Without further ado, here is the plan we followed for the draft last night in the First Annual Fantasy Baseball Search Expert League. The team we actually drafted will follow.

What is the most important part of developing a plan of attack? In actual warfare perhaps the paramount consideration is the ground upon which the battle will be fought. In fantasy terms, the terrain is dictated by the league rules, and a few other theoretical concepts.

In a head to head league, roto style, the thinking must be divorced from the standard rotisserie style. Here we have not one long war but 24 week long battles. So, instead of focusing on balance or season stats, the general must consider the following: how they match up week to week. In an expert league the problem is not just matching up week to week but also considering that knowledge and judgment are not necessarily going to result in a large edge.

How can one win the 24 little battles? There is no single answer to this, thankfully. But my judgment in this particular circumstance was guided by the following:

1. Most of the opponents will follow roughly the same basic strategies. They will usually target mostly hitting and wait until the teen rounds to get pitchers. This strategy is fine if you have an edge in judgment over your opponents when it comes to those pitchers.

2. Those that do not follow 1. above will almost certainly go for top starting pitching early, assuming they can lock up wins and Ks, and fight for offense. There is some merit to this idea in a vacuum also, again it depends on how much of an edge in judgment and knowledge you have.

3. The league rules allow for far more flexibility than most contemplate. There is no IP requirement or minimum for example.

4. While we are dealing with experts, it is not the same as being in a league with Ron Shandler or in Tout Wars. This means it is likely that a fluid flexible strategy may yield dividends, since as long as you fly under the radar and monitor the proceedings diligently it is unlikely anyone will even try to thwart you, much less will succeed.

5. Psychologically, even if anyone figured out what we were doing it is unlikely they would do anything about it. It is far more likely that my opponents will merely stick to their plan and not worry about me. An analogy for poker players: it is sometimes more difficult to beat the unpredictable $1-2 player than the $10-20 player, but it is far more difficult to win against the $15-30 player. This is because of predictability of strategies.

By the way, for anyone who was worried that we would go the conventional route because of this article needn’t have worried. We had already decided on the strategy, and I was floating that article out there for tactical reasons, which should be obvious by now.

So, here was the plan in a nutshell:

1. Draft no starting pitchers in the first 12 rounds no matter what. I could write a book on this topic and why we chose it, but essentially we are going for a strategy that completely eschews any starting pitching. Our intent is to put out a staff each week of nothing but closers and set up men. Given that it is a match up league and not a season long war, it is imperative that we make it difficult if not impossible for anyone to match up well against us.

2. Target high reliability offensive players with multiple skills. This may seem trite but it is doubly important when pursuing the “no-starter” strategy. We are counting on two things occurring each week. The first is that we will have a slight but discernible edge in offense. This is a direct result of our drafting plan. In the first ten rounds (for example) in a theoretical sense every time anyone drafts a pitcher we gain a fractional edge in points. Why? because we expect that we will win ERA, WHIP and Saves each week, but will lose Ws and Ks. Anyone who drafts any pitcher, in relation to their match up against us, loses some offensive points. They gain nothing from the starters, and very little from the relievers. So, as a result, with each pitcher drafted we gain a marginal edge in offense when we actually play them.

In order to exploit this to the fullest, it is necessary that we have high reliability hitters. Another conclusion is;

3. We must shore up any perceived weakness in the later rounds. While it may be tempting to try to hit a homerun in the later rounds, with our strategy it is far better to shore up our weaknesses. This is an application of Clausewitz’ dicta that defense is the strongest form of war. This could be another topic for a book, but in fantasy terms, the application of this principle is that it is far better given the circumstances to play defense than to swing for the fences.

4. Remain fluid! The best plans are those that are extremely flexible and fluid, as I have written before. Here, we maintained full flexibility by focusing solely on offense early, getting a few starters very late and by not forcing the issue by allowing the drafting to dictate our individual picks. In fact, as we went into the ninth round we were still willing to jettison the strategy and go with plan B if conditions seemed favorable. By being completely fluid with pitching we gained an edge.

Note that it was a necessity to draft a few starters no matter what. Why? Because even though in a given week we are not going to play any of them, it is important to be able to use them should the need arise. If anyone tried to attack us or challenge us in a week by stockpiling relievers, we could counter by still having our four or five closers and then could start three or four starters to take Ws and Ks. This gives us the opportunity to not only be flexible but to counter any counter attack against us in a given week.

The final part of the plan was:

5. Ensure no one thwarts our plan. One group that I have tremendous respect for are the guys at Fantasy Baseball Mafia. They are rock solid in draft strategy and player judgment, and acted after us. These were guys that could easily attack us. So we had two goals here; the first was to track and identify each team’s strategy in the middle rounds. For this my co-owner/General Matt Finkelstein (who is our resident mixed league snake draft expert) was on board. We were tracking how many closers each team had and when they drafted starters (ignoring what they were doing on offense for the most part). We wanted to identify when and if someone was either recognizing what we were doing or actively attacking us.

The second goal was to “feint” and draft a starting pitcher or two in the mid teen rounds. Analysis of the draft board revealed that once we got into the third tier of closers there was a big gap between where we were in the draft and the players we wanted. For example, we needed Jonathan Broxton to play defense on our pick of Takashi Saito, but we weren’t about to draft him in the 14th round. So, this provided a perfect opportunity to hide our strategy and draft a pitcher. No one would suspect what we were doing, they would merely think we were trolling for cheap pitchers.

As I write this the morning after I am relatively certain that no one had any idea what we were doing, and that our opponents either think we are complete fools or geniuses.

As I stated earlier though, it is my firm belief that planning of this sort is what will win it for us if we are fortunate enough to win, and being bold is far preferable to being a sheep and counting on marginal edges and fortune. As it stands now we will be a difficult match up in a given week since we start out with a one category margin (out of f
ive) in pitching and have those fractional offensive gains discussed above, giving us a chance of winning more than our fair share of offensive categories.

Feel free to comment, especially if you think we are fools.