Fantasy Baseball Home Stretch - Optimize Your Team For the Win

Fantasy Baseball Home Stretch – Optimize Your Team For the Win
By Alex A. Woods

As fantasy baseball season begins to wrap up, those that play in rotisserie style leagues all know that September is the championship month. At this point the trade deadline has passed and teams are locked in. Managers without a realistic chance of winning have probably stopped actively managing their teams. For those teams still in the mix, there are a number of actions you can take as a manager to maximize your chances of success.

1. Make sure you use all pitching innings. This one is huge one and a no brainer. Not using all your pitching innings is like leaving money on the table.

2. Identify categories where your team has a realistic chance of gaining ground and focus on them. Make waiver wire moves that will help you. For example, if you see that your team falls in tight band in the HR category with a few other teams, go out and pick up a player with some power and try to move up in that category. It seems that steals, and saves are the easiest categories to make a quick move in while BA, ERA, and WHIP are tough to make an impact on at this point in the season.

3. Following the same thinking as rule #2 – identify categories to punt. Are you so behind in saves that there is no way you can catch the league leader? Then trade/cut your closers and uses those roster slots to focus on categories where you actually have a chance to make up some ground.

4. Try to use all games for your positional players. Most leagues have a maximum games played at each position. Most people fall behind, particularly at the catcher position. If you can begin streaming players and maximizing your games played it can give you a small edge that can in some cases buy you the extra point that winds up being the difference between winning and losing.

5. Don’t be afraid to cut slumping stars. At this point you have given your guys the entire season to perform. If someone has not come through, do not be afraid to cut a big name to try to fill games. I just cut Big Papi Ortiz for this very reason.

In summary, following these 5 simple rules are not required to win, but can increase your chances of championship glory. The rules are laid out in order of importance so if you only implement a few of them make sure you start at the top of the list and work your way down. Good luck to those of you with a shot to win, and for those of you who are out of it, be sure to study up for football.

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