Can you win a league by giving up on a category? The answer is a “yes.” However, the margin for success, if this is the weapon of choice, is pretty thin. Not as thin as a g-string on an adult performer at an all-night gentleman's club, but thin nonetheless.

What is “Punting?”

“Punting” a category means that you don't even address a certain category. You just ignore it completely as if it doesn't exist (most often people refer to the saves or steals category when they talk about punting). The idea of punting comes from the belief that allocating the necessary funds on draft day to acquire players to help in a certain category may not be the best use of your limited resources. For every Aroldis Chapman, we're saddled with bushels of guys like Jim Johnson, Jason Grilli, or Ernesto Frieri. Given the massive yearly turnover at the closer position each year, you are quite possibly better off to identify talents that depend on skills and not those with the role of a 9th innings arm. Why not just "punt" saves, not even worry about it on draft day, and just target starting pitchers and power bullpen arms that will help in the ratio categories while piling up the strikeouts? Sometimes punting a category might just mean being smart on draft day. You might think you're punting saves, but in reality you are just rostering impressive talents at a great savings because they don't have the title of closer after their name. 

There is also an in-season option for punting a category. What if you get to mid-season and you realize your squad has 18 saves and you have no shot to finish any higher than 8th in saves? You could decide to “punt” the saves category and focus your resources on the categories that you can finish highly in. Maybe you deal Chapman for Nelson Cruz ’cause you need a power bat. Maybe you send Chapman out of town to bring back a big strikeout arm like Cole Hamels. However, punting a category is always risky and the level of risk only grows if you attempt to switch gears midstream. If you're punting a category at the draft, you ignore it, add resources at other spots and try to crush it. If you switch in-season out of need, is your roster constructed in such a way that it will allow for punting one category to work?

Is Punting a Viable Strategy?

Let’s assume we’re discussing a 12-team 5x5 mixed league. You need to accrue about 80 percent of the available point total to win a league. Given that there are 10 categories in the standard setup, it means a maximum point total for a 12-team league would be 120 points (10 categories, 12 points for first place finish in each, 11 for a second, 10 for a third, etc.). 

If the league maximum is 120 points and we’re targeting 80 percent of that number as the level we will likely need to achieve in order to win the league, then we will need our hypothetical team to record at least 96 points. (Obviously there are leagues where you might need 100 or more points to emerge the victor.)

If we were to “punt” a category, we have nine remaining categories to earn 95 points (you get one point for finishing in last spot in the category you are punting). Ninety-five divided by nine categories is 10.6, meaning we’re going to need to finish no lower than third place across the board in order to get to 96 points, but in reality we’re going to have to finish first or second in every category. Can a team do that, finish first or second in nine categories? Of course it can, but you also have to realize that by removing a category you’ve significantly reduced your margin for error. 

Let’s say in one of the nine categories, our team finishes in the 7th spot. That would leave us with six points in that category. With the remaining eight categories, we would need 89 points in our model. That’s 11.1 points per category, meaning we would have to pretty much finish in first place in the other eight categories to win the league. Is it possible to win this way? Yes, it is. But doesn’t it seem inherently risky? Doesn't this strategy leave you little margin for error with the rest of your club?

I haven’t even addressed yet a major component of this strategy that will have to work in order for you to win a league if you decide to punt something.

Will you select the right players to build your team around your strategy?

Punting can work if you draft the correct players, they perform as expected and they stay healthy. The last part is key. Each year, massive amounts of players end up on the DL. It's almost to the point where we have to expect every player to have at least one DL stint. If five, seven, nine of your guys end on up the DL, will your team be able to produce enough in the nine categories you are targeting to allow you to punt category #10? Sometimes you can do everything right with your analysis and the players, for whatever reason, simply don’t perform as expected. 

Can you win a league “punting” a category? You certainly can. Still, if you cut out a 10th of the playing field by removing an entire category (assuming you are playing in a 5x5 league), you're just making things harder for yourself than they need to be.