Optimizing Your Roster

Gypsy Soul fills me in on the state of his team and wants to know what he can do to improve it.

In my AL 5x5, the total dollars of 9 of the teams range from 250 to 281, my team stands at 256, being slightly stronger in hitting than pitching. The other three teams are in the 230s. Inflation for pitching is almost nothing, for hitting it is 25%. Other than trying to look for value, category optimization and spending all my dollars at the auction, is there any other strategy I can employ? I have no closers on my freeze list.

My general advice would be to simply go out, maximize value, and not get cute with your auction.

If you're $25 off the pace, you're still close enough to the top of the standings that you should close the gap between $256 and $281 simply by pursuing value in the auction. I generally don't recommend optimizing categories unless you're at least $32 behind the first place team in value.

Given your team's relative strengths and weaknesses, the separate hitting/pitching inflation should help your team as well. Something I'd monitor early in the auction is whether or not your league actually adheres to the separate hitting/pitching inflation phenomenon or not. When there is this much of a difference between the hitting and pitching inflation, owners will sometimes put more money into the asset that is less inflated because they don't want to pay full inflation on the asset that is more inflated. If you see some pitching prices going higher early, you may want to prepare to add $1-2 to your pitcher prices...particularly for arms that you like.

Even though you don't have any closers, I wouldn't chase. If you get a closer at your price, fine. If you don't, dump saves or trade for them later. A league where a $281 team is the best team coming out of the auction should be very competitive and should see a good deal of trading and jockeying for position as the season goes along. It should also be a league where you can dump a category - if you have to - and still win.

Good luck in your auction, Gypsy Soul.