For many seasons, rotisserie fantasy baseball was king of the mountain, holding sway with little attention paid to other forms of the endeavor. Head to head leagues were always skulking in the shadows, played on the major platforms but not seen as the preferred method of managing a fantasy baseball team. In roto leagues, the goal is to accumulate a balanced set of statistics from your pitchers and hitters, attempting to strike the perfect ratio of category performance with your roster so that at the end of the season, your players have accumulated sufficient dominion over enough of the statistical categories employed to evaluate player performance to beat out all competition.
Then came the growth of fantasy football, and its general head to head format, where your team takes on one opponent each week and attempts to outscore your adversary by collecting more points based on the positive, and negative, results the players in your starting lineup produce. In any week, you would go 1-0, 0-1 or in rare cases, 0-0-1. Then the next week starts, and the process begins anew. This approach appealed to those fantasy players new to baseball and familiar with the football model of fantasy. Add in the growth of DFS and its particular manner of evaluating a team’s performance, and there was a shift toward baseball leagues that looked to weekly production rather than season long performance by an owner’s collected ballplayers (or rather, the stats those players accumulated).
There are essentially two variations on the head to head (H2H) format in baseball, those being the category system and the points system. In the category format, you compare player performance-your hitters vs your opponent’s batters, and likewise with your respective pitching staffs-and at the end of a scoring period (Monday to Sunday, for example), figure out who won the most stat categories and then award that player a win for the week. There are variations, where weekly totals are added during the course of the season, forming a hybrid roto/H2H league based on weekly performance rather than season long stat accumulation.
The other primary H2H format, and the one that this article is now going to focus on, is a weekly points H2H format. In this scheme of fantasy baseball, points are awarded, or subtracted, based on the results a player in your lineup provides over the course of the scoring period. In weekly lineup leagues, you set your starting lineup prior to game play beginning for the week (Sunday night for a Monday start, perhaps) and then let the games play. If a player gets injured during the week, tough luck, he will simply not accumulate any points while he is disabled on the sidelines (some leagues allow for daily roster management, which lessens the impact of injury, but those are less common at present in this writer’s experience). At the end of the scoring period, all the points for each player are totaled and added together for your team, and compared against your foe’s squad. If you had more points, then you win the week. There are myriad scoring systems possible, naturally, although some standards have developed over the seasons. One such system is detailed in the table below. Note that this only describes pitching points, and that allowing baserunners is considered a negative for a hurler, as is taking a loss.
Category | Points |
Wins | 10 |
Losses | -5 |
Saves | 7 |
QS | 5 |
Ks | 1 |
IP | 1 |
Earned Run | -2 |
Hits | -1 |
Walk/HBP | -1 |
A commissioner is encouraged to experiment with the point system to adjust the league settings so that those are understandable to the owners and also to provide an accurate and dependable method of evaluating pitching (and hitting) performance. An example of this is the inclusion of Quality Starts (QS) as a scoring category, in response to the reduction in victories that starting pitchers are collecting overall these days. A league can incorporate a whole slew of wacky point categories, such as complete games, no-hitters, balks, and shutouts, but beware of incorporating too much extraneous noise in the point system, as most of the aforementioned categories will have limited utility in evaluating performance and producing results on a weekly basis. Note that holds are not listed as a stat category in the above table, but as middle relievers become increasingly valuable to teams and their pitching philosophies, there is no reason not to include them as a separate point category, or combine saves and holds (S+H).
When drafting a H2H team, it is generally understood that pitching takes on a greater importance in putting together your overall roster than it generally is with a roto league. The point value assigned to strikeouts, victories, QS, saves as well as innings pitched means that the top starting pitchers have extraordinary value for a points league owner. Therefore, traditional drafting advice suggests that a points league participant continually consider beefing up his or her pitching staff throughout the course of the draft, and do not sleep on pitchers until your offense is filled.
One facet that can be exploited in H2H point league competition is the ability to stream pitchers in and out of your roster. Having a two-start pitcher can deliver value even with a mediocre arm if innings pitched are a strong consideration, or if the starting pitcher has the ability to limit baserunners by racking up Ks.
Another avenue to pursue is to draft or acquire pitchers that qualify as a starter but that generally pitch out of the bullpen. This potentially leads to significant appearances in a weekly setting, racking up IP, Ks, and the occasional vultured victory (or save/hold). Relievers that provide strikeouts without allowing boatloads of baserunners, if they pitch sufficient innings, also open up a whole batch of pitchers for you to consider using on a rotating basis to plump up your point totals. The sixth starter on a team should be considered when making a streaming choice for the week ahead, especially if he will garner a start and be considered a bullpen arm, to boot, in a scoring period.
The use of advanced metrics, such as FIP, xFIP, xERA, SIERA, and BABIP are all tools that can yield good results when evaluating SPs for a points league. Knowing or being able to predict which starters have been unlucky and are due to rebound is always valuable. As is the skill of selecting arms that limit baserunners, whether by racking up Ks or just being stingy with the hits and walks (WHIP and ERA are still of value here, too). Limiting negative point production is a key ingredient to success in points league team management.
Above all, keep in mind this principle when competing in points leagues: It does not matter how or where you collect the points, just optimize your roster so that the players in the starting lineup accumulate points. Balance of your roster, as has been the mantra in roto leagues over lo these many years, is not essential or advisable in a points league. Find the pitchers (and hitters, of course, never forget about the offense) that will weekly pump up your positive stats and limit the impact overall by affecting your point aggregation negatively.
If you decide to participate in a H2H points league, below are two charts: one with the top SPs and because relievers are pitchers, too, the top relievers in terms of mid-February point production projection.
As ever, good luck and godspeed in your fantasy endeavors. If you have additional questions, send them via e-mail to: ia@fantasyalarm.com
Starting Pitcher | Team |
HOU | |
NYY | |
NYM | |
WAS | |
WAS | |
BOS | |
LA | |
STL | |
HOU | |
LA | |
CLE | |
TAM | |
TAM | |
CLE | |
STL | |
CIN | |
CHW | |
CLE | |
CHC | |
MIL | |
NYY | |
TEX | |
WAS | |
TAM | |
SD | |
TOR | |
CIN | |
CIN | |
PHI | |
LA | |
BOS | |
TEX | |
ATL | |
NYM | |
ARI | |
MIN | |
ARI | |
NYY | |
OAK | |
ARI | |
CHC | |
MIN | |
MIN | |
ATL | |
TEX | |
MIN | |
SD | |
LAA | |
PHI | |
STL | |
MIA |
Relief Pitcher | Team |
NYY | |
MIL | |
CLE | |
CHC | |
PHI | |
HOU | |
BOS | |
LA | |
ARI | |
SD | |
TOR | |
CIN | |
OAK | |
LAA | |
CHW | |
PIT | |
MIN | |
WAS | |
KC | |
TAM | |
DET | |
NYM | |
TEX | |
ATL | |
NYM | |
BAL | |
STL | |
ATL | |
STL | |
SEA | |
MIA | |
COL | |
SD | |
TAM | |
BOS | |
TAM | |
LAA | |
WAS | |
SF | |
COL | |
HOU | |
NYM | |
ATL |