Hi all, happy Monday, and welcome to (probably) week two of your fantasy playoffs. If you’ve moved on to your next opponent congratulations or if you’re in a league with playoff rounds that are multi-week – keep up the pressure! This week I want to cover a few tips, tricks, and just general things to keep in mind while playing towards your fantasy championships over the next few weeks. Some may be more obvious than others or just seem like simple reminders. However, I think it’s important to keep a clear head and follow through on the process/fantasy management style that’s gotten you to the playoffs in the first place if you want a shot at going all the way. Panicking and going off your game-plan rarely wins you the ship! So, without further adieu here are my top tips for the championship homestretch:
1. NO bench bats! Please I beg of you. There’s no reason to be holding one, let alone multiple, hitters on your bench at this point in the season. They’re not doing you any favors sitting there. I promise. That player sitting on your bench who was wielding the hot bat for a few weeks in August? The one that’s now gone into a slump that you swear if you just keep holding is going to get hot again? It’s OK, you can drop him. Pick up an RP instead and throw them into your lineup for a few extra potential points during the week or use that bench spot to stream some extra SP starts. It can truly be the difference between winning and losing your matchup. I also think holding bats on your bench tends to mess with your head a bit and you can end up chasing performances which is generally not a great way to manage your fantasy roster. Extreme example: A player on your bench has a two homer game. So you put him into your lineup in place of your usual hitter the next day but then the bat off the bench scores zero points and your usual player goes 4 for 5 with a home run. So in the end you end up missing out on both big games. Fantasy is often just a cruel mistress like that.
2. Kind of going hand in hand with tip #1, this one is called: “Don’t get caught with the bag”! By this I mean don’t be afraid to move on from players. Whether it’s a player that you picked up off waivers who was on a hot streak or even a player you drafted and have rolled out on your roster all season long. This is crunch time and anything goes. I’m not advocating dropping your whole roster but it’s very important to squeeze every last point you can out of your roster spots in the playoffs. My recommendation would be to take a look at your individual player’s performances over three different spans of time and then decide if there are currently better performing options on your waiver wire or in the case of pitching if you’d be better off using the spot for streaming SP starts. All fantasy platforms will have this feature in some form but take the time to look at each of your player’s point totals over a seven day period, then a two week period, then a one month period. Doing it in this way gives you a better idea of whether a player is just having a singular rough week or two or if this is an ongoing slump that you might want to think about moving on from. For example, a player that’s been slumping a bit lately on my own team is Cody Bellinger. He has just 15 points over the past seven days (I’d prefer to see a floor of at least mid twenties up to high thirties, ideally) and it’s been only slightly better over a two week span. However, his month-long point total is still slightly low but more in line with what I’d hope to see from my players. So, I’m going to make a mental note that this is hopefully just a short-term slump and I’ll check back in on his numbers over the course of this week before doing anything rash.
3. This one might seem obvious and I know we all lead busy lives and you can’t always jump right on your fantasy app right away, but do your best to: Make your pickups early!
For most fantasy platforms roster changes via waiver wire pickups can be made immediately following the first pitch of the first game each day. It’s extremely important to make your roster moves as soon as possible to avoid losing out on the best streaming options to your opponent and/or other playoff teams. Not to mention at this point in the season there are often very few viable SP streamers available per day. This past week there’s often only one or two starts at best that have interested me each day and frequently there have been none at all. So supply is low and competition is fierce, getting a jump on your opponent is paramount!
4. However, in order to do the above you need to: Keep a bench spot open! Try to keep one bench spot available that can be used as a rotating spot for SP streamers or the occasional bat stream on slow game days (or if all else fails and there are no SP streamers that interest you and you don’t need to stream a bat – stream an RP instead, just be sure to check bullpen reports online to identify who will likely be up for work and in a good matchup situation). I realize this can be hard when you feel like you have a great pitching lineup and you don’t really want to drop any of your guys but it’s such a huge advantage to have one spot available. At this point in the season if you’re trying to find a spot to free up, I‘d recommend keeping an eye on your least productive starting pitchers who have just had a start, are now at the maximum time before their next scheduled start, and ideally have a bad matchup for their next start as well. This is usually your best opportunity to move on from a pitcher who now has around a ten day window where they’re clogging up a spot on your roster and you can instead stream said spot to maximize your point production – especially necessary if you’re in a close playoff matchup.
Bonus tip:
Now, I don’t condone cheating in any way shape, or form but for you ESPN fantasy users I have one tip that I can’t believe is as seemingly little known as it is. Since ESPN limits your Starting Pitcher starts per matchup period you get 12 SP starts for a normal fantasy week and 24 SP starts for a two week playoff matchup period (this trick works for both). The loophole here is that if you get your pitching starts up to just one shy of the total for the week going into the final day, so that would be hitting 11/12 starts on Saturday for a normal week or 23/24 starts on the second Saturday of the two week playoff matchup, you can then have as many SP starts as possible on the final day of the matchup period and it won’t lock you out of accumulating the points for all of them. That is to say, if you go into the final day of your playoff matchup with 23/24 starts and then you manage to have every single one of your pitching roster spots filled with a pitcher pitching that day ESPN will NOT differentiate between one start vs. multiple starts. You’ll be allowed to count all the starts you have for that day even though you technically only had a single allowed start left for the week. Do with this information what you will…
