Week 10: Benching Hitters?

 

Keith is out of his boot and was enjoying his time with Gio and Pixie Mae. Unsure which one is the dog and which one is the kid.

This week’s mid-week blog is on the topic of Dave’s incredibly interesting strategy last week of benching his hitters. For those that didn’t see it, here was what happened:

·         Dave only had one hitter play on Monday of the week and they hit a HR with a second hit, boosting Dave’s AVG and SLG.

·         Not feeling too confident about his team against Michael and for some other reason’s we’ll dive into, he benched his hitters. This locked in that Dave would win hitting Ks, AVG, and SLG on the week, but he would lose the other 5 hitting categories.

This is, of course, legal…but was it the right move? Before we get into the results, let’s talk about the process, because that is way more interesting to me than what actually would have happened if Dave had played his hitters

The argument for benching his hitters:

Dave had just had one of his hottest hitters, Evan Longoria, go on the DL that Sunday and Dave didn’t have any bench hitters to fill the gap, so he would have need to spend a pickup that he considered very valuable to stream pitchers on a hitter. Not ideal.

Dave considered how good Michael’s offense had been and how Michael hasn’t allowed more than 4.5 offensive points against all year.

Dave wanted to have more roster flexibility for pitching streaming where he thought he could be more competitive. Dave didn’t think his pitching could keep up with Michael’s pitching so he needed to drive the innings pitched count up to offset Michael’s Starting Pitching base. This required having all his moves available to do so.

Finally, Dave likes to stir it up. But in a fun way that we can talk about and not in a yelling at us or making stupid comments way or writing emails that are way too long for a new dad to read. #CommishApproved.

The argument against benching hitters:

It’s punting 5 categories. Fantasy stats week to week can be highly fluid and nothing is certain. Dave has a good offense…if not as good as he’d like it to be...and that offense still had a fighting chance to compete with Michael in every category

Michael’s roster construction is showing that he doesn’t care too much about week to week performance right now. He’s rostering a dead spot for a prospect that might not come up until the all-star break or later at this point. By not pushing Michael to be ‘punished’ for not having a high AB count, Michael was able get away with having minimal offensive volume. By simply rostering a full hitting lineup, Dave would have had a better chance than normal to win more hitting categories due to Michael’s low AB total. Dave’s roster was not set up well to maximize this with not carrying bench hitters and then getting a hitter hurt.

Pitcher streaming, as we’re seeing, is a crap shoot. Streaming-class pitchers often do more to hurt your ERA/WHIP than they do good for your W,QS,K. Dave perhaps could have been more successful adding a hitter and fielding a full hitting lineup and dropping an RP to stream with and it be a better overall team strategy on the week.

Finally, Michael was happy to see this. It was a stress-free week where Michael didn't need to worry about which hitter to bench or if he needed to burn a move to add a hitter for off days or injuries. From that perspective, Michael was glad Dave benched hitters.

I’m sure other people can think of some more pros and cons, feel free to chime in.

How it played out:

Dave carried two less hitters than a full lineup so he could stream pitching more aggressively. Upon deciding on this strategy he dropped Odubel Herrera who had 7 hits, 7 runs, and a SB on the week and Evan Longoria who went on the IL at the beginning of the week.

Upon seeing what Dave was doing Michael also dropped one hitter so he could stream pitching better, Josh Donaldson, who had 4 hits, 5 runs, 3 HRs.

Final tallies if everyone had started their rostered hitters during the week (not counting Herrera and Donaldson stats)

	H*	AB*	R	HR	RBI	SB	BB	K	AVG	SLG
Dave	57	193	36	11	23	2	13	37	0.295	0.523
Michael	53	212	40	13	30	4	28	68	0.250	0.472

*not a scored stat

It ended up a wash. Dave would have only won 3 categories, the same 3 he did. BUT….

As you can see, Dave had a very good hitting week. Despite having 20 fewer At Bats than Michael, Dave kept up in basically every hitting category other than walks. Crediting Herrera and Donaldson’s stats brings Dave’s totals within 2 Runs of Michael’s Runs total. So, if Dave had added a hitter instead of a pitcher when he dropped Longoria, that hitter would have only needed to net Dave 2 runs to have his hitting score 3.5 points instead of the 3 he did. The hypothetical hitter could not have done enough damage to hurt the AVG and SLG categories to offset the big lead he had.

The pitcher streaming was where Dave shined on the week, Dave put up 87 innings with 97 Ks, 7 Wins and 10 Quality Starts and a sub-4 ERA. Big numbers. It is unclear how much of this streaming he could have done with one fewer roster spot to spare. He was behind early in the week when he was grabbing pitchers more than the day before their start but he added 3 Wins and 2 QS on Sunday to overtake Michael in those categories with pitchers he just grabbed the night before which Dave could have done while still having a full hitting lineup.

So what?

In reality, the strategy probably did not help Dave in the Yahoo Standings W-L column.

The long-term implications of this deal are probably like 1 fantasy category in the standings and Michael dropping Josh Donaldson who had a huge week after being meh most of the year. Donaldosn cleared waivers but was added by Carl after Donaldson’s 3^rd HR on the week. Time will tell if Donaldson keeps it up or not.

OK, that was it. Lot to think about. But in the meantime, on to the next week.