Secrets To Fantasy Baseball: Part 1

During the next few days I will be posting a series of Blogs called "Secrets To Fantasy Baseball". Throughout my experiences with fantasy baseball I have come to learn a few tricks and certain statistics to look at when drafting my players or picking up free agents. Through my experience I have come to a certain realization of how to be consistently successful at fantasy baseball. Now, I will not share all of my secrets, because many of my readers are my competitors, but I will give away a few secrets. Some of these hints may be obvious to hardcore fantasy players, but they all really do work. In my short history with fantasy baseball I have missed the playoffs less then 5% of the time and have finished first in the regular season over 60% of the time. That's all you can ask for. You want to be able to make the playoffs consistently, because once the playoffs begin in fantasy, it simply comes down to luck and match ups. I have won fantasy leagues, but the most important aspect is getting to the 2nd season.

The first position we are going to look at are pitchers. This includes starting pitchers and relief pitchers. There are many statistical categories I do look very hard at when identifying which pitchers I should take or pass on. One of the main ones I do look at is the K/BB ratio. This is a very basic and extremely important statistic. How you look at it is dividing the number walks into how many strikeouts a pitcher gets. Strikeouts in fantasy are very important and more important than just the 1 statistical category. As a fantasy owner, you want your pitchers missing as many bat as possible. The more missed bats the less likely errors can occur and of course hits. That will certainly reduce your teams ERA and WHIP as well. If pitchers can also limit the walks, then you are set. As a fantasy owner you really want the K/BB ratio to be anywhere from 2.3 and above. I would say 2.3 is a great barometer to start with. Anything lower than that is too risky. Let me break this down for you. I am going to look at the pitching statistics from one of my most competitive fantasy leagues. This is a 14 team league with my fraternity brothers. It is an AL and NL league, and every player takes this league very seriously. The top 2 teams have an average K/BB ratio of 2.40. The bottom 2 teams have an average K/BB of 2.16. The difference of .24 may not seem like a lot, but it is. Over the course of a season that .24 can represent anywhere from 75-100 K's and BB's. That can mean the difference of about 15 fantasy wins and losses over the course of a year. Look at the standings at the end of the year that 15 wins can certainly change the playoff landscape easily.

So the next time you are looking to make a trade or make a pick up on the waiver wire, look at K/BB ratio. Wins and ERA are easily the most deceiving fantasy categories. Luck has about as much to do with those stats as the players relative skill. Just look at Daisuke Matsuzaka as a perfect example. He went 18-3 last year with a 2.90 ERA. Wow those are impressive numbers, but if you look deeper, he had a K/BB ratio of only 1.63. Not what I call elite numbers. Just for comparison sake, lets look at Dan Haren. Haren went 16-8 with an ERA of 3.33. His K/BB ratio was 5.15! Now that is amazing and look at their numbers this year, because its not even close. Haren is 6-4 (bad luck) with an ERA of 2.23 and a K/BB ratio of 7.38! Matsuzaka is 1-5 with an ERA of 8.23 and a K/BB ratio of 1.89. This shows that luck plays a huge part in a pitchers success. His K/BB ratio is even better this year, but his numbers are extremely low. So make sure you are not looking at just the basics (Wins, ERA or Saves) and look a little deeper when analyzing a pitcher. You will be much better off in the long term.