The $9 (or in this case $10) Pitching Staff

An anonymous reader with a sorry freeze list is thinking about dumping categories.

My 6X6, NL-only team is slim on keepers (probably only Fielder at $33 and M. Montero $5). Yeah, it's a sad state.

With that in mind, I'm thinking about going with a $10 pitching staff. The total cap is $270.

A few items of note:
-My league counts holds, so I can pick up a few points with MRs.
-The last-place ERA in the last two years has been about 4.70.
-The last-place WHIP has been 1.47.
-We count W-L, not W.
-My league has a 1,200-inning minimum.

If memory serves, this is the same anonymous reader who has been asking me about his 6x6 league for the last couple of years. This means that his sixth offensive category is doubles plus triples, if memory serves.

I wrote about the idea of dumping pitching categories three years ago, so I'll once again provide the link to that article so I avoid repeating myself. One area where I think anonymous is correct to even consider this plan is that he's got practically no freezes (with Montero being the only true undervalued freeze). This might not be the right two-category dump, but a two-category dump is certainly worth considering.

I agree with Eugene's response that in a league with a 1,200 IP requirement, you need at least five starters to make this work. You may not necessarily need to own all five of these starters on Auction Day, but if you go that route you will have to mix and match fairly aggressively.

I'm more accustomed to 4x4 and 5x5 and the point totals to shoot for in those formats. In 4x4, I generally advise shooting for 74 out of 96 points, or 77% of the point total, by winning six categories and throwing two overboard. In a 12-team 6x6 league, 77% of the points would translate to 111 points. If you spent the bulk of your money on hitting and swept the hitting categories, you'd need 39 pitching points to get to this goal.

This means that you could actually dump three categories as opposed to two (it didn't occur to me until I wrote this that a 6x6 category dump could go as high as three categories depending on how competitive your league is). The dilemma with an incredibly cheap pitching staff is that it's difficult to control which categories you're actually dumping.

However, even though you theoretically can dump more categories in a 6x6 league, the design of the categories makes it harder to do so. Dumping strikeouts would be logical without an innings requirement, but with an innings requirement you're probably going to wind up buying strikeouts. Dumping holds/saves seems to make sense, but if you're carrying 10 starters, you're only giving yourself a leg up in strikeouts. And the use of W/L differential (as opposed to wins) nullifies some of the benefit of carrying 10 starting pitchers.

In the end, you're probably not involved in a category dump as much as you are in hoping to get lucky across all of your pitching categories and pulling off the 35-40 pitching points you'll probably need to stay competitive. That's an average of 6.5 points per category: or a middle-of-the-pack finish in all pitching categories. Your goal is probably going to be more along the lines of buying a mess of cheap pitchers and hoping to get lucky with at least two, and then using your offensive excess to trade for pitching later.

As a general rule, I don't like this strategy because - as I mentioned in the linked article above - this is less of a strategy and more of a wing-and-a-prayer solution. If you're willing to try it while recognizing that there's a good chance you're going to wind up dumping (while hoping some of your $1 pitching buys are part of your next winning team), then I'm all for giving it a shot. If you're serious about winning, I'd look for a different category dump.