Rotisserie: Covering the Bases

Just about every baseball fan thinks he or she can do a better job picking players than the general manager of any major-league team. But Rotisserie or fantasy-league players know it isn’t as easy as it looks.

Perhaps the most crucial part of the Rotisserie season is its beginning -- the auction or draft of players in which participants fill their 23-player rosters. Strategies vary, but here are a few draft-day rules of thumb for fantasy-baseball general managers.

Pitching may be 90 percent of the game, but in Rotisserie baseball, it’s more like 35 percent. That is, on a typical 23-player roster with 14 hitters and nine pitchers, most experienced Rotisserie owners spend no more than 35 percent of their total budget on pitching, in part because pitching performances tend to be less consistent from year to year than hitting statistics.

Be patient. Many Rotisserie owners, especially inexperienced ones, spend most of their money in the early rounds of the auction, then have to watch every penny in the latter stages, when many good players can still be had. Patient owners wait until the latter stages and scoop up the bargains. Many experts believe Rotisserie seasons are won and lost in the “endgame” in the waning minutes of an auction draft.

* Don’t fall for “brand name” players. Darryl Strawberry and Jose Canseco may be big-name superstars, but their Rotisserie salaries tend to reflect their fame as much as they do their statistical performance. Canny owners know that there are lesser-known players -- particularly on less-followed teams such as the Seattle Mariners and Atlanta Braves -- who provide almost the same statistics as the big names, for a fraction of the price.

* Do your homework. Nothing beats the satisfaction of finding a young, little-known player in spring training and buying him cheap in the draft and watching him bloom into a star during the regular season. It’s not easy, and it doesn’t happen all the time, but Rotisserie owners who spotted Cecil Fielder, Ron Gant and Delino DeShields before the rest of the world last season often laughed all the way to the pennant. One caveat: Given the preponderance of baseball information available these days, few truly good unknowns remain secrets for long.

* Don’t fall in love with a player or, worse, a whole team. You’ll probably wind up overpaying, especially for hometown players. Be willing to be flexible about the players you want to acquire.

* Look for players who can help you in more than one category. Wade Boggs may be the best hitter in the major leagues, but for Rotisserie purposes, his value is fairly limited. Why? Because the only fantasy category in which he has a major impact is batting average -- he doesn’t steal bases, doesn’t hit many homers, doesn’t drive in 100 runs. The trick is acquiring four-category players such as Ryne Sandberg and Boggs’s teammate Ellis Burks -- although they are few and far between. In pitching, two- or three-category players are a must -- there is almost no such thing as a pitcher who has great totals in all four pitching categories.

* Don’t mix leagues. Some Rotisserie leagues pick from a combined pool of American and National League players, which fills rosters with superstars unless there are 20 or more teams in the league. This takes out a lot of the fun -- part of the skill in fantasy leagues is having to choose between obscure bench players and middle-inning relief pitchers to fill out rosters. If you’ve never heard of Al Newman of the Minnesota Twins or Larry Andersen of the San Diego Padres, Rotisserie baseball will ensure that you know who they are -- and why they can be incredibly valuable to a winning team.