How many times have you heard someone say, “Now is not the time nor the place”? At some point, we’ve all been on the receiving end of it and usually, it comes with a disapproving look or an eye roll. But while your timing at that moment may not be the best, the phrase does lend itself to the belief that there is indeed an appropriate time or place for whatever it is you just said or did.
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Well, when it comes to talking fantasy baseball strategy and punting categories, that’s me with the chastising words and the disapproving look. I do not like to punt. Not one bit. But while I may not be the biggest advocate of the strategy, I won’t let my personal bias stand in the way of showing you that, under the right circumstances, it is definitely a viable course of action.
Allow me to start with why I don’t like it.
For starters, you’re just giving away points. Whether you’re playing in a rotisserie format or head-to-head, punting a category means you’re taking a zero. Let’s go with saves as the example here. If you don’t like investing in closers because the position is so volatile and you don’t want to spend your entire FAAB budget chasing saves on the wire all year, you may choose to punt the category altogether. While your opponents are investing high draft picks in names like Aroldis Chapman or Zach Britton or even mid-round picks on the likes of Edwin Diaz or Kelvin Herrera, you can choose to go forego saves and opt for stronger starting pitching or even more hitters. Adding more quality starters should help you in categories like wins and strikeouts and may, if you land the right guys, keep your ratios stable.
The question is, though, will they help you enough to make up for not getting any points in saves? What if your pitching choices don’t pan out and you find yourself taking it up the WHIP-hole week after week? You can certainly grab some late-round middle relievers to help balance out your ratios, but are you then giving back some points in wins and strikeouts? You just might be.
It’s the same in head-to-head. You’re punting one category with the expectation of dominating in the others, but if your picks don’t pan out or you suffer through injuries, you end up coming up short across the board. You have just as much chance of failing with a punt of saves as you do in grabbing a pair of mid-tier closers who end up losing their job. In fact, if this is your strategy on Draft Day, you’re actually increasing your chances of failing because you’re giving yourself virtually no shot at earning points in the category.
But again, going by what was said in the opening paragraph, there is an appropriate time or place to punt. The situations are obviously specific, but they do exist.
Let’s say you grab a pair of mid-tier closers in your rotisserie league and one of them either gets hurt or loses his job. You can try your hand at the waiver wire, but as we’ve all seen, when there’s a reliever who could sniff a save opportunity in the near future, the rest of the league goes bananas. If you invest and get him, well, you can continue down the same path on which you started. If you don’t, you’re going to start falling behind in the category. If it’s late or even at the mid-point of the season and chasing saves on the wire isn’t going to net you much in the way of points (you have to look at how many saves behind you are from the next three or four teams in front of you), you may opt to punt at that time and look to build up in the other categories. You save your FAAB budget for the time being and trade your other closer for help. Suddenly, the punt is helpful.
You can also opt to punt from Day 1 if your league doesn’t have an innings minimum. Some people like to punt wins and strikeouts and look to build their rotation with closers and middle relievers in this situation. While everyone else is grabbing high-end starting pitching, you can grab a strong closer early and then keep grabbing hitter after hitter until your offense looks like some crazy juggernaut destined to win every offensive category. While they’re fishing for power late, you can grab those low-end closers and strong middle relievers so that you dominate in saves and the ratios. Again, many leagues try to put a stop to that with innings minimums, but obviously there are some leagues in which this strategy works.
Again, I don’t like the notion of punting from the get-go. Why put yourself short-handed right off the bat? Why not at least give yourself every chance to win in all the categories rather than giving up one at the onset whether it’s saves or steals or even batting average. Maybe it becomes more pragmatic as the season rolls on, but to start yourself off in a hole seems like a lousy way to open the year.
Unless your league rules dictate the punt strategy is viable from the onset, draft your team with the best possible chance or winning as many of the categories. If you find that it’s not working out for you, then make the determination as to whether or not a true punt is the way to go. If the stars are aligned in that direction, then go right ahead. Do what you have to do to win. If they aren’t, then start building up where you can without giving up on any one category.
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