Draft Strategies: The LIMA Plan

Ever since Ron Shandler revolutionized the strategics of fantasy drafting when he developed his LIMA Plan (low investment mound aces), drafting has gone from a means to forming a team to a multi-million dollar science. The pitching pool this year is the deepest I've ever seen it. With that in mind we are going to revist Shandlers LIMA plan in a 10 team $260 auction league.

C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, MI, CI, OF, OF, OF, OF, OF, UTIL, 9 P, and 3 Bench.
(This is a standard ESPN auction draft)

Let's start with a little math. Each team starts with $260 to fill 25 roster spots. If you spend a minimum of $1 on each spot that leaves you with $235 to spend to improve those 25 spots (260-25=235). Now, the key to executing the LIMA plan first begins with a good bit of research. I've spent considerable time this offseason looking for pitchers that go largely undrafted and usually don't cost anything more than $1. Here is a list of players that I feel have a great chance of exeding expectations and are being overlooked by the fanatsy community:

Paul Maholm, Manny Parra, Jeremy Guthrie, Jonathan Sanchez, Jair Jurrjens, John Maine, Oliver Perez, Justin Masterson, Wandy Rodriguez, Kenshin Kawakami, Jesse Litsch, Jeff Samardzija, Jered Weaver, Chris Carpenter, Chris Young, Fausto Carmona, Edwin Jackson, Nick Blackburn, Kelvin Escobar, Ian Snell, Sean Marshall, Sean Gallagher, Jorge Campillo, Rick Porcello, Rich Hill, and Jeff Karstens.

That's a very long list and can be intimidating if you're not familiar with their names and statistics. Several of these players are coming of very good campaigns, some are youngsters competing for jobs, a few are veterans coming back from injury, and a couple guys coming off horrible seasons but have showed signs of progress in spring training. Obviously you won't be drafting all of these players, but the bigger the list, the better, because there may very well be other managers targetting any number of these players, and when the money gets tight, you might not have enough to even spend an extra dollar to get them. But, each and every one of these pitchers should be available to you for $1. Pay attention to what these players do during the spring, who is progressing from injury, who looks to have the inside track on a starting job and who is(or isn't) struggling with command. The best of the bunch are Maholm, Guthrie, Jurrjens, Weaver, Litsch, Young, Porcello and Samardzija.

Now that you have your sleeper list for pitchers. It's time to take yourself through the first part of the draft. The thinking here is that you want to completely dominate the offensive landscape. Using a little bit more math we can calculate what our budget is for the offensive positions. You also want to be nominating stud pitchers every chance you get to clean out the landscape and force other managers to spend large portions of their payroll on something other than offense.

There are 9 pitcher spots, and our goal is to spend $1 on each. So you can subtract 9 from 25, which gives you 16. We can also assume that we won't be spending anymore than a $1 on our 3 bench spots and our catcher, which takes us down another 4 to 12. So, we have $235 to spend on 12 roster spots. That's an average of $20 and some change (since we've all ready included a dollar charge for each of those 12 spots the exact math is (235+12)/12=20 and some change) . Not bad, but we can do better. Now let's figure out which stud players we are going to target to fill the 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, CI, MI, and OF spots. Let's target Pujols($40), Kinsler($30), C. Davis($20), H-Ram($40), Howard($25), Phillips($20), and Braun($35). These are the absolute maximum dollar values we can consider spending on these players. It's very possible that the prices we actually pay will be less, but it makes it easy on ourselves to over value before the draft and compensate later in the event of a discount. So, the total of those 7 spots is $210. Since we all ready included a dollar for each roster spot we can take this total down to $203 (210-7=203) That leaves us with $32 to spend on our remaining 4 outfielders and our utility spot.

The average value for each is roughly $6 and some change but the best way to approach it at this point is to adapt a bit to your draft. It's very likely that you will be able to get players like Nate McClouth, Bobby Abreu, Corey Hart, Torii Hunter, Johnny Damon, Jay Bruce and others between $10-$15. So for the sake of simplicity let's assume we snag McClouth for $14, Adam Dunn for $9 and Lastings Milledge for $3 so that puts us at a total of $23 (after subtracting our $1 charge for each position). So we now have $9 left to spend on whatever we see fit. For our remaining OF and Util spot we take $1 flyers on Elijah Dukes and Nelson Cruz and then take Kevin Kouzmanouf and Ian Stewart as our offensive bench players as well as our dollar catcher, in this case let's say we snagged Gerald Laird.

So now our offense is filled and we can spend an extra $9 on pitching. At this point I'd check to see the dollar amount available to your other owners and gauge the availability of the closers left against it. Maybe spend a few extra dollars to get guys like Chad Qualls, Matt Lindstrom, Joel Hanrahan and Brandon Lyon. Chances are one or two of these guys will be available for a buck at the end but make sure you get at least one closer (or even two). Also you can spend an extra dollar to get a guy like Brandon Morrow, Randy Johnson, John Danks, or Chris Volstad. Or perhaps you can just go all out and try to land a Chad Billingsley, Josh Johnson, Scott Baker or Matt Cain. Chances are you won't, nor would I recommend it, but to each their own. Then once you're down to a dollar you can start throwing out those LIMA aces we talked about at the begining. Well there you have it, a perfectely executed Lima Plan. So let's recap our roster:

C - $1 Gerald Laird
1B - $40 Albert Pujols
2B - $30 Ian Kinsler
3B - $20 Chris Davis
SS - $40 Hanley Ramirez
MI - $20 Brandon Phillips
CI - $25 Ryan Howard
OF - $35 Ryan Braun
OF - $13 Nate McClouth
OF - $9 Adam Dunn
OF - $3 Lastings Milledge
OF - $1 Elijah Dukes
Util - $1 Nelson Cruz
Bench - $1 Kevin Kouzmanouf
Bench - $1 Ian Stewart

P - $5 Chad Qualls
P - $5 Brandon Lyon
P - $3 Joel Hanrahan
P - $1 Paul Maholm
P - $1 Jeremy Guthrie
P - $1 Manny Parra
P - $1 Jair Jurrjens
P - $1 Chris Young
P - $1 Jered Weaver
Bench - $1 Jesse Litsch

$260 spent and the LIMA plan executed to a T. Obviously things out of your control can happen, perhaps someone goes all in on Hanley Ramirez or Albert Pujols that leaves you shaking your head wondering how in the world someone could pay $50 for them. If that's the case just do some mental adjusting. Instead target Miggy or Reyes and use the remaining funds elsewhere. This is just a 'sketch' if you will. Hell you're team could look better than this if you end up spending considerable less on the stud players (which is possible especially considering that these are usually the MAX values for each player). So remember, the key is that no matter what strategy you take to your draft, you MUST be prepared to adjust.

Good luck!
Roto Wizard