely spend $35 in tough auction leagues on 33 year old power hitters but never finish in the money, well you should be able to use this information to examine your decisions.

4. What is your motivation, and your opponent’s? Does your opponent excel at offense or defense?? We are using oblique terminology here; but as an example there is an owner I know in a high-stakes league that excels at offense in the auctions. He is routinely bidding players up, jumping out at the right time, forcing fair value on most players. Occasionally he gets hurt but more often than not he doesn’t. But he doesn’t handle his team well during the year and rarely finishes in the money. Some critical analysis here would do wonders I am sure.

Just to give a concrete example, another owner I know very well is very astute at spotting young undervalued pitchers. This is to his great benefit in deep leagues, but it also has tremendous value in a 12 team mixed league. Why?? In general, your best strategy in a 12 or 10 team mixed league is to draft hitters early and to speculate on pitching. So the ability to draft developing pitchers that you can draft late but that can produce like a middle round pitcher is very difficult to beat.

In my 12 team mixed, non-keeper league I drafted no pitchers with our first five picks. The strategy here was to rely on the ability to spot pitchers who were good but unlucky last year and to hope for a reversal, and to draft guys who were excellent but unknown. I am not sure if I was moving from the Heavens or burying myself below the Earth; but I was taking advantage of my perceived ability compared to the rest of the league to spot undervalued pitchers. Here are the mainstays of our staff, all drafted late:

Kelvim Escobar
C.C. Sabathia
James Shields
Javier Vazquez
Claudio Vargas
Ian Snell
Dave Bush
Jose Valverde
Al Reyes

Is this the best staff? No. But it is one of the best, and by eschewing the early round pitchers, I am able to get 90-95% of the early round pitcher’s performance but still get to have All-Star hitters. On CBS Sportsline every hitter I have is owned in 99% of the leagues with the exception of my catcher, John Buck, who is no fantasy slouch. Shields, Vargas, Snell and Vazquez all went after the 14th round into the reserve round. Our first five hitters:

Chase Utley
Prince Fielder
Vladimir Guerrero
Jim Thome
Hanley Ramirez

So far the strategy has worked, we are first overall in points and first in the Power Ratings (on CBS Sportsline) and first in our division (which has the top three teams in a head to head in a four team division). Last year I deviated from this strategy, hoping to draft early round great pitchers. It wasn’t my strength, and naturally we finished out of the money. Drafting Randy Johnson in the First Round will do that to you.

The lesson: play to your strengths and leverage them the best you can. If you deviate, don’t be surprised at lackluster results. Randy Johnson in the first round?? What on earth was I thinking?