A few words on fantasy baseball strategies and philosophies for roster construction/team building

Mets GM Sandy Alderson, who is one of the people I admire most in all of professional sports, said this recently about success and failure in team building:

I think the reasons for success and failure are not about philosophy or theory, it is about execution. It is about how you execute on the ideas.

Translation: pretty much every philosophy on how to build a roster works if you pick the right players.

The Mets have been praised for their collection of young, electric starting pitchers. The general public perception has been that the Mets chose to build around strong pitching, but Alderson says that is not the case:

We didn’t have a grand plan to build around pitching. We had a grand plan to build around good players.

Alderson, when trying to build a winner, did not predetermine that he wanted to build it around young power arms who throw 96 mph with good command and good secondaries. He tried to acquire as many good players as he could, regardless of whether they were hitters or pitchers.

I think these two quotes can really be applied well to building a fantasy baseball team, too. I don't think a fantasy owner should get too wrapped up in specific philosophies for roster building, such as prioritizing hitting over pitching, or becoming set on drafting an ace pitcher early. It's about player selection execution, using as much good information and good processes as you can find. I hope this doesn't sound hilariously obvious (it probably does), but I think it can sometimes be overlooked in pursuit of a strict roster building philosophy.