Fantasy Baseball: Head-to-Head Strategies

By now, strategies for head-to-head leagues are fairly well known. Punting saves to stock up on wins and Ks. Punting wins and Ks to focus on saves, ERA, and WHIP. Punting steals to beef up your HR and RBI. Using a starter who qualifies as a reliever in an RP slot or a reliever who qualifies as a starter in an SP slot.

These strategies can be risky. For example, if you’re predictably punting saves every week, an attentive owner will make you pay by starting just one closer to guarantee himself a win in saves while still competing in the other categories. It makes more sense to use such an approach selectively. Like when you know you probably can’t win saves against a certain opponent, benching your closers in favor of starters that week might not be a bad idea. Even still, a week is such a short time period that bad things can happen. Those starters you put in get shelled, and suddenly you’ve lost four or five categories.

I’m interested in hearing your experiences with head-to-head strategies. So comment away and hopefully we can all learn from each other!