The sub $5M Rotation

In years past, going Coors with a cheap staff was a pretty common choice. I don't have the overall results of those teams, but I know many did pretty well. It would appear to me that approach is less common in the recent sets, although I don't know that for sure.

Perhaps it's just me, but I feel like there are a lot more rotations being put together this season for $5M and under, and they're winning!

Is anyone else noticing this?

I've only tried this once, a few years ago, and I got crushed.

What's the strategy when putting these teams together?

Michael.

I have had success with rotations where no member is about $5M, but needed Dellin Betances to make it work.

shhhh I just finished a league with the top seed and no pitcher above iwakuma's 4.18. betances was the runaway mvp and cy young winner. after 48 games in another league he is 1-4 with a 2.95 era.

last night I got bit by the inevitable risk of this rotation, my 5th starter vs his #1 stud. I lost the pivotal game 5 and now have my back against the wall. iwakuma vs samardzija tonight.

last night I got bit by the inevitable risk of this rotation, my 5th starter vs his #1 stud. I lost the pivotal game 5 and now have my back against the wall. iwakuma vs samardzija tonight.

That's generally a risk with the 5-man staff, period, not just with the sub-5-mil per starter 5-man staff...which isn't a substantial risk, either. Very few managers spend much on their #5 starter, even if they did spend more than 5 mil on other starters.

last night I got bit by the inevitable risk of this rotation, my 5th starter vs his #1 stud. I lost the pivotal game 5 and now have my back against the wall. iwakuma vs samardzija tonight.

If you can survive that, though, the remaining games are your #1 and 2 vs. their #2 and 3. Not as big a gap as a 5 vs. 1, but depending on team construction, could be a little advantage. (in other words, I'm trying the glass half-full view).

whew, I survived game 6 by the skin of my teeth. down 5-1 after 5, I scored 9 runs in 2 innings. up by 3 in the 9th my sub 2.00 era closer allowed a 2 out 3 run jack to tie. then his closer ran down to f0 and I scored in the bottom of the 9th to win. big game 7 tonight (kazmir for me and kuroda for him), trying to cash for the 1st time. I have 4 starters with a combined salary of 23.65 hitting .154 with 1 homer and 3 rbi's. if a couple of them can wake up I might just survive this.

last out of place post and i'll let this thread get back on track. I won game 7 last night, 6-4. league mvp betances got the save with 3 shutout innings. my 1st cash in strat. now I go for the 2 credits starting tonight.

Good thoughts, freeman.

I'm having some success with a similar team--but it's a 60m league, so perhaps the move is not as bold as for the team mbertolli has linked to :

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1402659

Quick update: my team won the Finals. 96 wins. Betances slightly over 200 innings, and none of starter with more than 162 innings except Capuano with 164 innings. What amazes me is that my team finished 6th or 7 th in league' era. Of course, a nice middle defense helps! Also, matching the right starters against each opponent is part of the strategy.

It definitely worked. What's counterintuitive to me is having pitchers who give up a lot of baserunners be able to survive in a HR park. I understand that an attempt was made as well to pitch these guys against teams with favorable match-ups but Martinez as I think would be a typical example (not adjusted for BP) has a 23 out of 108 chance to put a right handed batter on and then a 38 out of a 108 chance against lefties. And Miller Park is 1-18 1-18 BP hr. My instinct would be to think Martinez would put runners on with his card and then any team with significant power would crush him. But my instinct is wrong. Capuano gets crushed by any team with lefty power. I'm sure the other pitchers also had similar major flaws. But you made it work. Gutsy move that paid off.

What's counterintuitive to me is having pitchers who give up a lot of baserunners be able to survive in a HR park.

In theory, you're right: outs count even more in highly friendly hitter environments. But this was a 60M league, so there were a lot of outs of many hitters' cards too. I do believe it can be successful at 80M, but my team whip wouldn't be as low, that's for sure. Playing in Miller park instead of Coors gave my staff 6 more outs (out of 216 chances). Playing under a good defense sure helps too. And playing with 7 pitchers allowed me to have the right matchups in most games. So, for Carlos Martinez, for example, I would use him almost exclusively against teams with 5 right-handed hitters or more. If you assume a 40/60 ratio, then his overall card allows less roughly 29 chances of on-base (notwithstanding ballpark singles), just a bit under the psychological ceiling of 30. You can see on the lefty/righty page that Martinez faced 48% of lefty bats, but this number is inflated by his use of mop-up against cards loaded of lefty hitters.

But you're right that the ideal pitcher for hitting-friendly stadiums is one with low whip. However, most of the pitchers under 2M with a low whip typically allow many homeruns---and thus are not good value for ballparks with high homerun chances. There are exactly 20 non-500K starting pitchers under 1.5M who allow 2 BP homerun chances or less on each side, and without a single exception, they all allow more than 30 chances vs at least one side of the card. E. Santana, who was my "ace" in the 7-men rotation ("ace" in that he's the one who was getting the call regardless of the matches), is second best in registering outs among those 20 pitchers, second only to Swarzak. Actually, I had drafted Swarzak, but couldn't hold on him because of money issue. But I believe J-Pav used Swarzak a few times with good success, I seem to notice.

Anyway, bottom-line is this: it all come down to finding good values. I'm sure you can have success by establishing an all-ace rotation, and rest your offense on nice values, just as you can spend the most you can on offensive threats, and rest your rotation on bargains and on giving the ball to the reliever as fast as possible.