Fantasy Baseball: The Great Experiment

The Head-to-Head (H2H) format for fantasy baseball is an abomination. It's popularity is due most likely to the influx of fantasy football players who are scared of change, and refuse to try something different (much like my 3 year old nephew). Rotisserie is not broccoli, people! Try it, you WILL like it.

Here's the problem with H2H. It doesn't reflect actual baseball at all. People stream pitchers, ignore entire categories, don't draft ANY pitchers, etc. Sure, sure, Roto is no different in the "not like real baseball at all", but this is different. In Roto, you're forced to focus on all aspects of the game at hand - every category counts. But in H2H, you just need to cover more categories than the other guy.

So what is a winning strategy? In my opinion, you can completely discount starting pitchers. Completely. To prove this, I am undertaking the Great Experiment: I'm taking part in 4 Yahoo Public H2H leagues (competetive). In the draft, I will not draft a single starting pitcher. The only exception is for pitchers that are SP-eligible, but are actually middle relievers or closers.

How do I expect to win without any SPs? I can do this two ways: I can either stream pitchers (which is to shuffle in every starting pitcher from the free agent pool that I can, and win Wins, Strikeouts and Saves (from the many relievers I'll draft), and possibly compete in ERA/WHIP), or just ignore Wins and Ks, and take Saves, ERA and WHIP by just having dominant closers.

What will this accomplish? Hopefully, it will shed some light on the complete worthlessness of the H2H format. It works in football - but not in baseball.