2011 Fantasy Baseball: Good Hitting Reigns Supreme

Fantasy baseball is addicting.

It attracts people to follow the game of baseball that would otherwise be disinterested in rooting for a single team.

It's the strategy aspect.  Owners marvel in the strategic value that fantasy sports has to offer.

The dedicated owner, which can sometimes become an obsession, plan their draft day attacks months in advance.  Whether it's scouting minor league prospects, comeback hitters, stolen base phenoms or under the radar pitching, an active fantasy enthusiast fails to take any strategic measure lightly.

But through all the sleeper picks, preseason trades, and mid-season waiver wire additions, where do some managers go wrong?

It's pitching.

For some reason, this notion that pitching wins championships, has grown into a fantasy baseball how-to. 

Owners get all tangled up with drafting, adding, and trading for starting pitchers, blinding them to the winning truth that hitting is the key ingredient for a successful playoff run.

It's sometimes entertaining to witness fantasy owners pretending to be Bobby Fisher making a chess move when they select their draft day pitching.

The fallacy that is pitcher based teams has become more or less a fantasy baseball hoax, like Big Foot or crop circles.

But there's a goal behind this madness. Owners truly believe that drafting three or four elite starters will fulfill their championship destinies.

However, when your best offensive threat is Rickie Weeks or Shane Victorino, when does strategy become clueless management?

Don't get me wrong, Weeks and Victorino are more than serviceable roster options, but when drafting pitching impedes on your offensive potential, teams become too one-sided.

For example, some guy in my CBS league decided to draft Roy Halladay, Felix Hernandez, Justin Verlander, Jon Lester, Yovani Gallardo, Tommy Hanson, and Brandon Morrow, making it nearly impossible to match his pitching production on a weekly basis.

However, his offensive attack has been left in the hands of Eric Hosmer, Rickie Weeks, Alex Gordon and Casey McGehee. Not to mention, much of his roster is made up of Brewers and Royals players, his lineup is anything but tantalizing.

His team has done fairly well though, relying on his monstrosity of a pitching staff and a patch-job of an offense to go 6-2 through the first quarter of the season.

But I've got some bad news for the pitching staffs of all pitching staffs. Not only is he forced to start just five of his elite starters every week, but he's in for a rude awakening come playoff time.

I've learned first hand that relying on starting pitching during the playoffs will surely get you into a heap load of trouble. 

The fact is that too many teams, whether in a playoff hunt or shutdown mode, limit the play of their elite pitchers by cancelling starts or spreading innings thin. MLB teams more or less baby the majority of their starters, making it that much more difficult for fantasy owners to find reliable options.

Towards the end of the baseball season, some of the best fantasy starters get gag ordered by their ball clubs. Guys like Clay Buchholz, the before mentioned Gallardo, and other playoff team specialists, are unable to entertain numerous starts down the stretch.

So what was once a 25 point performer, turns into a 15 point, mid-tier option.

With that said, it becomes more suitable to stack your fantasy squad with productive and consistent offensive threats. Players that will actually take the field when all the marbles are on the table.

Because losing and winning a championship can easily be determined by a team pulling their starting pitcher for his final start. Trust me, it happens. 

Losing a hard invested season hurts, but it's even more devastating when all the pieces were there but a pitcher wasn't given his final few starts in order to rest for the playoffs.

By allowing your team to be run by pitching and pitching alone, you're gambling with the possibility of any one of those guys flaming out towards season end and leaving you scrambling for a replacement if it's not too late.

So, beware that pitching can be the end of all things fantasy baseball, leaving you to pick up the pieces and plan for next year.

Starting pitching in fantasy baseball is like LeBron James, a regular season Medusa.

But good hitting is like Kobe Bryant, rising to the occasion to capture a title.