Is there a strategy, good time to play, best way to dodge high ranked teams
Play more.

The more games you play, the more "fine-tuned" your persistent rating becomes (aka, the hidden rating). The problem comes when you abandon your team and make a new one. Your persistent rating never adjusts properly so you end up facing the same group of people...because a lot of highly skilled people are doing the same thing.

It probably took me 300+ games until I was "tuned". I got up to 1800 and switched teams. Now, I go up against other 1800 rated teams because my persistent rating is high. I've armory'd a few teams that beat us and they were 1900+ (while my new team was 1500). If more people switch their teams, the 1500-1600 range becomes highly competitive.

Here's an example of why that happens:

I get to a 1800 personal/team rating.
You get to a 1800 personal/team rating.

We both leave our teams and make or join new (1500) teams.
We will be matched up because of our "hidden" rating is very close. We will be fighting each other for points @ the new team rating (1500). Ideally, If I win, I go up to 1515 and you go to 1485. Now, you get matched up against another team with high hidden ratings and low personal/team ratings. The 1500-1600 range has become a pit of highly skilled people that *had* high ratings.

Have you ever noticed that when you beat a team, but lose to them right after, the points don't add up? You win 8, they lose 14. They win 9 you lose 15. 17 points have been won, but 29 points have been lost. The points dissolve. If you face this team all day long w/ a 50% W/L ratio, you will both end up with a net loss in points and eventually get sucked into this 1500-1600 pit.

I found that when I ran my 2v2 team to 1100, I was able to get it up to 1800 without any hassle. We even joked about how easy the 1800's were. When I abandonded my team and rejoined w/ my same partner later, we couldn't even keep a 1600.

I would argue that this season has probably been the worst season for Arenas. I left my 1800 team because my partner wanted to honor-grind for some gear w/ the 1800 rating and I just wanted to keep playing arena. I made a new team w/ a new partner and I convinced my old partner to join me because we wanted a better W/L showing. We had like 300W 310L on our 1800 team. We can't get back up there. I'm so tempted to dive bomb back down to 1100 to see if I can jump the 1500-1600 gap in a run of wins.

[Edit]:
I also wanted to add that this season has the lowest number of participants, especially in the 5v5 brackets, out of all seasons. Arenajunkies had a site where you could look at the number of participants. If last season was 300k participants, this season was something like 40k (differing from battlegroups).