| 6/25/2008 | Team Name | Points | Waiver | Moves | |
| 1 | O.N. Thugs | 107.5 | 1.5 | 11 | 50 |
| 2 | IStillSuckCurveballs | 103.5 | 0.5 | 8 | 9 |
| 3 | IamJabrone | 98 | 2.5 | 12 | 38 |
| 4 | TheJimmyDixLongballs | 97.5 | -0.5 | 9 | 8 |
| 5 | Black Sox | 96.5 | -1.5 | 7 | 20 |
| 6 | 90 Reds | 88.5 | -3.5 | 2 | 32 |
| 7 | Milwaukee Whiffers | 78 | 0 | 5 | 19 |
| 8 | Phatsnapper | 76 | -0.5 | 1 | 9 |
| 9 | Muddy Mud Skippers | 53.5 | 0 | 4 | 10 |
| 9 | Cheeseheads | 53.5 | 0 | 6 | 15 |
| 11 | Westy's Slugs | 52.5 | 1 | 3 | 39 |
| 12 | Benver Droncos | 31 | 0.5 | 10 | 30 |
These are the standings for our league as of June 25th. For the past two weeks the top five spots have been fairly consistent, with C-Lauff and Roland fighting over first and O.D. making a strong run at the top of the order too. What's most interesting for me has been watching the many many moves of teams like the Thugs and Jambrone and wondering if I should be adopting the same strategy.
I mean, think about it. Is it normal that 40% of the top 5 teams have made less than 10 moves, while 2 of the 3 teams with the most moves are also in the top 3 of the league?
Unfortunately for me, this kind of rapid player-swap isn't included in any of my long-term plans. Part of this is that I'm still new to the fantasy baseball scene and still learning which players are for real and which are flukes. Most of it is personality - My memory can't really retain obscure stats and player info that well.
I'll just put it out there - is there a strong advantage in making frequent player moves? Are these low-move teams sitting in the top 5 just injury-bombs waiting to happen? With constraints such as time and / or knowledge is there a greater value in using your "Move" utility in trading than working the waiver?
It'd be interesting to track the number of trades made and the number of waiver moves made. It's probably in there somewhere.
4 comments:
I think that a lot of this is personal style. I tend to hire and fire people often. It's a carousel, more or less, but I've always done it like that.
I think that making additional moves does a couple things. First, you force yourself to stay on top of what's happening. The other thing is that it slows down what other people are doing. This isn't as big of a deal in baseball, where there are so many players.
But in football, where positional scarcity means not having a starting QB or RB (and not just having to play a so-so one), this is a very important thing to note. I still remember a couple seasons ago when C-Lauff had his QB go down, and I had a bunch of flexibility on my roster. The first thing that I do is to go pick up the next 3 best QB's, just to mess w/ C-Lauff.
So sometimes more transactions is just a function of me messing with people.
Beats me. What do the rest of you think?
faaIf you have the advantage of being in first place by a million points, you can afford to mess with people in your roster management. I remember Roland teasing me obsessively in instances just like the one he outlined in his post. However, for those of us battling to move up, I think the answer is: it depends.
This year has been interesting for a variety of reasons. 1.) There have been some solid players that have started out slow and people have given up on them, so you need to remain flexible with your own roster and realize when you could be getting a player whose career numbers suggest that he's going to pick it up, soon. That's what I've done with Aaron Rowand, Shane Victorino, Gary Sheffield and Travis Hafner. 2.) In a deep league, you're bound to weak at some position. This year, I knew it would be 2nd base, so I drafted Placido Polanco and Jeff Kent. Both stunk in the beginning, and ended up dropping both at least once, but once Polanco picked it up (I wasn't sure he would because he doesn't have a long career of solid production), I picked him back up. Those kinds of transactions can account for a lot of activity. 3.) I traded away my top closer and started seeing my lead in saves deteriorate, so I began picking up speculative closers and guys who were inheriting the role because of injury, If nothing else, they could be good trade bait for teams who are behind in saves and might undervalue saves. 4.) Using the DL slots effectively requires that you be flexible with your roster, always knowing the one guy you would drop if one of your better players were to come off the DL. Like everyone, I've had a lot of players go on and off the DL, so that requires activity on the waiver wire. 5.) There have been more stud players called up from AAA than I can remember in years, so keeping up with call-up activity usually nets a few transactions as well.
This year I've probably been more active because of those reasons, but it's probably also a function of being near the top. If you're in the running, there's an incentive to maintaining a top spot, so that requires a constant evaluation of your team's strengths and weaknesses and where players who are available can be found.
Good post, I enjoyed thinking about it!
I meant to say "overvalue saves" in my previous post.
In a league with unlimited roster moves, I do think that there is an advantage to being aggressive and making many roster moves. Sure, you might give up on a guy a little too early. However, from what I can tell, that's more than made up in the times you'll pick somebody up a half week before Yahoo's "experts" know what's going on. Furthermore, just like C-Lauff with Polanco, there's always that chance you can get a dropped player back.
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