BY: SOME GUY NAMED STEVE
Folks, it may be fantasy football draft season but that does not mean that baseball should take a backseat. The fantasy baseball playoffs have started and if you’ve been following us all year, you’re likely in a good position to win a championship! Today I have a few final tips that will help your teams achieve glory!
Tip #1: Check Your Lineup Daily
This may seem obvious but you would be surprised how much can change during a single week. With injuries, rain delays, and COVID-19 it is important to make sure that your lineup is always starting the players that are playing and healthy. This is the playoffs and one missed start could be the difference between winning and losing.
Tip #2: Know Your Lineup Strengths and Weaknesses
This tip goes overlooked by many because most owners assume their team is good based solely on their record. However, their roster could be lacking in a few important categories that should be focused on in the playoffs. A great way to do this is to go to your league standings and sort by each category to see where you rank among all teams. If you team is near the bottom in certain categories those are the ones you will want to focus on improving for pick-ups and roster decisions.
Tip #3: Know Your Opponent’s Strength and Weaknesses
This tip goes perfectly with the previous one and can really help you in category leagues. Knowing what your opponent is good or bad at will help you “steal” categories and ultimately win the week. For example, if your opponent doesn’t have a lot of starting pitchers, you can take advantage of this by constructing your roster where you will have 2 or 3 more pitchers than your opponent. You may need to drop some bench bats for this but it is a simple trick that will help you win multiple categories. You can also do the same for batting. If your opponent is lacking in power or in speed you want to target batters in free agency who are great in either home runs or steals to secure that specific category.
Tip #4: Don’t be Afraid to Have Empty Roster Spots
What I mean by this is that you don’t need to start a player at every position if it isn’t helping your team. For example, catcher is a position that has been very weak for years and I have found that most of the time rostering a catcher hurts you for the week instead of helping. Unless you have a stud, I highly recommend dropping the catcher to pick up a pitcher or a bench bat. That way you’ll get an extra start or two in the playoffs or have a reliable bench bat that you can plug into your lineup on off days for your other players.
Tip #5: Maximize Your Acquisitions and Limits
You would be shocked to find out how many teams don’t use their maximum acquisitions and starts each week that their league allows. Now this tip is solely based on what your league rules are but if my league has a ten pitching start limit you better believe I am getting ten starts out of my pitchers that week. If my league has an add limit of 5 per week, I’m using 5. Don’t be afraid to drop players. Use all your adds and starts possible because it will maximize the amount of points or categories you can earn for the week.
Tip #6: IGNORE SEASON LONG NUMBERS
Although this is Tip #6, it is one of the most important tips I can give out and a tip that I use all year long. Just because a batter or pitcher has good season long numbers does not mean that they are helping your lineup that week. Instead of blindly going off season stats look at how your players are trending over the past week, two weeks, month, etc. You can do this on the ESPN app under the “research” tab. Baseball Reference is also a great tool that will let you see how any player has been trending from week to week, or even month to month. This can help you find the players who are trending in the right direction.
Tip #7: Take Advantage of Pitching Match-ups
This one is really important to me because we have reached the point in the MLB season where most teams are either all in for the playoff race or have checked out and are looking towards next season. You can take advantage of this in fantasy by finding players who are facing teams that aren’t in contention such as the Pirates, Diamondbacks, Orioles. Most of the time these teams are trying new starters, prospects, lineups and therefore tend to get blown out by their opponents. And this may not happen every night, but you can also find a mediocre pitcher that you can take advantage of by streaming a few batters who are facing him.
Tip #8: Stash your IL List
I will admit that this tip applies more to those teams that have a bye but you can still use it if you are in the first round. There are a lot of good players who are on track to return in a few weeks and could be huge for some teams in the playoffs. If you have the room on your IL, I would fill it up with as many guys that could return before the end of the season. You may need to trade for a few guys, but some names to target are Yasmani Grandal (60.1%), Corey Kluber (54.9%), Ian Anderson (81.1%), Raimel Tapia (77.8%) and Eddie Rosario (64.8%).
Tip #9: Stream, Stream, Stream
I cannot stress this enough. I don’t care how “perfect” you think your roster is. If you are not streaming batters and pitchers you are at a disadvantage in the playoffs. Leave one or two spots on your roster that can be used as a filler position. This means that it will be used exclusively for streaming so you can pick up a batter on a day a lot of your regular starters are off or you can pick up a new pitcher each day who is starting in a favorable match-up. Doing this will help you tremendously during the playoffs and it’s the number one tip that has helped me win my fantasy championships.
Tip #10: Here Are a Few Free Pick-ups
If you’ve made it to this point in the article you deserve an advantage so here are a few of my favorite free agents for this week that are all owned in less than 50% of ESPN leagues!
- Frank Schwindel (Chicago Cubs 1B): 14.5%
- Vladamir Gutierrez (Cincinnati Reds SP): 49.6%
- Reynaldo Lopez (Chicago White Sox SP/RP): 5.1%
Now go dominate your fantasy playoffs!!!!!
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