We often hear about position scarcity in baseball. I've believed in drafting and trading based on this scarcity and its helped me win leagues. Now I'm wondering if "category scarcity" is a better way of winning?
I ran the numbers for our league based on projections. Yes, projections are often wrong and often based on prior performance as opposed to skills, capabilities and leading indicators. What I found is that some categories are more variable than others. For example, the whip category has very little variance across all teams (less than 15% difference), whereas the loss category (which we added for pitching a few years back to balance the streaming strategy with the traditional strategy) has the largest variance. Sure, you're forced to put players in positions as a constraint, but the actual game is played in categories. I think maybe its a good idea to focus a little more on the most variable categories?
In our league, if the projections are half decent, the most variable categories are (for pitching, in order) losses, saves, quality starts, strikeouts, era, whip. For hitting, the most variable categories are stolen bases, strikeouts, hr, RBI, runs, batting average (in order).
I think I might focus on the most variable categories assuming that I can stay competitive in the "lucky" close categories.
Wish me luck!
