5 Head-to-Head Pointers for the Stretch Run

By Nad Navillus

Rotisserie leagues are fine and all that but pack twelve friends into a league where every week you go face up with just one guy and the result is a bulletin board full of lively trash talk, big time taunting, and, to my mind, just more fun. I’ve been doing the head-to-head leagues since the get go—it’s just better knowing that not only did you have a great week but you also sent your college roommate down to 10th place with that drubbing. Sure you can get punished, too, when you look at all the matchups and you realize that you would have beaten every single team in the league except the one you were actually playing. A buddy of mine and I played each other back in week 13 and the guy set two weekly records and tied a 3rd. Unfortunately for him, I beat all three of those records and he lost 2-10 for the week and fell below .500. I sent him a “Get Better soon” e-card with bunnies on it.

But I don’t find many good articles that help with the general strategies for head-to-head leagues. I have never failed to reach the playoffs in these leagues, either baseball or football, and I think the reason is that other principles are at work when it’s all a matter of “how am I doing this week?” With that in mind, and the all-star break behind us, here are one man’s thoughts on helping your head-to-head team.

1) It’s all about the playoffs!

This seems obvious—you can’t win the league if you don’t make the playoffs, right? Right. But what are the repercussions? First, make every trade with one question in mind: How does this help me with the playoffs? Once I know I am a playoff quality team, every trade is about me being a better playoff team. But until then, every deal has to help me get there. Two examples, one for a playoff bound team, one for a team that needs to get there: On the first, I drafted Dmitri Young (he qualified at 3B) and Eric Hinske. Well, Dmitri went down with a broken leg and Hinske stayed down with a big time slump. But I still felt pretty good about the rest of my team and I knew that Dmitri would be back eventually. So rather than trade, I got by with week-to-week waiver wire fodder (eventually getting a few good weeks out of Koskie) and now my team has both Hinske playing well and Da Meat Hook healthy and I didn’t weaken any other position sin the meantime. In a Roto league, those weeks would have killed me, but in head-to-head, I just had to survive them. I rejected offers that would have brought me Aramis Ramirez and other quality 3B’s because they would have cost me elsewhere and then left me with a surplus at third.

Another team of mine paints the opposite side of that picture—needing to get into the playoffs. I had injuries to Nomar and Jose Reyes right off the bat and only had Adam Kennedy at 2B. This was a 12 team league and so the wire didn’t have any help. So, I made a big move and offered a three for one trade (including Kennedy) to get Marcus Giles. It works, and then he gets hurt! I had zero healthy middle infielders. Now, I didn’t want to trade Nomar, he’s someone I want on my team when the fantasy playoffs hit, but this was too big a gap to wait, I was going to be in danger of missing the playoffs. But when it’s a matter of missing the playoffs, no one is untouchable! I traded Vlad Guerrero for Michael Young and Gagne. I traded Nomar for Brian Giles, and I picked up Rollins off the waiver wire. Now that Marcus Giles is back, I get to start him, Michael Young and Brian Giles every week and I have climbed into a virtual tie for the league and a sure playoff berth. Do I miss Nomar and Vlad, absolutely, but I got the MI help in Young (as well as the key to a pitching strategy in Gagne) and Brian Giles took the edge off the loss of Vlad. You’ll never need to defend a trade if you’re in the playoffs.

2) Trade to win long-term! Waiver wire to win short!

While the trades above are all about the playoffs, your friendly neighborhood waiver wire is more immediate. Certainly it’s possible that a waiver wire move or two could end up sending us to the top of our league, but it’s much more likely that our waiver wire moves help us on a weekly basis. So, come the halfway point of every week, I start really checking the waiver wire: who’s out there, who’s hot right now, who are they playing next week, does Colorado have home games? These help me little by little, but they also are the best way to find those guys that surface as potential studs every year. On one team this year, I got both Travis Hafner and Victor Martinez, and as soon as Rollins heated up, I got him as well. I may have picked them up because I wanted to win that very next week, but now they’ve been helping me for months and they let me trade better known names (and therefore higher trade value guys) like Jason Kendall and Delgado. By making wire moves every week, you’ll find guys like these. In every league I happen to be leading, I lead the same league in roster moves! Sure, I’ve ended up with some real duds for a week, but hey, they're easy to drop the next time.

And always know who the player is that you are most willing to drop! Nothing is more frustrating than knowing that I want to take a chance on Seattle’s new DH Jacobsen but not knowing who to let go. And, believe me, I lost a lot of players by saying, I’ll decide later—and then he’s gone! Now I always know who I am most willing to drop before I ever start shopping.

3) You CAN throw categories in head-to-head!

They talk in Roto leagues about never throwing a category, and I agree; but in head-to-head, the point is to win a direct matchup every week. In a typical 5*5 league, that could simply mean 6-4 victories. If you achieve those all year, you’ll be a contender. Get a few 7-3 victories in there and you’ll be top tier one. So let’s look at those categories: on offense you’ll have runs, rbi’s, hr’s, steals and average. To my mind, this instantly values power guys as a general rule, because when a guy hits a home run, he scores four categories at once. If you were to give up on steals and focus on power guys who bat between third and fifth in their lineups, you’ll have a great chance of taking 3 or 4 offensive categories against most of your opponents. Now, that’s not to say you shouldn’t use any of those speedy leadoff men if they’re available, as a matter of fact in one head-to-head league I found myself with Abreu and Carl Crawford and so I didn’t give up on steals and rather focused on guys who can contribute in all 5 categories. I don’t have a single big-time masher, but every guy on my team can hit for power and average, and at least half of them can steal double digits for the year.

Your pitching matchup should be addressed the same way. If your categories are wins, saves, strikeouts, era, and whip, you can choose to give up on K’s, saves, or wins and still make solid showings in the other four. Hudson will give you 3 categories but he’ll never strikeout enough to carry that category (and except for this talk about him coming back from injury into the bullpen for a week or so, he obviously won’t get you saves) so you can choose to try and cover him with some big strikeout guys or bolster his strength by giving up on K’s and get a hold of cheaper guys that’ll help Huddy keep your whip and era down. In one league, I ended up with Foulke and Gagne, so, what the heck, I picked up Takatsu, too, figuring I can keep my whip and era real low, as well as have as close as you can get to a stranglehold on saves, and now I’m confident in 3 of 5 pitching categories every week. Couple this staff with the power team above and I would be real weak in wins, K’s, and steals but every player on the team will be contributing to the other 7 categories. And, it worked out even better because Gagne and Foulke get enough K’s to keep me in that matchup half the time as long as I get some from my starters.

4) There’s more than one way to skin a league!

Just from the advice above, you should see that there’s more than one way to win—you need to explore different strategies. When I draft, I take the best players and try to fill positions and weaknesses, but by this point in the season I know my areas of weakness, I know my strengths, and I know my league mates well enough to know how, if at all, trades may be available to improve myself. Here’s when the question is now so focused that life should be easier. Early on in the season, I may try to overcome weaknesses, but now I may want to play to my strength. When Johan Santana started coming around on one of my teams and Peavy came back, suddenly my strikeout totals were improving, so I made a trade for Roy Oswalt to bolster this. Likewise, with the team I mentioned above that has Abreu and Carl Crawford, I try and have one more guy who steals a few bases in my lineup every week, even at the expense of some power. I don’t need many more steals, but if I am starting Carl Crawford, I never want to lose the steals category until I come up against the guy with Ichiro and Juan Pierre and Scott Podsednik. In another league, I feel lucky if I get two stolen bases in a week, so I play for the other categories and even traded away some stolen base threats to someone who cared about them.

If you’re starting seven pitchers, it might actually be good to throw 4 relievers out there, but only do it if it means it gives you a great chance in 3 of those 5 categories (saves, whip, and era). If they get some K’s, even better. But don’t do it because one of those relievers seems to get some wins (just ask that guy that started Rincon this week!) Likewise, don’t be afraid to give up on saves and try to finagle six quality starters into your lineup. I hate having just one good closer (okay, unless it’s Gagne). If I had Smoltz, I’d rather trade him for a starter than start him and Herges every week. Matt’s going to kill your era and whip. In a roto league, Herges might be valuable over the long haul, but any given week…yikes! I feel like one good closer doesn’t offer me a good strategy, so I either go out and get one or two more, or I get rid of him.

There are some overall strategies that don’t work, too. For instance, there’s one guy I play with every year that loves to build a dominant pitching staff at the expense of his entire offense. But that will never win consistently! First off, even if you win every pitching category, that’s only half of the overall head-to-head matchup. And frankly, wins and saves are too inconsistent on a weekly basis. Over the course of a season, you may be able to fairly accurately predict wins and saves for a lot of pitchers, but they can come in bunches and spurts and then dry up just as quickly. I could see a team with a dominant pitching staff losing 7-3, even when their pitchers pitch well! And even the best pitchers throw out stinkers every once in a while (read: Jason Schmidt this week). And then a pitching first team is doomed.

This means that every team needs two strategies, the pitching one and the hitting one. Both strategies need to aim for more than half of their categories. But don’t go too far—if you’re already starting Carl Crawford and Dave Roberts, don’t go making trade offers for Scott Podsednik figuring you’ll be locking up steals and giving yourself a good shot at runs and average—no one needs that many steals. And you can go for a balanced approach, as a matter of fact, I go into every draft starting that way then I let other strategies start to identify themselves.

5) Sabotage!

Now, I’m one of those guys that loves finding the trade that’s good for both teams; I love the fair deal not the ripoff. It’s just my style. I like to look at a team and find a way to make us both better. I’ll even overpay for a guy as long as my chances every week are better. But this doesn’t make me altruistic, I still want to win. While some guys love making the trade that proves they can rip others off through smooth-talking, I would prefer to not rip them off and to prove I’m better by keeping my eye on the prize—the long term!

Here’s what I mean. Obviously, you should always be trading to make yourself better. And in a fair trade, both teams are made better (for now.) The sell-high strategy is a crude example, not that that’s an insult! It is saying, “look, you’ll be better right away” with the full expectation that they’ll be worse soon enough. But, and here’s where I feel I am at my most devious, I like to look at my biggest competition and ask myself where I think they are artificially strong, that is, where they are playing over their heads. For example, in one of my leagues there are about five teams that are contenders. The best team, in my opinion, is owned by a guy I don’t know real well but he seems nice enough. His pitching has been awesome across the board: he got Clemens cheap, Kenny Rogers pitching well for the first half, a steal in Nate Robertson, along Mark Mulder, a couple good closers, and, oh yeah, some guy in San Fran named Schmidt. Jason, I think. Now, it’s clearly a good staff…but not as good as it is, if you know what I mean. I figure, there’s no way Kenny Rogers is going to keep up what he started (and sure enough that is already showing), Clemens has to come to Earth, right? A little? Mulder and Schmidt, I figure, are solid and Robertson looks more and more real with every start. So, I make it my goal to make a very fair trade that leaves him with a pitching staff that looks better than it is. If I can leave him feeling confident with the gambler and the rocket and manage to get away with Mulder or Schmidt…Bingo! The deal is fair but when the playoffs come around and he’s having to bench Kenny Rogers and start Daniel Cabrera, well, my team will be fairer!

In other forms of sabotage, in one league I wasted my waiver priority on a catcher to backup Victor Martinez just because the league leader has had to play the catcher of the week approach, and I didn’t want him to have even a consistent starter. You can sabotage without ever trading a guy just before it’s announced he’s on the DL and without ever getting the reputation of a rip-off artist that no one wants to trade with.

And, oh yeah, it can help you win, too.