The Quarter Pole - Time for Action

Having just hit the middle of May, it is the quarter pole for the 2011 regular season and thus, our fantasy baseball teams. How are your teams doing? And what are you going to do to improve them?

We all play in many different leagues and I can’t address all formats and rules, but the idea is to find out how to get more at bats from your lineup….and better at bats if you can. In very deep leagues this can be difficult so you will have to get a little creative.

First, feel free to overpay for what you need. Especially when you are getting what you know to be a quality player who might be underappreciated by your trading partner, or when you can trade a player whose stats look better to others than they do to you. An example of the first type of player might be Raul Ibanez who started very slowly this season and was hitting under .200 for a while, and is now up to .240 because he has been hitting well for the last two weeks. I think he has made the necessary adjustments and would bet on better production for the balance of the year. His owner may just look at the .240 and only three home runs and be tired of Ibanez in his lineup. You may be the owner of Vicente Padilla or Eduardo Sanchez who have been getting some saves recently. Neither of these pitchers is likely in my opinion to hold their job much longer or continue to get those nice cheap saves.

If you could package one of those closers and an outfielder who you think will not be as valuable as Ibanez for the balance of the season – let’s say the Padres Will Venable who is hitting the same as Ibanez but has ten stolen bases to go with it instead of the three home runs – this might be attractive to a prospective trading partner – some cheap bags and saves for an underperforming, older outfielder. I think the closer will be put out to pasture and even if Venable stays in the lineup to steal more bases, I would bet on his batting average for the balance of the year being lower than that of Ibanez.

Another player to trade would be a starting pitcher who may have been very fortunate to date but is unlikely to continue to put up solid ratio numbers or get wins at the same rate for the balance of the season. I really liked the Cardinals’ Kyle McClellan coming into this season, bringing some nice peripheral stats from the bullpen to a starting gig in front of a good defensive team who figured to be contending in their division. Well to date my investment on McClellan has worked out fine. He is 5-0 with a 3.30 ERA and a 1.35 WHIP.

But, McClellan has benefitted from a lower than normal hit rate – especially in his last few starts, and a declining strikeout rate. That doesn’t auger well for the ERA staying at that level or wins to come as easily. The point is you may find a profit in trading McClellan now. Get something else you need believing that you can plug in a less fortunate starter. If McClellan continue to regress even slightly you don’t have to find Jair Jurrjens, you can live with Paul Maholm. In the meantime you have improved your offense.

Secondly, you can often better your spot in your league’s standings without gaining points.

Yes your read that correctly…..if your main competition loses points you will have more of a lead even if you don’t gain points. The way you can do that is to find a specific trading partner. Let’s say you can trade saves for stolen bases in your league. IF you trade your saves to a team that is currently behind your targeted opponent so that they may overtake them in the standings you will have a net gain even if your side of the trade does not produce a gain in the SB category. This type of trade can help you in two ways (long time readers will remember this article as “Rotisserie Baseball Math”).

Here is an outdated but still strong example of this type of trade:

Let’s take a look at a different league – the Cannonball Run III American League.

Here are the current standings

Note how close the teams are –especially from 9^th at 62 points really all the way up to 2^nd at 76.0. And of course some of the categories are so close that point totals and places can shift from day to day.

Now let’s look at two categories – Strikeouts

Salem              562

Point Loma       466

Surprise           449

Boston             444

Scarsdale         437

Cape Cod         434

Framingham    425

Brooklyn           419

St. Paul 413

…and Saves

St. Paul 56 and leading

Surprise           38

Boston             33

Beverly Hills     28

Kilbourne         24

Silver Lake       21

Framingham    21

Scarsdale 19

If St. Paul could trade one of his premier closers – Mariano Rivera or Joakim Soria…..AND trade him to Scarsdale for a SP who would add a decent amount of strikeouts, he could not only gain four+ points in K (and take away a point each from Framingham and Cape Cod), but Scarsdale with the additional saves would take away another point from Framingham AND Kilbourne. With any additional improvement in other categories, this one trade would put him in a battle for 2^nd place in the league with only one point of downside.

Addition by Subtraction – watch for it in your leagues. It is a great way to make a useful trade for your team and also reduce the points your opponents have at the same time

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