However, I would still base my values on what the Price Guide indicates. That might mean you’ll miss out on the hitters. But with no hitters on anyone’s bench, you should be able to react more quickly off of the waiver wire. (The people who paid more for hitters will be more hesitant to drop them than you are.) You should be able to find some talent with less than 100 hitters drafted.

You might not drive up the prices for pitchers as much as they are needed, but you can make people spend a little bit more. I think people will notice, especially if you dominate the pitching categories this year. If you get, say, 35 points in pitching and maybe 20 in hitting, you should be near the top of your league.

In your league, you have hitters to pitchers in about a 1:1 ratio… It seems like a 50/50 split makes sense in that case.

There’s currently no way to force a certain split, although I’m sure you could adjust the values with a spreadsheet and some free time on your hands… Why do you think you need to spend money like the rest of your league does?

6 P
7 Bench

What happens is basically everyone loads the bench with pitchers the average team has about 12 pitchers, basically all their bench. WHen i plug it in for the price calculator do i put pitchers in at 6 or 12…whenever i put it in at 6 it automatically puts the split at 49/51 in favour of pitching. MY league follows a traditional 70/30 split even with excess pitchers so my values are messed, How can I manually force it to do a 70/30 or 60/40 split. Or should i just not count the bench?

But in deep leagues (AL/NL only, or 16-20 team leagues) you can’t do that. The waiver wire is harder to work. In those cases, you may want to consider a contrary strategy, actually bumping pitchers up by a buck because they are undervalued. Why undervalued? Owners read/listen to the overwhelming fantasy advice to avoid pitchers which is valid on a standard mixed league, even though they are in a deep league where it might not apply as much.

I’ll liken it to when I go to the grocery store to buy some Bran Flakes. I have to choose between the $4 name brand and $2 store brand. To me, they both taste the same, so the choice is pretty obvious. You would be amazed at how many poeple out there will say, “It’s only $2, what’s the difference?” Well, if I eat 50 boxes of ceral a year, that 100 after tax dollars. Of course I don’t have an extra $100 in my pocket at the end of the year. I take that $100 and use it to buy premium items that I want, like steak instead of hamburger.

So it is in fantasy baseball. You don’t want to spend money on something you can get for free. In my league, to be a #3 starter you have to provide at least $8 worth of value. But I would never spend $8 on an $8 pitcher. Why? Because 11 of the top 37 starting pitchers in 2008 came off of the wiaver wire. This is not an unusual situation. So why pay $8 for a #3 starter? On top of that, starting pitching values vary so wildly from week to week, it’s not all that uncommon to have a top 15 starter ($20) available on the wiaver wire!

So what I do is calculate the $values in a similar manner to the Price Guide, which comes out at exactly 61/39. Then, I take every starting pitcher worth $10 or less and move them down to $1. Then I take that money and spend it on elite offense. Thus, I can be “inefficient” and overpay for top flight hitting talent and still put together a very good pitching staff. The final tally usually ends up having an extra 9-10% shifted from pitching to hitting.