Advice on 2007 Doubles based team

[CHARLESBELL]

Looking for some advice as I'm planning a pitching move to shore up a staff where the lefties are all getting the stuffing pounded out of them. In the process of trying to trade, but may end up going to the FA. There are some good SPs still there, and if I go that route I think I could swing someone in Clemens price range.

This is a "test" team as I want to learn how the the mid-to-low priced SPs will do given the lack of quality SPs and depth of hitting this year. At the halfway mark the pitching is NOT holding up.

I've been experimenting with doubles based teams and this is one of them. On offense I'm 4th overall in runs scored but my differential is 451/497. I'm not sure I can keep the team over .500 with that kind of disparity. I'm also better on the road than at home (25-20 vs 18-21).

My pen is probably too deep so i think I can trim back there, and I want to move the remaining lefty SP in the rotation (Olsen). Note that I already tinkered with this once, dropping another lefty starter to get spot starters Buchholz and Oconner.

The pitching is seeing 60% RH bats. I'm in Kauffman; the other division teams are in cell, petco, and fenway.

charlie

[JdEarly]

Can we get a link to your team? I'm working on a speed/defense team with an emphasis on doubles and OBP, so I'm interested in seeing what how you're going about doing what you're doing.

http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/baseball/stratomatic/2007/team/team_other.html?user_id=3031

There's my team. I'm hoping that having so many strikeout pitchers will keep runners from advancing on productive outs, and that my infield doesn't commit too many overly costly errors. Good range, sure, but the errors could doom me. However, I feel that I need the OBP and doubles that Nick Johnson and Carols Guillen will provide in order to compete. This is also my first 2007 team, so I'm also experimenting. I can let you know how these pitchers work out, if you would like.

Anyway, yeah, link us to your team.

[CHARLESBELL]

Oops! Meant to do that. Here it is:

http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/baseball/stratomatic/2007/team/team_other.html?user_id=1688

I have guillen as well - he's doing exactly as expected - hitting up a storm and leading the league in errors.

[CHARLESBELL]

My other experimental doubles team I went all offense and then force fit a pitching staff with what $$ I had left over. This one is a lot faster than the other one, too.

http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/baseball/stratomatic/2007/team/team_other.html?user_id=2329

[CHARLESBELL]

Help?

[Sknsfan]

I'm experiencing the same problems. Can't seem to get my pitching staff to perform up to snuff.

It's tough when your team is hitting like that to have to deal with a team ERA over 5.

Not sure what suggestions to make as most of the moves I've made in 07 have seem to backfired.

One thing you could do though is before you make any major moves see where your hurting in your pitching - are you getting killed by lefties - find a giant lefty killer, etc.

[visick]

I'm no expert charlie, but I'll try to lend a hand...

Righties are hitting .290 against you. Lefties are hitting .253. You're seeing more righties than lefties. With your park, a guy like El Duque would do well. (Any other hard RH as well. ie. Bonderman)

Olsen "should" be better, but he's probably just not seeing enough lefties.

While Cain, Olsen, Cabrera and even O'Conner have nice IP/H ratios, they also walk alot of guys. Giving someone a free pass in a pitching park, could spell trouble.

[CHARLESBELL]

Thanks for the comments. The SPs for this team are also a bit of an experiment, as I focused more on IP/H (as you noticed) and TB, allowing the extra walks, figuring to make it as hard as possible to drive those walks home. Obviously mixed results so far.

I can go a couple of ways here. The best available hard RH for the price are Juan Cruz and padilla. Cruz is better balanced against lefties while he would still become my best hard RH SP. Padilla is even better vs RH and has the advantage of being a *SP6 vice Cruz at SP5. Definitely leaning toward padilla for olsen here as the other RHPs should help protect against teams piling up lefties against padilla. Another idea is to go for broke with a top tier starter. If I shuffled my 3b's around (dropping derosa) and dropped a relief pitcher like feliciano (a lefty who is getting too many innings), I could swing an SP like A Sanchez. I'm not sure I really need that kind of horsepower, though. Olsen is up to pitch tonight against a team that can put 6 RH hitters in the lineup against him, so I'll likely move on this today sometime.

Thoughts about padilla or sanchez?