"Being Steve Parsons" references the movie "Being John Malkovich", where people get to see the world from John's eyes for a few minutes. Likewise, you get to see the world through my eyes for a few minutes as you read this column. It's a place for experienced roto players to explore issues, get your own ideas peer-reviewed or to just use the resources of RotoCommunity to look at this game we love. If you are a less experienced player or do not consider yourself an "expert," read on, but you may wish to read the introductory column as an FAQ or just to see the rules of the road. However strongly held my opinions may be, my goal here is to put forth an issue and look at as many sides as my editor will let me get away with. If you have an idea, a column or just a thought you would like to explore, just leave a comment.

Being Steve Parsons - June 1, 2010

I'm in favor of making the first week of June "National Rotisserie Roster Reconfiguration Month."  

August is too late, many of you have trade deadlines or have "mortgage your future to win now" transaction regulations. July is too late because everyone is speculating as we approach the trade deadline, and the prices which fall precipitously in May suddenly ratchet up, especially for anyone with an ounce of speed or a shot at closing. The old axiom is that whomever is ahead on Memorial Day will win most of the time, so it's easy to remember too. June also roughly divides the season into it's first third, and that's important.  

Just a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation will tell what's going on. If you swap a 30-save guy for a 40 save guy, you're only gaining Six or Seven saves over the course of the final four months of the season. And if you were behind, you've got to fix that too before you are going to make any positive gains.  You have your debt, then you have your deficit.  In August that 10 saves (just one big month behind I keep telling myself), is now 20 and you have two big months, out of two, to fix the debt, and you've still got the deficit problem. That is, maybe I can grab 20 saves somehow, but I still have a staff that was (x - 5) saves per month.

The first thing I do is make a gut check of what is working and what is not. A real-life example to work with... I'm currently 1st in a tough 12 team NL-only... wait...  You want to know what to do when one is NOT in first?  Well, that's hard because obviously I am first in all my leagues, aren't you? (ed. Steve... stop lying, how about the RC triple-crown mixed where you are fifth).

The RotoCommunity.com Triple Crown Mixed... I have a pitching score of 41, which is a bit low for a winning total, but I usually have a pretty good handle on pitching and I see the necessary points out there and some pretty obvious ways to get them.  I have three points of K's ahead of me and in this standard roto set, that's just adjusting my mix of starters and relievers. Likewise, a couple of points in WHIP out there, which again can be fixed by adjusting the mix and without killing K's either. You can make a few points on WHIP by substituting quality MRs for iffy single starts. The right MR will get wins about every 8-10IP whereas even a good starter will usually be in the 12-17 range.  The pitching will be fine. 

But we have Ian Riley of OpenSports.com putting forward an impressive 98.5 and my good-for-nothing wonderful RC boss, Dave Gawron at 93.5 and my 25.5 Offense isn't going to get me to the 92-93 that I think will eventually win the thing.  So where am I going wrong?  Back that up... is there a serious problem?  

Batting average: I am just a touch below Fantasypros911.com's Greg Marta, but a good seven points behind RotoExperts Nate Pigott. That's a problem. Batting average is a tough nut to crack in a roto format. To catch up seven points I have to improve my team batting average by about 11, and that just gets me two points and only if the guys in front of me don't also adjust. If I want to make hay here, I need .276 , which means batting better than Ian Riley's squad (the leader in batting average) has for the rest of the season.

Home runs: I am 10 behind the top four and 13 behind ESPN's Shawn Cwalinski. I'll probably make some incremental change here, but I've had a couple of slow starts and some injuries so I am not concerned about this. I have some points I could lose (which complicates making BA HR tradeoffs).

Runs: I am in seventh in runs, Cwalinski leads here, but only 12 out of 3rd, and 16 above 8th. Both HR's and RBI's are very bunched together (they probably are in your league too) so this is suggesting my focus going forward.

SB: People who focus on steals are usually amongst the best players in fantasy sports. But I have to tell you, I pretty much ignore them.  I enjoy a stiff competition at the top of the steals category, because it usually lowers the bar for me to score some easy points without investment below. But having said that, I am currently 1 stolen base out of last. Because of my batting average issues, I need to make up 15 steals to have a shot at winning.  Thankfully, because it is June 1, I don't have to deconstruct my team (and lose all the available points in RBI and Rs) to accomplish this.  I "just" need another 5-6 stolen bases per month.

Here's how I would approach this problem. The obvious solutions here would be to replace low batting average types with high average types, preferably with stolen bases (or with stolen bases and pray to Jobu for batting average). I won't do the math here, but two should do it (if you're interested, there are a number of decent remainder of season projections at CBS).  As luck would have it, I have two such candidates for removal in J.J. Hardy and Kevin Kouzmanoff (my MI and CI). In my case, I am willing to let the stolen base issue float just a little bit because two of my stolen base sources, Rafael Furcal and Matt Kemp, have gotten off to slow starts for different reasons. I think their presence will make up my deficit, so I just need a single guy to work on my debt. I'm going to target Maicer Izturis. With Kendry Morales going down I think his CBS projection of 9.1 stolen bases for the remainder of the season is a bit low. With our weekly FAAB, this doesn't run until Friday evening, so league mates, remember put in a hefty bid if you want him and remember I have a back up!  

If I didn't have a Maicer Izturis now, my stolen base situation would require a Desmond Jennings to come (and for me to get him), or a trade. Not a pleasant prospect.

I want to emphasize here that I am not "eyeballing" this. What I have done is to take various players and plug their remainder-of-the-seasons projections (with my own adjustments) into a spreadsheet to try to target a result. In this case, what I am shooting for is a 4th place total in batting average, 5th in steals, 5th in R and 3rd in RBI, which would leave me with 44 or 45 points in batting, to go along with a 46 that I anticipate in pitching for 90. If I achieve that total, then when Grady Sizemore comes back, if Manny Ramirez is being Manny (the hitter that is), and Victor Martinez returns to form, the extra points should come to pull a third place 90 into a first place 93 or so. 

Ask a question about your fantasy team in our FORUM. Leave a comment about this article down below.