So you’ve made it through a long fantasy regular season and perhaps you’ve had an easy-as-pie, automatic-pilot, breeze of a time coasting through your league schedule. On the other hand, maybe you’ve slogged tirelessly through the ups and downs, the bumps and bruises, good times and the bad just to finally scrap tooth and nail in the last week in order to be the last of the mohikans to come out the other side with the last playoff birth.
Your team may have had the fantasy MVP anchoring your rotation.
Your team may have been ravaged with injuries.
The thing about fantasy is it doesn’t matter how you got there, as long as you found a way to make it into the postseason.
Beginning on day one of the fantasy playoff, the cruisers and the scrappers are next to each other, bobbing in the waves in the same boats with nothing from the regular season to distinguish one team from the other.
Sorry cruisers, but it’s truly mano y mano. You’re in a street fight and you’re both rolling with the exact same odds, a clean slate.
For those of you looking to improve your odds once your playoff match up is set, there are outlets to do just that. If your league still allows you to make moves with no predetermined ”playoff roster” of sorts, there is a strategy that you can apply to your team.
Strategy: Identify your playoff opponents team weaknesses. If you play in a league that offers points by winning team categories like K’s, steals, bombs, RBI, batting average etc. than do your best to make sure that your guys are decidedly better in at least one more category than your opponent.
For example if your opponent is weak in steals, RBI, and HRs and you feel that those are winnable categories with the right player in free agency, pick him up. If you need bombs and RBI’s and you think you already have steals wrapped up, consider dropping Erik Aybar in favor of J.J. Hardy. It’s the playoffs man, win or go home and making these moves seemingly out of desperation is the equivalent of an MLB manager bringing in their stud starting pitcher from the bullpen in an elimination game.
Conventional wisdom is not always applicable in the fantasy playoffs.
So set your lineup, ride the guys that got you there and if you haven’t already make sure to cross your fingers, rub a bald monk’s head or any partake in any other luck bringing practice you subscribe to because like it or not, at the end of the day it’s going to come down to the way the ball bounces.
