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What is the Bench for?
If you’re a new fantasy manager, you should already be familiar with the substitution rule: the highest scoring player from the bench is inserted into the lineup if a player on the field does not play, so long as the resulting lineup is a legal one. When learning that, an ambitious newcomer often says “Ok, instead of using extra money from a limited budget on the bench, I will just focus my time and money on picking strong field players who hopefully will play in real life and then fill out my bench with any old $4.0 million players. Done.” Seems natural and occasionally works, but it turns out that approach misses major opportunities to use the bench for better purposes. Over time bench-neglect will give your team the FMLS equivalent of skinny little arms and no pectorals to speak of!
Distinguish Advanced Players from Beginners
The Fantasy Physician is here to teach you the muscular techniques you lack. The titans of the game at some point dubbed these the “Switcheroo,” the “Keeperoo” (a goalkeeper Switcheroo), and the “Autoroo.” Certain well-designed mechanics of the game – automatic substitutions, manual substitutions, and rolling lockouts – along with an MLS schedule that spreads game times over a weekend or more, enable these high-value techniques.
Let’s for a moment go back to the fundamental challenge in MLS Fantasy: predicting hard-to-predict events. You wish you had a crystal ball so you could see how certain players will do before committing them to your squad, or you are considering two players– if you knew which one would do better, you would obviously take that one. It turns out that your bench gives you some power to do just these things.
Keeperoo: Although Keeperoos are really a specific type of Switcheroo, they are a great place to start expanding the profitable use of your bench. MLS Fantasy gives you two slots for goalkeepers, one on the bench and one on the field. For the Keeperoo, identify three goalkeepers: one who plays early in the weekend, one who plays late in the weekend (or at least after the first goalkeeper’s game is finished), and a “scrub” i.e. one who is highly unlikely to play, whose cost is the minimum $4.0 or close to it, and who is either on a late-playing team or on a bye that week. With the addition of San Diego FC as the 30th MLS team, the even number of teams means that there are few byes in 2025, but when they happen, they are the ideal source of scrub players.
To execute the Keeperoo, put the early goalkeeper on the bench, and the late-playing goalkeeper on the field, and then see what happens. If the early goalkeeper has a stinker, no problem. Your late-playing goalkeeper is already on the field and hopefully gives you a better score. The key is that you get to see the early one’s score first and decide if you like it. In a later article, the Fantasy Therapist will dive deep into what it means for a player on your bench “to hit,” but for discussion’s sake let’s call that a score of five or more. What if he hits? Great! Then your next move is to “scrub” the field goalkeeper i.e. manually replace the late-playing goalkeeper with the non-playing goalkeeper. Rolling lockouts (as opposed to other fantasy games in which the entire squad locks as soon as the game week begins) enable you to do this, but only if you make the substitution before the late-playing goalkeeper’s team’s published kickoff time. Use the start time in the MLS Fantasy Schedule to identify the lockout time. After the scrub’s game is over (and sometimes sooner if the scrub is not in his team’s 20-man gameday roster), the MLS Fantasy game will count your bench scores triggered by automatic substitutions.
If you need help picking safe scrubs (ones who are guaranteed not to play), ask on the MLS Fantasy Boss Discord or visit the MLS Fantasy Boss Mega-Reference.
Switcheroo: Master the Keeperoo concept and then the Switcheroo will be a snap. The differences? Non-goalkeeper switcheroos i.e. for defenders, midfielders and forwards can either involve swaps for like players (a defender for a defender) or a non-like players (a forward for a defender) but does not include goalkeepers. The overall restriction is that the final scoring lineup must be legal and viable in the game–at least 3 and at most 5 defenders, at least 3 and at most 5 midfielders, and at least 1 and at most 3 forwards. Early-playing players go on the bench. You see their score, and if you like it, you put a non-playing scrub on the field to trigger that score. If you don’t like it, you put another player on the field.
Autoroo: In MLS Fantasy, you pick 15 players each week, but only 11 will score. So having useful scrubs on the field will not hold you back, if they trigger high scores from the bench. Autoroos take advantage of the automatic substitution function in the game: if a player on the field does not play, the game will select the highest scoring bench player as a substitute and count his score in your week’s total (again, the resulting lineup must be legal). Say you are a fan of the high-flying forwards on Inter Miami, Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez, but you puzzle over who will do better in the coming week. Put them both on the bench, and then put a non-playing scrub on the field (say a defender like Selmi Pidro from STL, a $4M player who was loaned to a non-MLS team, and thus will not play). After Miami and St. Louis have played, the game will pick the highest score of the two Miami forwards to include in your week’s total. Over time, players see that the bench is a tool to manage risk. Some players are very risky but have high upsides; we say they have a “high ceiling but a low floor” or are “boom-bust.” These are often ideal players for your bench. Autoroos come in two other numerical arrangements. If you have one scrub on the field and three candidates for the spot, that’s a 3 for 1 Autoroo. If you have two scrubs on the field and three candidates for their spots, that’s a 3 for 2 Autoroo–where the two highest scores of the three will count.
Liberating Your Budget
Early on in the season Fantasy Managers are working at building their team’s budget, the subject of last week’s Fantasy Strategy Clinic. The bench is also useful for that. Say there’s a player who is looking at a guaranteed price rise because of strong performance in the preceding two weeks. You want that, but you are worried he’s in a bad or uncertain matchup for this week. Put that player on your bench, and you can benefit from the price rise without worrying about the outcome. Now could that same player also be part of an Autoroo, Keeperoo, or Switcheroo? Of course he can! Are you feeling the muscles coming alive? What’s more? When bench player’s “hit” early in the game week, replacing field players with scrubs who are cheaper may suddenly liberate more funds that you can use to upgrade a player at another position.
Applying to Game Week 4?
With three early matches Saturday and three matches on Sunday, the Game Week 4 schedule is spaced out nicely to take advantage of any of the ‘Roo strategies. Arguably, any of the goalkeepers playing at home in the first 6 games on Saturday have a decent shot at a clean sheet, so pick one and put him on your bench. Or toss on a couple of early defenders you like from a strong defense, like New York Red Bull or LAFC to see how well they score. Or you could even throw on a couple of early-evening match forwards, like Christian Benteke or Alonso Martinez, to see if they score a brace or leave you with a bitter taste in your mouth. Then, when any of your bench players hit, replace a corresponding starter in your lineup with a cheap, non-playing scrub like Pidro (D), Biello (M) or Pierre (F). Just be sure to have a backup plan if your bench fails. And don’t forget to save those lineup changes!
The “Fantasy Physician” is Ron Birnbaum, @Half Century City on Discord
The “Fantasy Therapist” is Mike Leister, @Kenobi on Discord
