Oak's Corner: In-Season Management

I hope everyone had a good week and enjoyed the first issue of Oak's Corner last week. I am enjoying writing it and cannot wait until we have real games to discuss. Since last week we went over what goes into prepping for the draft, I figure that the next logical step is to discuss how to handle the in-season management aspect of a fantasy league, especially for those who play multiple leagues. Again, I mostly will be discussing my management with the NFBC, but this can be applied to almost any league as I also use this process for all of my non-NFBC leagues.

The wonderful thing about fantasy baseball is that the weekly management decisions you make in-season genuinely have a significant impact on the standings. While the draft is always important, weekly lineup decisions, free agent acquisitions and player drops carry a lot of weight. I feel like it's substantially easier to recover from a mediocre draft or respond to injuries in baseball as opposed to other sports. With deep rosters and a lot of active players in the lineup, an injury or poor draft pick doesn't have quite the impact that it might in football or basketball, as long as you're responsive and deal with it appropriately.

How I Manage In-Season

From talking to a lot of people who play fantasy baseball and also from reading messages boards and comments on Twitter, I often hear people complaining about the time they need to spend on free agency (I will just call that FAAB from here on out to make it easier) and setting lineups for baseball each week. I have had multiple people ask me directly how to attack this process efficiently, so I thought it would be fun, and hopefully valuable, to detail my process every week. The first and maybe most important thing I do is to not stress or think about FAAB much during the week. The free agent pool isn't going to change, players are going to get injured and I can't bid on anyone until the weekend anyway, so I don't worry about bids until the weekend. I may check quickly to see if a rookie who gets called up is available, but for the most part, I don't even think about bidding during the week. This allows me to enjoy games and not focus too much time or energy on my team during the week. Of course, I am always following news and watching games and box scores because I love doing it and scouting players is fun for me, but I'm not remotely worried about bidding on a player or how much it will take to get him.

Assuming I have time on Sunday afternoon/evening, I will conduct my process then, but if busy or out of town, I can of course do it on Saturday or earlier in the week if necessary. I start with a blank legal pad (I know, I know, again with the pen and paper, but this could also be on a Word or Excel document. Writing stuff down works for me) and use one sheet for each of my teams. I start with the NFBC Main Event first as it is my deepest league so I can then use any research from that for any other league. The first thing is to note what my team needs, both from positional and category standpoints. I keep a running weekly tab of my total per category (yes, this time on a spreadsheet), which really helps me get a feel for where I am trending in each category. As I start to look at the free agent pool, knowing what position I need to fill or stat category I need to address helps me decide where to spend more time and focus. I then look at my roster and decide whom I'm definitely dropping and also whom I may consider dropping based on what players I want to add. I think people spend so much time on who to pick up, but then are too casual about who they drop, which can be just as important a decision. Last year, I was doing well in pitching early in the season and decided that Jeremy Hellickson was a drop. I paid the price dearly when my pitching eventually got thin and Hellickson had a very solid season. Sometimes we have to make some tough drops, which is part of the challenge of the game, just make sure to give it the attention that your pickups get.

At this point, I will list all the pitchers on the roster and look at the projected start grid to see what teams they are facing (and where) in the upcoming week. I put a checkmark next to guys I'll be throwing for sure, and this will give me an idea of my immediate needs and I'll know whether I need to study the upcoming week's matchups to find guys to throw right away or if I can just look for guys I like as long-term adds. Finally, I will take a look at the schedule to see the matchups that my offensive players have to see if anyone has multiple days off or if I have an AL DH, if that player's team is at an NL park.

When I'm ready to jump into the FAAB pool, I start at catcher and go by position, then select the last week as the time period and sort by at-bats. This gives me a good indication of who's getting playing time and provides an easy way to see what production each player has in that time period. If I have interest in a player, I'll usually look at his stats over a longer period of time and maybe read some local beat writers' articles to see how his playing time looks. I write down anyone I might be interested in bidding on and usually note anyone whom I consider a must bid to make sure there is no way I can forget him. I go through each position in this manner, making sure to go deeper on any position I know I need to add to fill a spot for injury or lack of performance. For starting pitchers, I will not only write down the names but also take note of what their scheduled start(s) are for the week. As a very last check, I take all the hitters and pitchers and sort them by percentage owned (a nice feature NFBC has) to make sure that I haven't missed anyone I didn't notice in my first pass who may have been dropped in my league. Once I finish this, I'm left with one page for my team with all my projected pitchers, needs, drops and everyone possible I might add. I will do this for each of my squads, but after the first team, it becomes simple as I usually know whom I'm looking for and that just slightly changes based on what each team needs and the differences in the player pool for each league.

As far as bidding on players, I tend to not spend huge on any one player or spend huge early in the season. There are many different ways to skin this cat, and I know players who swear by spending everything early. I will only go into the triple digits on a player whom I consider a game-changing difference who will regularly play on my team. Now, if I think a player is someone who could be a significant impact player, I will clearly make an aggressive and competitive bid, but I tend to do that less than most players. I like to be active in FAAB every week to take advantage of breakouts, rookies coming into the pool or great matchups in the upcoming week. This strategy will often result in getting outbid early in the season when everyone has money and is aggressive, but I'm okay with that, unless I need a closer early or think someone is too good to pass up. I have tried to adjust this a little bit as I found myself getting outbid on too many players, so I've been more aggressive in the last few years. I do my best to not have to chase closers all year, especially in the Main Event, as that just bleeds your FAAB dry early in the season, often for a player who ends up providing little to no value.

Aside from the weekly FAAB moves, setting your lineup is the other function of in-season management. For pitchers, I will just add any pitchers I added in free agency to my existing list and pick my nine for the week. In almost every week this will be six starters, two closers and then the last spot will depend on what categories I need to attack if I have a third closer on the roster. Early in the season, if I happen to have that elusive third closer, I will usually run all three out there to try and build up a reservoir of saves since I know there's no guarantee the closers will keep their jobs all year. It also gets a closer in for my seventh best starter, which is usually a good thing for ERA and WHIP week to week. I'm usually aggressive with using starters who have two starts in a week unless it's an extreme matchup situation like a start in Coors or I happen to dislike the matchups in both starts. I'm a pretty firm believer that if you have a pitcher and you aren't using him for a two start week (of course, aside from extreme matchups noted above), it's time to decide if that pitcher really should be on your roster.

Offense is a little bit of a different animal in the NFBC, as you can make changes before the Friday game, and this is a rule of which you have to take advantage in order to maximize your offensive stats. I like to have three or four bats on my bench (of course, it varies based on how many injuries I have at any time) so I can take advantage of matchups, parks and game count. I only consider offense in half-weeks in the NFBC and treat each half-week as its own period. I never mess around with stud players on offense since I drafted them for their end of year stats, and as long as they're healthy, for me, they are in. This will usually leave me taking a closer look at my final two outfielders, my middle infielder and maybe a corner infielder, depending on how my bench is built. I will map out the schedules for these players, noting where their games are, how many games they play and what pitchers they face. An important minor note that not everyone does is to make sure to check if they are in the lineup on Monday or Friday. With the extreme amount of information available online these days, the lineups for almost every game are usually out by deadline time, and a guy sitting the first game of the series can turn a three game period into a two game period quickly. This little piece of information is valuable, and many times a season, I will make a lineup decision simply based on those Monday or Friday lineups. Leagues in the NFBC are regularly decided by a few runs or RBI (I have both won and lost a high stakes league on the final weekend) and every little matchup of which you can take advantage during the season could pay off big at the end of the season.

That is the process in detail of my in-season management and how I go about it week to week all season long. Of course, the actual decision of which players to add is important, and that comes with further research each week into the peripherals behind recent player performances. I try to keep it simple and streamlined and not obsess about it during the week and enjoy this hobby, as well as have time for everything else in my life. I hope one or a few of these tips helps you get a little better with your in-season management; if you have any of your own tips or questions or comments, please feel free to ask below or you can always hit me up on Twitter @ScottJenstad. For next week's edition, I will delve into some players I am targeting and fading in drafts.