Those Last 3 Weeks

If you are reading this article then you are probably asking yourself one of two questions: Just how much ground can I make up in the last 22 days or how can I hold off the teams that are chasing me.

Those are difficult questions to answer but it is worth spending some time to figure it out. I suspect that, like myself, all of you have been scrutinizing the league standings and saying “if everything goes perfectly I can make up X games.”

Of course, it is highly unlikely that everything will go perfectly - especially since the guys in the lead positions are going to be doing their best to knock you down too. So all that can be done at this point is to try to maximize production and hope for the best. I know that I have said some of these things before but I can’t stress them enough.

1) Don’t be complacent. I’ve seen plenty of players get run down in the last few weeks of the season and end up being knocked out of the money positions because they thought their lead was big enough that they didn’t pay attention.

2) Use your at bats - all of them if you can. It’s hard to change your average by more than a point or two over the next few weeks and if you aren’t penalized for K’s, or low OBP, it’s to your advantage to try to wring out every R, RBI, HR, and SB if you can move up in any of those categories or someone behind you could catch you.

3) Use your innings too. Sure WHIP and ERA can swing a little upwards if you make bad choices - so use caution, but there are usually points in WINS and Ks just waiting to be plucked by smart managers. If you need points from ERA and/or WHIP don’t be timid in your use of pitchers - it takes a lot more innings to change things by much at this point.

4) Be proactive. Start looking a few games down the road on your schedule. See when you’ll want a substitute player and lock up the best that you can get a few games ahead of time. Then while your opponents are scrambling the day before to fill spots on those light baseball days, you’ll already have the best producers in hand.

5) Boost your batting stats by checking the projected starter lists a day or two in advance. Look for those rookie pitchers that were called up Sept 1st for a cup of coffee. They may not be ready for the prime time so your hitters will have a better chance of pumping their stats and your pitchers will have better chances at a win in such match ups.

6) Keep a finger on the pulse of your team. This is perhaps the trickiest thing to do since your players are on a lot of teams.

A) Players not likely to remain with their current team this year are likely to be getting time off while the team assesses their call-ups if the team isn’t in a playoff hunt.

B) Players on playoff bound teams are likely to get more games off if the team is locked into a playoff slot. This is especially true if the player has some nagging injuries.

C) Teams will start shutting down stars that either need time to heal or perhaps need surgery before next season.

D) Starting pitchers on playoff teams will start getting pulled earlier in games to rest them for the playoffs.

E) Players on teams still fighting for a playoff spot will be pushed until the team is knocked out of the hunt. Expect full games from them until that point.

7) Cut DL’ed guys less slack. If anyone gets DLed this late in the season don’t waste a roster spot on them unless you have plenty of room on your bench or an open DL spot. With 20 odd games left, teams are apt to be cautious (unless very much in the hunt) and you’ll only probably get 8-10 games maximum out of the injured players when they return.

8) Assess your staff. With so few games remaining you can probably figure out which of your pitchers are going to match up with which teams. Don’t hang on to guys with bad match-ups - maybe you’ll even get lucky and an opponent will pick them up when they are likely to get shelled.

9) Know your inning limits. Run out of innings on your terms, not by accident. Yahoo! and many other leagues count all your stats on the day you run out of innings. This can allow you to stack your rotation on that last day so that you might maximize your totals. If you are not using all your innings make sure your opponents can’t catch you because of it.

10) Watch the waiver wire. It’s the time of the year when some good players will get dropped as other teams try to maximize stats or have already fulfilled their game limits at some positions (and thus can no longer accumulate stats from that position in their roster). You might get yourself an upgrade or two for a few games.