PLAY WITH FIRE

You can be like everyone else—load up on hitters early, mix in a few high-K starters, lock in two or three reliable closers and reach for a few high-upside guys late, all in the pursuit of balance. Borrrr-ing.

Or you can be like Ricky Roma, Al Pacino's character in Glengarry Glen Ross: "I subscribe to the law of contrary public opinion. If everyone thinks one thing, then I say bet the other way."

Hey, the call is easy. It's fun to make like Pacino—and potentially rewarding, too. (Just ask Daniel Day-Lewis.) Below, we give you five wild strategies that will knock your rivals' socks off. And keep turning these pages for more equally genius tactics for winning it all.

Chris Graythen/Getty Images

Your friends might laugh when you pick Gagne, but you'll have the last laugh.

JOIN THE MICKEY MOUSE CLUB
Back in the day—not Oscar Gamble's day, more like Mel Ott's—the fine, all-wise studio folks at Disney would cast their films with proven, talented actors who were coming off a flop. Those actors, eager to get their careers going again, would come at a bargain price. Does the concept sound familiar?

In Plan Mickey, you load up on guys coming off down years. With any luck, they'll come at a discount. And when Andruw Jones, Travis Hafner and Richie Sexson all hit 40-plus homers again; Eric Gagné saves 30 games; and Ervin Santana wins 15, you'll tell everyone you knew it all along.

Ready to take this method to a Daddy-Day-Care-IV-starring-Ice-Cube extreme? Add players recovering from major injuries to your list. While everyone pays big bucks for Johan Santana and Roy Oswalt, you pick up Randy Johnson and Francisco Liriano and stash Chris Carpenter for later. Maybe you even add Rocco Baldelli and John Patterson to your roster. If a few of these guys tank, no biggie; they cost you next to nothing. But if even just one or two of them has a monster bounce-back year, you'll be paid off 10, 15, 20 times the investment.

EMBRACE YOUR LOW-AVERAGENESS
In a few short pages, the Talented Mr. Roto will extol the virtues of forsaking closers at the draft table. But saves isn't the only category worth scorning. There's also average. Look, you're not going to win a title without being competitive in the power categories. But why pay full price? Get your pop on the cheap, with low-BA boppers like Nick Swisher and Carlos Delgado. Put it another way: Don't pay for batting average. It's not the most efficient use of your draft picks or dollars.

MAX OUT ON HITTING
Think pitching is just a crapshoot anyway? Prove it. In a draft, wait until the very last rounds to start taking hurlers. In an auction, spend no more than $15 of your $260 budget on pitching. As you load up on hitters, look for any young pitcher with some upside (think Homer Bailey) or talented arms with poorly defined roles (Carlos Mármol). And as you work the free-agent pool for pitchers throughout the season, your offense will bludgeon your opponents and make them beg for mercy.

MAX OUT ON PITCHING
It's the bizarro-world version of the max-hitting strategy. Pitching categories count just as much as the hitting categories do, so why do hitters get all the attention early in drafts and 70% of the league's money, on average, in auctions? Well, most owners discount pitchers due to the risk of labrums getting torn, rotator cuffs getting frayed and elbows getting Tommy John'd. But let them be wimps. You be the daredevil who spends 50% of your budget on pitchers (or five-plus of your first 10 draft picks). Yeah, you run the risk of hearing the name "Dr. James Andrews" more often than you'd like. But no guts means no WHIP, no ERA, no K's and no W's glory.

BEND—DON'T BREAK—YOUR LEAGUE'S RULES
In the early years of more than one national experts league, there was no minimum requirement for innings pitched. Savvy owners took advantage of that by building around low-cost, high-K middle relievers, locking down first in WHIP and ERA. In one league, an owner even attempted to get a single, solitary situational lefty to throw a scoreless third of an inning. The rules were eventually changed, but this illustrates the point: Is there something in your league constitution that can be taken advantage of? Rules are rules—and they're meant to be exploited. But broken? That's another story.

Print Article . Email Article. Subscribe to The Magazine