As the popularity of fantasy sports continues to grow, so do the options for choosing a format in which to play. For fantasy baseball, the rotisserie format still seems to be the gold standard, but with society’s current need for instant gratification with regard to winning and losing, the head-to-head format has grown exponentially. Why wait until the end of a six month-long marathon to decide the winners when you can start charting wins and losses on a week-to-week basis?

Personally, the roto format is my preference for baseball, but that doesn’t mean I can’t get behind the head-to-head format for a variety of reasons. After all, most fantasy football leagues use head-to-head and, more often than not, I have a great time playing. Different strokes for different folks, right? So rather than put my traditionalist hat on and preach against head-to-head baseball, I’ll lay out some pros and cons and let you decide for yourself. And from there, I’ll discuss head-to-head strategies to explore should you decide that this style of league is your preference.

Head-Head Format

Pros:

For starters, like its football counterpart, head-to-head baseball usually culminates with a playoff format to ultimately decide the league champion. If you’re mired in fifth place in a rotisserie format for most of the season, your chances of advancing high enough in the standings to win your league can be the equivalent of climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. In head-to-head, you just have to make it to the playoffs and from there, it’s basically a whole new season. You may not like being a fifth or sixth seed, but you still have a chance to win it all with a strong last few weeks.

To again steal from the football world, let’s put the “Any Given Sunday” cliché to work. That’s right. Anything can happen over the course of a one-week match-up and a team that may not look as good on paper can take down your league juggernaut if the stars align properly. Injuries, scheduled days off, a four-game match-up in a hitter’s park – any of these can become a catalyst for a middling club to pull out a much-needed victory and climb up the overall standings.

Let’s face it – there’s probably no one in this world who loves the fantasy smack-talk more than me and the head-to-head format paves that road in style. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing your best friend, your spouse or just some guy who’s a friend of a friend of a friend who jumped in last minute to give your league the necessary even number of teams. Give ‘em hell! And I’m not talking just talking about a post on your league message board after the match-up. I’m talking about weekly match-ups from start to finish. Open the week by telling your opponent his first baseman swings the bat like a middle infielder. After one of his starters bombs, tell him his pitching staff could find the strike zone if it was up his ass and they had a road map and a flashlight. I was playing against my father-in-law one week and told him that every night of the week my team was beating his, I was going to have sex with his daughter! Fantasy sports are supposed to be fun, so if you like dishing it out, and can take it as well, then this format will work well for you.

And let’s not forget about the side bets. Many leagues have an entrance fee and prizes are usually doled out to the top three teams at the end of the season. But that shouldn’t stop you from winning a little extra on the side, should it? Remember the movie The Color of Money? The 9-ball tournament had its prize pool, but most of the players were out-earning the tournament winner just by throwing out action on the side in the green room. And it doesn’t always have to be about money. I threw down a side-bet with Peter Kreutzer in our Tout Wars H2H league in which the loser had to tweet out a photo of himself holding a sign the winner got to pen. Unfortunately, I ended up on the losing side of that bet, but we all had a great time with it.

Cons:

Unlike the roto format where the best team sits atop the standings by season’s end, the head-to-head winner may not necessarily be the best team. For everything I just discussed in the “Pros” section above with regard to the “Any given Sunday” adage, it can also be considered a negative as well. Teams get hot, owners stream in mediocre starters to dominate the pitching categories and late-season waiver adds can make a huge difference if quality players are being rested for either the playoffs or so the team can audition a few youngsters. There’s a lot that can shift the balance of power in the playoffs and just like the real MLB game, a wild card team could win it all.

On a similar note, your team could be dominant in a number of categories and you could have the highest overall total but in actuality, it matters not. It’s a week-to-week thing and while you could have strong totals across the board, your season is really only about weekly wins and losses. How many times have you seen a fantasy football team total the most points over the entire season and sit with a 4-8 record? Same thing happens in baseball and well…it just plain sucks.

This final thought is also attached to the first “Con” paragraph in that you could have the most dominant team in the league all year, but one lousy week from your team in the playoffs could ruin the whole thing. You could have been the most knowledgeable fantasy owner in the draft room, built yourself an amazing team and still fall to an inferior squad. It’s less harmful to your psyche if you’re saddled with a loss during the regular season, but when it happens in the playoffs, you’re scarred for life.

So there you have it. Some good, some bad. Some people feel the “Pros” are what makes this format more like the real game while others steer clear of it because of the luck aspect. Whatever the case may be, if you’re playing in a head-to-head league, here are some strategy thoughts which command your attention:

H2H Strategies

Wait on Starting Pitching

Pundits have been telling you for years to wait on starting pitching. The position is rich with talent and is always crazy deep. Over the past few years, however, there’s been a bit of a shift as the pitching has become increasingly better. You’ll often see a number of fantasy experts grabbing an ace early just to ensure they have one. You can probably do something like that here in a head-to-head format, but loading up on aces is a mistake. If your league allows streaming (explained further below), then an inferior team with multiple two-start hurlers can beat you just by having a half-decent week. They can get you in both wins and strikeouts and, if they throw well or your aces have a bad week, they’ll take you down in the ratios as well. Not to mention, this is a common thing in the playoffs. You can have multiple aces, but if they don’t have two-start weeks in the playoff rounds, it’s not like you can drop any of them to get a two-start pitcher in there. Suddenly, owning multiple aces is a handicap as it prevents you from making the necessary moves it takes to win.

Power-up Early

Now that you’re appropriately waiting on starting pitching, it’s time to get your power on. Sure, there’s plenty of talk about speed being at a premium here, but for head-to-head purposes, one good burner might be all it takes to win the category each week. You want hitters and you want a lot of them as they are the driving force behind your offensive prowess. Home runs, RBI and runs scored are staple categories in most, if not all, leagues. Some also include doubles and triples, whether they’re individual categories or lumped together as one in an extra-base hits category. With the right hitters, you will be able to dominate the offensive categories week in and week out. Let others load up on starters. Let the others pay a premium for top-tier closers. Just keep grabbing the elite bats in the early rounds. You’ll be glad you did.

Don’t Sweat Position Scarcity

This ties in to the above paragraph. Lots of folks will tell you that you need to worry about the thin positions like shortstop or even second base. Do you really? I’m happy to grab a guy like Manny Machado and utilize his multi-position eligibility, but in head-to-head, I’m not looking to grab a 15-15 Francisco Lindor in the third round when Wil Myers or Joey Votto are sitting there. Even if I took Paul Goldschmidt in the first round, I’ll add my corner infielder or even my utility guy that early if it means getting their production. Especially when I can get bigger bats in Marcus Semien or Brad Miller much later. Again, focus on the level of production, not the position. That doesn’t mean grab four first basemen right from the get-go, but don’t be afraid to let those “thin” positions go by while you’re stacking your outfield and corner infielders with big bats.

Streaming Starters

As always, you have to check your league rules to see if there are innings limits, games started restrictions and what not, but streaming starters has proven to be a successful strategy in head-to-head formats. If you feel the need to make an early play for an ace, that’s fine, but, honestly, you’re better off doing that extra research necessary to find the mid-level starters with good strikeout totals and middling ratios as your foundation and stream in hurlers who have favorable match-ups each week. These guys may not be glamourous, but in the right match-ups, not only will they supplement your innings-pitched, wins and strikeouts, they won’t hurt your ratios and help you maintain some stability in your week-to-week numbers. Remember, with a strong offense, you don’t need to win every pitching category. Streaming in different starters will help you stay competitive enough and, if you make the right calls, even steal a few categories here and there.

To Punt or Not to Punt

There’s a whole article on punting categories coming your way in the 30 Strategies section, but let’s just dive right in here for head-to-head. Punting is not something I like to do, at least not from the start, but if your league rules offer up an opportunity to punt somewhere and allow you to draft a beast of a team around it, well then why wouldn’t you? Take saves, for example. The aspect of strong closers people tend to overlook is the ratio help they provide while also accumulating saves. If you don’t want to invest in such a volatile position, then why not punt saves and grab a bunch of strong middle relievers who not only offer up strong ratios, but also augment your strikeouts? While someone uses a fifth-round draft pick on Aroldis Chapman, you grab yourself another high-end bat and then in the 25th round, grab Kyle Barraclough. His ratios have been tight and his K/9 was actually better than Chapman’s and he threw more innings. Plus, you’ve got the 25-home run bat in your daily lineup as well. You may not win saves each week, but you’re likely crushing on the offensive front while staying very competitive in four of the other five pitching categories. You can probably do something similar with steals as well, especially because steals are expected to be at a premium this year. It’s a bit trickier given the fact that stolen base guys tend to also help in runs scored and batting average, but it’s doable if you decide ahead of time to punt and you focus on solid hitters with strong batting averages or OBP. Again, not my favorite strategy, but if the rules of your league make it a viable option, you can certainly be successful with it.

Pay Attention to Real-Life Match-Ups

To over-simplify – hitters in hitter’s parks and pitchers in pitcher’s parks. That’s what you want each week. Now obviously there are some players who transcend park factors, but when you’re looking at players both in your draft and in-season, you have to look at where guys will be playing each week. If in your draft, you’re deciding between Nolan Arenado and Kris Bryant, maybe the guy who plays half his games at Coors Field is the way to go. If you have an injury and need to find a guy on the waiver wire, why not find a guy who has a four-game series coming up in Toronto? If you’re streaming starters, who’s facing the Braves this week? Who’s throwing in Miami? You need to pay close attention to where your guys are playing and who they’re facing. A left-handed bat may be raking for two-straight weeks, but do you want to pick him up for the following week when his team is facing four southpaws over a six-game span? Probably not. It doesn’t take much to look at the upcoming schedule, so make sure you’re not handing your opponent the win because you didn’t do the right research.

One caveat to finish with and that is that this has been a general overview of standard head-to-head fantasy baseball leagues. The intricate details of successful strategies will depend on your league’s scoring. If you’re in a straight 5x5 category-based league, then everything above is very much in play. However, if your league is a head-to-head points league, you’re going to have to check the scoring to see what strategies work best. In some leagues, the scoring favors pitching dramatically, so if that’s the case, you may want to look into more than just one ace. If your league has weekly innings-pitched minimums or maximums, you may want to adjust accordingly, especially with your use of closers or middle relievers. There are simply too many different styles of leagues for us to sift through each and every nuance, but you get the gist here.

Best of luck to you this season no matter which format you choose!