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| I would think the majority of leagues that use daily transactions have some sort of an innings maximum for pitchers and/or a games played cap for hitters. It is extremely important that by the end of the season, you either reach these maximums or come as close as possible. If you don't, you are giving your opponents an opportunity to accumulate more counting stats than you for free, thereby limiting the points you receive in those categories. So how exactly do you ensure you reach this maximum and determine if you are at risk of losing any points in the ratio categories while chasing the counting ones?
Let us start with pitchers. To better illustrate, I will be using my Yahoo league as an example. Our league's maximum innings pitched is 1,350. I believe the default is 1,250, but you could use this advice for any innings level. My staff has pitched 1,020.0 innings and is on pace to finish with just 1,311.2 innings, or 38.1 below the cap. To ensure that I reach this innings cap and maximize my points in the strikeouts and wins categories, I have been picking up a spot-starter from free agency every so often who has a reasonably decent matchup and a good enough skill set that doesn't scare me to death when activating him. This is fairly straight forward, but the issue lies with what kind of damage I might end up doing to my ERA and WHIP. This is where we need to examine the standings in the two categories and calculate some scenarios to figure out the likelihood our spot starts lose us points. Luckily for this exercise, but unluckily for my team, my pitching staff has been weak most of the year and is sporting a 4.23 ERA and 1.36 WHIP, good for a tie in 2nd to last place for 2.5 points in both categories. That means I could lose only 1.5 points at most and only need to compare my team with one other. Obviously we don't need to calculate anything to realize that we could easily lose 0.5 a point in both of these categories considering we are tied now. However, we could look at the team with one point in each category and figure out what our staff would have to post over the remainder of the year to rise to the same mark as the last place team. Of course, this method ignores the fact that the last place team could improve or even get worse, but there is no accurate way to do that besides projecting individual players, and that is not what I want to do. So we will focus solely on what my pitching staff could do. In Microsoft Excel, set up the below spreadsheet, with Innings Pitched in cell A1:
Any cell with nothing below it is a number you will enter yourself based on your team and the standings. The cells with formulas below them are the formulas to enter in instead of the number that appears above it. The Worst Case ERA and WHIP represents the team one point behind you in each of those categories. You may take this further and change it to a team any number of points behind you to analyze exactly how many points you may lose. The Worst Case RoS ERA and WHIP is what we are looking for, as it tells you what your staff would have to post the rest of the season to reach the Worst Case ERA and WHIP marks you have indicated. Once this exercise is completed, you will have a much better idea of how many points you put at risk when spot starting to reach the innings max. Simply looking at the ERAs and WHIPs needed could you tell you how possible they are to put up. If you see a 6.00 ERA and 1.60 WHIP, you're in good shape. If you see a 3.50 ERA and 1.25 WHIP, there is a good chance you lose points. Remember to analyze the wins and strikeout category standings to see how many points you could gain there and if the reward is worth the risk to your ERA and WHIP. Examining wins and strikeouts is much easier, since you're simply looking at you and your opponents' wins and strikeouts per innings pitched ratio and then pro-rating that to the innings max. Remember, though, that not every team will reach the maximum so it is possible a team ahead of you in K/IP still won't finish ahead of you if you reach the max and they do not. Now that the pitchers are taken care of, we will quickly discuss hitter strategy. This is much simpler as there is no need for any detailed calculations. A hitter could only hurt you in batting average, so unless they hit like .150, it is worth it to pick up any player for the last month who will contribute in the other four counting categories. Any time you have a hitter whose team is not playing on a particular day, you have an opportunity to pick up a free agent for one day to fill in. It is best to have a rotating spot start slot on your roster to be used for picking up pitcher spot starters and hitters for days off. Look at your current games played by positon and if you have only one open slot to add a player, choose the position you have had the fewest games played to date. This is not a hard and fast rule though since at this point, we only care about raw stats, and so you want to pick up a first baseman or outfielder over a catcher or middle infielder if the games played are relatively close and both positions have the day off.
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