Newbie School: Time to Cut Bait

An extremely important date is on the horizon for Benchwarmer Baseball: The Final Day for Salary Rebates. This year the deadline is July 15th -- a Wednesday, and just 10 days away.

Any player that you release by that day, you will receive back 40% of their salary. Release the player after that... you get stugots. It's like going to the Salvation Army with your old lava lamp, double-breasted suits, and Van Halen CD collection... and getting a tax receipt in return! It's junk you didn't want anyways, so why not monetize it?

I look through my roster and put to each player "The Questions": 1) is this player helping me this year to win a championship, and 2) will I keep this player for next year? If you have two "No" answers, either try to trade the dead-weight for a player that gives you a "Yes", or else just make an outright release. That's good money you can use to extend contracts or use in the off-season.

BWB Newbie School: Starting Pitching, a Case Study

The New Fairfield Neanderthals were taken over this year as an orphan team after having a dismal year last season at the hands of The Notorious Kelly Smith. My early season prediction for the Neanderthals was at best a .500 record considering the many weaknesses of the team at that time. Team owner Russ has managed to guide the team to a 36-30 (.545) record to date, which stands at 4th best in the entire league! In looking at their roster, one would not think this would be possible: the lineup features Russell Martin, Adam LaRoche, and Chris B. Young as the 3-4-5 hitters! So what gives?

It comes down to one thing: starting pitching, period. New Fairfield has allowed the least amount of runs per game in the entire league (4.2) despite having only one closer and carrying an injured Hong-Chih Kuo.

Let's take a look:

P1 Josh Beckett 4171
P2 Carlos Zambrano 4220
P3 Edwin Jackson 2346
P4 Aaron Harang 4016
P5 Zach Duke 2062

S1 Ross Ohlendorf 267
S2 Jason Hammel 545

Although none of the starters were ranked in the Top 5 at the beginning of the season, they are mostly solid veteran pitchers (with the exception being Edwin Jackson's shorter career), and the rotation is dependable from 1 through 5. Additionally, Harang and Beckett came off of down years, so their contracts were reasonably priced. The spot starters are nothing to get excited about, but Ohlendorf has been healthy all year and can be relied on in case a starter misses a start or two. Basically, New Fairfield ranks very highly in the Starting Pitching ERA category -- simple as that.

It has been suggested in the past (by Andy, I do believe) that Benchwarmer Baseball comes down to pitching, and I am not sure I am a convert, but it is clear that having 5 strong pitchers in the rotation can turn a weak team into a contender fairly quickly.

Hey Russ! If you actually take Coco out of the lineup, replace Kuo and Howie Kendrick, you may even take a run for the division. (But since I'm first in the division right now, I hope you're not reading this!)

BWB Newbie School: Setting Lineups

I recently had an e-mail exchange with one of the new players to Benchwarmer Baseball for this year regarding the timing of setting lineups. I thought it would be helpful to post my thoughts from that exchange here, and ask for any additional thoughts from the experienced BWB players (as I may be wrong!):

Q: Our roster is illegal but the site is not allowing line-up changes.

A: In looking at the Transaction Schedule, the past set of add/drops were during Week 4, which means those players will be available for the Week 5 games. Although it currently says your lineup is illegal, you will have an opportunity to set your Week 5 lineups before that week starts, so you will not have an illegal lineup for any weeks.

In a sense, you are setting your lineups for a week in advance, so perfect timing is very tricky with BWB. I take an approach whereby I set a lineup that is fairly all-weather (one that can endure 1 or 2 players being injured) to avoid this difficulty.

So, don't sweat it like you would a regular ROTO league where you set lineups every Monday. The deadlines will be fluid over the season due to the nature of the real MLB games having rain-outs, so I just check-in when Jon sends out an e-mail, and when it says you can make changes to your team, that's when I do it. That approach has served me well.


Jon and others: any additional advice that you can impart on this topic?