Yahoo Fantasy NASCAR offers a very unique format for its Fantasy NASCAR game. As a result, we are forced to use different strategies than we would for other Fantasy sports. The two most popular fantasy sports, football and baseball, usually have drafts where you have a set roster and pick which players you believe will perform the best each week or each game. The only real leeway Fantasy Football and Fantasy Baseball owners have is through waiver wires or trades. Therefore, if you happen to miss on some key draft picks, you can sabotage the rest of your season. The beauty of Yahoo Fantasy NASCAR is that each and every week you get to put bad decisions of the past behind and start over with a clean slate. The catch is that, unlike Fantasy Football or Baseball, there is a limit to how many times you can use each driver. For example, if you have LaDainian Tomlinson on your football team, he is a no-brainer start every week. Yahoo Fantasy NASCAR limits each driver to 9 starts and therefore forces you to try to make the most of those 9 starts.
Over the past few seasons, I’ve been a huge proponent of “saving your studs.” That means each week, I put a big emphasis on trying to find at least one or two sleepers to stick on my roster and hopefully save a start from one of my studs. (Those of you who started Jamie McMurray in the Pepsi 400 at Daytona last year know what I’m talking about.)
After seeing the A,B, and C Lists for the 2008 Yahoo Fantasy NASCAR season, I think my strategy my have to undergo a little change. The A List is always stacked so you really don’t need to save starts there. You only need 36 A List starts and that should be easy this season with 9 starts from Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, and Tony Stewart with some Matt Kenseth, Denny Hamlin, Kurt Busch, and Carl Edwards starts sprinkled in. As you can see, covering 36 starts should be no problem.
Every year, there are 4 or 5 C Listers who work their way to the top of that group, so you really don’t need to worry about saving starts there either. (For what it’s worth, I think that Paul Menard is going to be a C List stud this year. He could be the best scoring C Lister in recent memory.)
The B List is where you win or lose in Yahoo Fantasy NASCAR. In previous years, managing the B List has been crucial since you didn’t want to be stuck running David Gilliland and Elliott Sadler at the end of the season. According to my pre-season math (which is probably completely wrong) this is how I see the starts breaking down:
- I see Dale Earnhart Jr., Kyle Busch, Mark Martin, Ryan Newman, Martin Truex Jr., Greg Biffle as being “automatic 9 start guys”. That’s 54 of the 72 starts you need in the B List, leaving only 18 more starts.
- I have to go ahead and announce my Fantasy NASCAR love for Casey Mears this year. I personally think he’s going to be awesome and is an automatic 9 start lock. I know there are others who are a little wary of Mears and don’t like him as much as I do. So, just for arguments sake, let’s say you ONLY get 7 starts out of Mears (although I think he’s going to be a stud and I’m sure I’ll start him 9 times) and 5ish starts out of a guy like Jamie McMurray. (You could also make an argument that McMurray can be considered a 7-9 start guy, although I like him for about 5-7 starts.) Even so, if you lowball the both of them and get 7 from Mears and 5 from McMurray, thats 12 total from these two. That leaves only 6 more B List starts from this group all season.
- With 6 more starts needed, you still have 7 more you can use from Mears or McMurray, 4 total starts from Robby Gordon and Juan Pablo Montoya on road courses (for the record I think Montoya will be a 5-7 start guy and could even be a 7-9 start guy), a couple from Bobby Labonte at places like Atlanta or the shorter flat tracks, and who knows if Reed Sorenson and J.J. Yeley take a step up this year and could be worth a start or two here and there.
- That easily makes up for the 72 total starts needed in the B List.
So, what does all of this tell us? It basically says that saving starts will be at less of a premium this year to be successful. I plan on going pedal to the metal for the first 8-10 races by running my best team possible. I’ll still try to find places to plug in Mears, McMurray, Labonte, and Montoya, but I won’t bend over backwards to make it happen. After about 10 races, I’m going to re-evaluate the B List and see how I match-up for the rest of the season. At that point, I’ll make whatever changes that are needed to my strategy.
