The 10 Most Dangerous Mistakes Fantasy Leaguers Make
A BASEBALLHQ.COM SPECIAL REPORT, by Ron Shandler
Think back to last year's draft day. If you were like most fantasy leaguers, you came out of your draft with a pretty decent team. You were probably satisfied that you had assembled a good group of players. You looked forward to the season when you would manage your team to a championship.
If you won your league last year, congratulations! However, odds are you were among the other 90% who came up short. What happened? Did you make some bad decisions? Did you get hit with bad luck? Most of us can probably pinpoint a few wrong turns that we made. However, you can also identify some bad luck that played a part in your team's finish.
Good decisions, bad decisions, good luck, bad luck... they all shape our success in this game. The very best fantasy players make more good decisions and position themselves to take advantage of luck better than the other owners in their league. The truth is, we have much more control over our fates than most people realize. While many of our decisions may have turned out badly, there are many apparently unlucky events that were not bad luck at all. They were bad decisions.
After playing this game for well over two decades, I've seen certain types of mistakes happen very frequently. Here are my 10 most dangerous mistakes fantasy leaguers make:
1. Not coming to terms with your true goal for playing the game. This might sound like corporate-speak -- setting goals, yada, yada, yada -- but it is at the heart of fantasy league success. In fact, this singular mistake pervades nearly every other mistake on this list.
At its most basic level, most of us go into our fantasy season with the goal of "winning while having fun." However, there needs to be an appropriate balance between the "winning" and the "fun." Finding that balance is often elusive, but your ultimate success depends on it.
If you are committed to winning above all, that often means separating yourself from the emotion of the game. Perhaps you'll need to pass on your favorite players if they don't fit your budget or plan. Maybe you have to look beyond that terrific single-game performance at the game you attended. There is a danger to getting attached to individual players or being swayed by small sample sizes.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with playing for fun; this is a game, after all. But even if you're fully committed to winning yet allow yourself just a few roster spots for hometown faves, know that each indulgence has a price because every roster spot is precious. But again, there needs to be an appropriate balance that reflects your true goal for playing the game.
2. Using last year as a baseline for this year. Here's a little exercise. Take a look at the final player rankings for 2007. Now take a look at some of the spring magazines and online fantasy sites for their projected 2008 player rankings. In all likelihood, both ranking lists will look remarkably similar. Last year's top players will be this year's projected top players. That's because it is a natural inclination to use last year as a point of reference for this year.
While many players do populate the same segments of our rankings each year, there is a great deal of volatility. Over the past five years, the consensus #1 draft pick never finished atop the end-of-season rankings, and barely 40% of those projected in the top five finished that high. (If not for Alex Rodriguez, that percentage would be under 20%.)
A better approach is to start each season with a clean slate. The more that you can divorce yourself from preconceived notions about what players' stats are supposed to look like, the better positioned you will be to evaluate players based on what their stats could look like. In 2007, that would have meant looking at Barry Zito not as a "former Cy Young winner getting a change of scenery" but as a "pitcher in a 3-year skills decline."
3. Taking the numbers at face value. Any way you look at it, fantasy baseball is a numbers game. But winners know that the stats we use in our contests are not the most accurate measures of skill. Homeruns, batting average and ERA are just outcomes of specific events. The real value is knowing what those numbers represent -- power, batting eye, pitching effectiveness -- and what peripheral gauges drive them.
In fact, the best way to project future performance is to look exclusively at these peripheral gauges and then reverse-engineer them back into the stats that we play our games with. For instance, projecting a pitcher's strikeout rate, walk rate and ground ball rate will provide much greater insight into his future ERA than attempting to project ERA from his past ERA history. For instance, coming into 2007, those who saw the strength of Javier Vazquez's peripherals would not have been put off by his 4.85 ERA the prior year.
4. Getting caught up in minor league or Japanese import hype. One of the biggest joys of playing this game is to be the guy who had Hanley Ramirez on his farm roster when the then-Red Sox prospect was still in Single-A ball. Part of the reason we play, after all, is to prove how smart we are. However, success depends in good part on risk management and these types of players are the riskiest commodities to own.
Prospect scouting is an integrated process that involves both traditional skills assessment and statistical analysis. Even the most adept at these processes is only going to have a moderate success rate in identifying serviceable Major Leaguers, let alone future stars. For a fantasy leaguer, there are far more players who have a proven track record.
What happens in many leagues is that hot rookies get selected far earlier in drafts, or for far more dollars in auctions, than their first year skills potential would dictate. Given all the obstacles a young player has to overcome to succeed, the odds are far more likely that you will end up with an Alex Gordon than a Ryan Braun. That's not to say that Gordon isn't a fine talent (and in keeper leagues, the rules are different), but the odds of immediate success are slim. To put it in perspective, the top 25 rookies drafted in 2007 cost, on average, $10 in auction leagues. Their average return was $3. In fact, if not for Braun (who went undrafted in many leagues), the return would have been close to $0.
You probably don't want to hear this, but if you play in a shallow mixed league (12 teams or fewer), you shouldn't even be looking at the minor leagues. The proven player pool is far too lucrative. But once again, it comes down to goals -- do you want to be the guy who uncovers the next Troy Tulowitzki or the guy who wins year after year? It's extremely tough to be both.
5. Ignoring risk factors when selecting early round or high-priced players. In this winter's early mock drafts, I have found it amazing to see Ryan Braun's name among those going in the first or second round, or for over $25 in auctions. There is no question that he proved himself to be a great talent last year, but first round/$25+ players are not just players with great talent.
These top-drafted players also have to bring stability to your roster. There is no room for excess risk when you are building a foundation. They have to be proven commodities with a long-term track record. Particularly in snake draft leagues, you can't afford a first or second round player to go belly-up.
So, no matter how sexy Braun's stats were last year, we have no evidence that he will be able to repeat that performance in 2008. Perhaps pitchers will uncover a flaw. Perhaps he'll get overconfident and make mistakes. Perhaps he won't take well to a possible move to the outfield. We just don't know. All we have is a single data point. With the importance of that first round pick, you don't want to leave your team's foundation in the hands of a player who has had the sum total of five good months for his entire major league career.
Similarly, any top level player with some underlying risk should be avoided in the early rounds. In general, we advise to pass on pitchers -- even Johan Santana-level talents -- because pitchers are inherently risky. And any player coming off an injury -- even if media reports deem him healthy -- should be left for others to take on the risk of a slow recovery or another breakdown.
6. Obsessing over every dollar or ADP rank. Research has shown that, in an auction, there is only a 65% chance of a player returning within +/- $5 of his purchase price. In other words, if you buy a player for $25, there is over a one in three chance that he will return under $20 or over $30. This carries over to snake draft rankings as well.
These findings provide us with two important lessons: 1) Projections are highly variable, and 2) we should not be overly tied down to draft rankings. Whether a player is rated at $22 or $25 is almost immaterial. Similarly, players whose ADPs are within five or 10 ranking points of each other are pretty much interchangeable, and that spread grows significantly the further into the draft you are.
By the time you are into the 18th round or so, the likely variance between projected and actual stats for those late round players is so wide that your singular focus should be on just filling your roster with anything that has a conditional upside. Bench players behind risky frontliners. Middle relievers who could be in line for saves. Players with no clear path to playing time but solid skills potential. At that point of the draft, you should just trash your rankings list. It's completely worthless by then.
7. Breathing a sigh of relief after draft day. It is a common axiom that you can't win your league on draft day but you can certainly lose it. As such, most fantasy owners spend an inordinate amount of analytical muscle on the draft, then abandon the analytics come Opening Day.
Beyond the typical news monitoring, pre-season activity is fierce with calculating projections, compiling rankings lists and running an endless stream of mock drafts. These are all pro-active planning activities. But once the season starts, the focus shifts away from pro-active analytics and moves to re-active decision-making. Yes, we do follow pitching match-ups and the like during the season, but the focus is still on reacting to today's events rather than planning for tomorrow.
During the pre-season, mock drafts act as simulators for the real event. During the season, there is very little "simulating" done, even though we do have the means to accomplish this. For instance, few fantasy leaguers take the time to calculate pro-forma standings. This is a powerful in-season planning tool. All it involves is taking your team's and league's current stats, adding in balance-of-season projections and simulating what the end-of-season standings might look like. This exercise, calculated even monthly, is invaluable to help you see where your strengths and weaknesses are. But few fantasy leaguers engage in forward-looking activities like this.
It is true that the stats and standings change every day so we have to be in tune to current conditions, but that in-season activity has to be a blend of tactical and strategic decision-making. Most fantasy leaguers seem to focus on the former to the exclusion of the latter.
8. Making in-season player moves based on yesterday's performance rather than tomorrow's potential. Last May 1, thousands of Erik Bedard owners were jumping off of bridges after he opened the season with an ERA north of 6.00. It's tough to ignore the stats in front of your face, but those numbers are already in the books; there is nothing you can do about them. The problem is that many owners allow their in-season decisions to be ruled by yesterday's numbers. Winning, though, requires that we look ahead, not back.
First we have to remember that players are evaluated based on their performance over six months. A player who we consider a .300 hitter might have a few .250 months -- and likely a few .350 months -- on his journey to .300. If those .250 months happen to occur early in the season, there is a tendency to panic. But long-term history has to set our expectations. A single .250 month does not mean he is no longer a .300 hitter.
That is why forecasting has to be an ongoing process, not a one-shot pre-season exercise. Few players are going to perform exactly as we expect right out of the gate, so we must constantly analyze each one to see what the future really holds. Heck, maybe that sub-Mendoza batting average in April was real. But we can't just assume that the next five months will be similarly bleak without a full analysis. Our in-season decisions have to be driven by the results of that analysis, not the view of a one-month 6.00 ERA in our rear view mirror.
9. Misunderstanding the impact of averages. Everybody knows batting averages and ERAs, but we often don't understand how to manage them. We'll trade for high average hitters and expect them to have a major impact on our team's BA, only to be disappointed. To improve our team's 3.75 ERA, we'll pass up a middle reliever with a 2.00 ERA and pick up a starting pitcher with a 3.00 ERA. That's another tactic likely to fail.
The problem is that decisions are often made blindly when a little bit of basic math can reveal the truth. Say it's the end of July and your team could potentially move up several places in the standings if you can pick up 5 points in batting average. Solid in the production categories, you've been offered James Loney for Brandon Inge for your corner infield slot. With your team's .275 batting average, you think that replacing Inge's potential .240 batting average with Loney's .300 batting average over the rest of the season will get you to your goal. That 60 point improvement has to do it, right? Let's see (using some round numbers)...
AB H Avg
==== ==== =====
Your team right now 3000 825 .275
*Projected for 2008 4500 1237 .275
MINUS
Brandon Inge proj 167 40 .240
ADD
James Loney proj 167 51 .305
NEW TEAM PROJECTION 4500 1248 .277
* Assumes that team will continue to perform at more or less the same overall pace.
The math shows that a 60-point trade in batting average completed at the end of July falls far short of closing a 5 point gap in team batting average. The primary lesson... your ability to affect the ratio categories drops significantly with each passing week. Exercises like this often can make or break a season.
10. Defending the right to strike out on your own. Nobody wants someone else to tell them how to play this game. But once again, it comes down to goals. If your goal is to win, then you should make use of all the tools and advantages available to you. Many fantasy leaguers are content to read their daily newspaper and surf the internet, picking up the same free tidbits that everyone else has. There's no competitive advantage in that.
At BaseballHQ.com, we are in business to give you that competitive edge. We don't play the game for you; we just provide tools that nobody else has access to. Are we experts? Perhaps, though I prefer to think of ourselves as facilitators. You have a full-time job; you don't have time to scout for information and crunch numbers for hours on end. We do.
At BaseballHQ.com, we help you overcome all 10 of these mistakes. Our focus is on
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