By JIMMY D / Late season baseball strategy from Jimmy D | Jimmy's archive

Jimmy has led his baseball fantasy league for all but three weeks of the season and is in the driver’s seat heading to September.

It is far from time to put the team on cruise control.

He had to tip his hat to the computer that auto-selected for him when Jimmy got the draft time wrong and missed it! Matt Holliday, Brad Penny, Miguel Cabrera, Dan Haren and Russell Martin landed on Jimmy’s team through the computer’s astute picking.

But it was the waiver-wire work, snapping up Brewer 3B Ryan Braun just as he was being promoted from AAA and watching the upward trending in Chone Figgins’ bat that kept Jimmy ahead.

And his normally successful policy of grabbing a pair of two-start pitchers each week and dumping his mediocre one-start guys back to the waiver wire.

Now with just two weeks left in the fantasy schedule and with two foes within striking distance, Jimmy has to get serious with his late-season strategy to keep them at bay.

Here are a few Jimmy tips that all fantasy baseball hounds can use, but especially those in a roto style where you set weekly rosters.

SWOT Analysis

No, not a SWAT team, but a Strength Weakness Opportunity Threat assessment. You do it in the business world if a new competitor emerges or if you are planning a takeover or expansion.

Who is chasing you? What are their strengths? Where can they make up ground on other poolies and more importantly, where could they leapfrog you in a category? Where do your opportunities lie for gaining ground or keeping your pursuers at bay?

For Jimmy, this took him to the Wins and Strikeouts categories. He can make up a bit of ground and hold off two pursuers by making some headway there.
And the standings meant some flexibility in the Saves category (too far behind to catch anyone, but too far ahead of the next poolie).

So Jimmy is sending 37-save man Joe Borowski to the bench and grabbing two-start Indian teammate Jake Westbrook off waivers (two winnable games vs. Minny and Chicago). So instead of six starters and three relievers on his fantasy staff, he’ll have seven starters and two relievers to try to maximize wins and strikeouts.

Jimmy is giving Jeremy Bonderman one more chance to get on track (vs. KC) and bringing Curt Schilling back to the active roster. And bless knucklechucker Tim Wakefield, picked off waivers two weeks ago and has been golden.

Trade Deadline No. 2

Baseball’s second trade deadline hits Friday, so there will be action this week that affects your fantasy strategy. Pay close attention to rumoured and completed trades.

Again, don’t just look at the players changing teams, because their situations might not change much. But probe the rosters of each team involved in that trade to project the fallout of the trade and find some trade value.

$10,000 football contest

It’s not often you see a no-strings-attached free football contest with a guaranteed $10,000 prize. So when Jimmy sees one, he can’t help but pass along the news.

It’s called the Eliminator Challenge and it lives at fantasy.sportsbook.net on the Web. And it works like so-called Survivor games, where you pick one team each week to win its game. But then you can’t pick that team anymore for the rest of the season.

So it’s a neat combination of weekly pick ‘em game and survivor. It also requires some long-range planning to map your strategy for the full year. Do you take Indy in Week 1 or cherrypick another team and save Indy for later?

At last check, there were only 111 players signed up, so pretty good odds. There will be lots more, but check it out.

You’ll also notice a certain fantasy expert doing a daily blog there. All Jimmy all the time!

Stay busy, stay lucky.

Jimmy D