Unpredictable seasons demand unpredictable strategies.
The 2021 season is certain to be an unusual one: The first played off a 60-game, prior-year sample. A year following one during which no pitcher exceeded 84 innings pitched, with only 40 even meeting the ERA qualification threshold. The lingering threat of a pandemic, after a season during which 43 games were postponed due to positive COVID-19 cases. And, on top of all that, the February report that Major League Baseball will slightly deaden the baseball, while adding more humidors around the league.
Yes, I expect odd things to happen in 2021, and my LABR-AL -- that stands for the League of Alternative Baseball Reality, a 12-team, AL-only league of industry analysts -- team reflects my expectation. I anticipate that pitching will be more difficult to project and ultimately fill than usual, and you'll need to make transactions at a greater rate.
First off, if you're interested in the specifics of my LABR team, you can see it in the inset within the column. I'm not going to dig too deeply into the details -- no one really wants to read too much about one person's fantasy team -- with the focus below more on some of my findings from the salary-cap draft itself.
Can Stars and Scrubs work as a strategy in a year like this? I'm thinking yes, otherwise I wouldn't have employed it, but it's also not exactly the strategy. The idea here was to load up on offense and go light on pitching, both because there are a lot of low-end, profit-potential arms available in the lower tiers of the AL-only ranks, and because I expect cycling arms through my lineup is the way to go in a year where workloads will be scrutinized, wins difficult to project and we don't really know how much more of an advantage pitchers will have with the change to the baseball. Perhaps none, but in that case, the extra offense can be used for a midseason trade.
Putting together my spreadsheet, Dane Dunning, Deivi Garcia, J.A. Happ, Jose Quintana and Cal Quantrill were all pitchers I priced $8 or less who sold for $5 or less, three of them finding their way onto my team. Logan Gilbert was a midseason debut candidate prospect who was selected by design; LABR has that rule where a pitcher you roster to your team on draft day cannot be removed from the lineup (except by outright release) unless he's deactivated from his big-league team's roster (which Gilbert almost certainly will when demoted to the minors at the conclusion of spring training). The fortunate break in this draft was that there were a good number of matchups-capable pitchers who snuck into the reserve draft, with players selected in those six rounds able to be freely activated and reserved each week without penalty: Garrett Crochet, Matt Shoemaker, Dean Kremer, Kyle Gibson, Justin Dunn, Chris Flexen, Bryan Garcia.
In the end, my pitching staff cost a mere $52 total, and while I have gone the relatively cheap route on the pitching side in recent years -- I haven't rostered a pitching staff costing as much as $80 since 2015 -- it's still by far the cheapest staff I've assembled since my move to the American League-only format in 2013.
The second- and third-tier starting pitchers were expensive. Perhaps this is a byproduct of there being more top-shelf talent in the National than American Leagues. Using my own top 25 overall rankings, only six players -- Mike Trout, Gerrit Cole, Jose Ramirez, Shane Bieber, Xander Bogaerts and Eloy Jimenez -- hail from the American League. Only three of my top 13 starting pitchers, too, call the AL their homes. That appeared to cause a good amount of inflation in the group ranked beneath Cole/Bieber: Lucas Giolito cost $35 (my valuation was $32), Lance Lynn $26 ($25), Jose Berrios $25 ($22), Zack Greinke $22 ($18) and Lance McCullers Jr. $19 ($18).
In the end, I paid my full price for "staff ace" Corey Kluber ($16), which might be the most scrutinized decision of my draft. As with Gilbert, Kluber's selection was strategic, as he should provide potentially top-eight fantasy production (among AL-only starters) when healthy, and when he's not, I can IL him and find a temporary replacement.
There's a good chance you can use the deep designated hitter pool to your advantage, but mind your roster if you dive into it early. There are seven designated hitters I had with a valuation of $16-plus this year -- Shohei Ohtani, however, also brings pitcher eligibility -- and in this league, only 12 roster spots in which to place them. Bear in mind, too, that this comes into play in ESPN's standard league, where that are only 10 teams and therefore 10 roster spots across the league to place them. This is a lot like the 2016 season, which was the last and only time since at least 2013 in which I had as many as seven DH-only players valued $14-plus.
While there's a finite amount of room for those DHs, and acquiring them can "clog" that spot, these hitters can provide you a handy contribution and are therefore worth it. In LABR, Nelson Cruz ($21, but whom I valued $22), Franmil Reyes ($16/$17), Jorge Soler ($15/$17) and Miguel Cabrera ($2/$5) were all relative bargains, perhaps because of the dwindling competition for their services after each successive one was rostered.
As mentioned in my Playbook, this is a critical area in which tracking your competition's rosters works to your benefit. I had every intention of rostering one of the top-tier DHs, but after spending big on hitters like Trout, Alex Bregman and Eloy Jimenez early, I knew I might need to go cheap at DH after all. Being aware of which teams remained eligible competition for a DH-only player allowed me to take a $1 flier on Willie Calhoun; at the time no other team with the spot open had $2 to bid.
There is a huge premium being placed on stolen bases. In fact, among the 17 American League hitters that we project to steal 20-plus bases on ESPN, the group averaged a cost $1.5 more than my listed prices, with 13 of them costing more than my list price. Speedy shortstops Bo Bichette ($35) and Adalberto Mondesi ($34) were particularly pricey, and the aggressive prices at that position represented the one area of my team where I was disappointed with the outcome. I had hoped to land Amed Rosario (15 projected steals), only to see him cost $3 more than expected.