By Dalton Del Don – Senior Writer
As a real estate agent might opine location, location, location, a similar motto can be used when analyzing fantasy baseball: format, format, format. Taking callers on the XM radio show (I’m still on every Wednesday at 11 a.m. Ch. 144), it has become abundantly clear how important league specifics are in regards to handing out advice. Nomar Garciaparra is probably not even worth owning in shallow mixed leagues, while in deep NL-only ones, he’s a legit CI option. In deep leagues, trades that bring in depth are often best, while in shallow formats the one getting the single best player usually is the winner. And keeper-leagues bring in a whole other level of uniqueness. If you don’t have a legitimate chance at winning your keeper league this season, you should absolutely be trying to move an expensive Albert Pujols for Ryan Braun or Hunter Pence.
Me, I’m more of a draft guy than auctioneer, but I’d like to try the other side soon. I play in two main fantasy baseball leagues – one a Yahoo! 12-team league with daily transactions and an 1800 innings cap, the other an NFBC 15-team league with weekly changes. Using my two as an example, let’s take a look at the differences:
In a weekly league, middle relievers are essentially worthless. No matter how great their K rate is, they still hurt you in the strikeout department based purely on lack of innings – even Jamie Moyer will get 30-50 more Ks than an elite middle reliever. They also hurt you in wins and don’t contribute much in saves. Unless it’s a 95-inning sub-2.00 ERA performance, they are unrosterable. In daily formats with a max-innings cap, however, they can make sneaky good plays. Their K rates are often better than starting pitchers’ and without roster constrictions, the help in ERA and WHIP can be bountiful. If you employed Pat Neshek and Matt Guerrier this year, here are the stats you would have received so far: 92.1 innings, 1.76 ERA, 0.84 WHIP, 87 Ks.
NFBC uses FAAB, which is fine by me. You don’t want to only reward those sitting in front of a computer all day, and it also brings in another level of strategy, always a good thing. However, the advantage as far as adding strategy when it comes to weekly leagues ends there. If your guy gets hurt Monday, tough. Want to sit your lefty masher facing a southpaw? Fuhgeddaboudit. What about your pitcher with two scheduled starts, one coming in Coors Field? You pretty much have to roll the dice.
And I don’t want to hear about daily formats being too time consuming – that’s a cop out. Especially regarding NFBC, when the minimum entry is $100, with most of the leagues being $250, $500 and $1,250, you’d expect someone shelling out that kind of cash willing to take 5-10 minutes out of their day to check the matchups. Speaking of which, this leads to the brilliant new additions to Yahoo! Under the new “opponents” option, you can see the pitching matchups for all of your players right there on one screen. Now, we’re talking literally five minutes of work per day, and you can even go ahead a few games as well. Even the regular Yahoo! player pages now gives you the career statistics against their upcoming opponent.
In short, I like daily formats much more than weekly leagues, mainly because I love to micromanage. You don’t want to over think stuff like how your batter is hitting during day games or on Thursdays, but handedness of opposing pitchers and ballpark affects really should be taken into account. Formats should also affect your drafting (or bidding) style, as weekly leagues make boring, durable players more valuable than injury-prone, high-risk, high-reward guys with upside. J.D. Drew or Barry Bonds sitting out two-three times a week hurts that team a whole lot more than in a daily league. I’d continue, but I have a deep bench and am going to be out of town early next week, so I have quite a bit of tinkering to do.
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