Two Lessons for Next Season
The fantasy baseball season is officially over. Whether you won your league or stopped playing weeks ago, there’s a lot to take away from the past season. While wounds are still fresh for some of you, it’s always important to reflect on your fantasy team. Knowing where you went wrong, or what went right can help you formulate a winning strategy in future seasons. As you look back on your team, here are a few things to keep in mind for next season.
Have confidence in your draft picks.
This one seems obvious, but it’s actually pretty tough to follow. Every year, there are a couple of mid or late round picks that get off to poor starts and are dropped just weeks after the draft. Immediately after they are cut, it seems, these players go on a tear and wind up as some of the more valuable fantasy players. Last season, it was Michael Morse. And this season, a solid case can be made for Paul Goldschmidt. By season’s end, the original owner of those players is kicking themselves for letting them go.
That doesn’t have to happen. Assuming that you’ve done your research, and put together a solid list of sleepers, you need to stay confident in your guys. If you believed in their talents enough to invest a draft pick in them, you shouldn’t be willing to cut bait with a guy after only a few weeks. Hell, sometimes it takes a month for a guy to get going. Now, obviously, injuries are a part of fantasy sports, and they could force you to give up on a guy too early. But if you can help it, try and stick with your guys for a month at the very least.
Mike Trout and Bryce Harper are the exception, not the rule.
There’s usually a ton of risk involved with drafting rookie or top prospects in fantasy leagues. But with the success of Trout and Harper, there’s a chance that owners will be far more confident in selecting the next crop of rookies much earlier than usual. That means guys like Dylan Bundy, Manny Machado and Jurickson Profar are likely to cost quite a bit next season. While Bundy, Machado and Profar are highly regarded prospects, it’s pretty rare for those guys to come up and perform as well as Trout or Harper. In most leagues, Trout had an outside chance at being the most valuable player, and he missed the first month of the season. That’s just not likely to happen again.
Now, there are some rookies that are able to come up and play well immediately, but even the best prospects are far from a sure thing. It look Jay Bruce and Phil Hughes years before they finally reached fantasy relevance. Owners that invested in Jeremy Hermida are still waiting for a breakout. On the other hand, Jason Heyward and Buster Posey immediately produced. While there’s some upside in young guys, there’s also a fair amount of risk. Harper and Trout succeeded because they were considered two of the best prospects of all time. Same with Stephen Strasburg. Bundy, Machado and Profar are going to top a lot of prospect lists this summer, but all three of them carry more risk than Trout or Harper. That’s not to say they aren’t worth a decent draft pick, but don’t go overboard because rookies looked good this year.
Harper and Trout succeeded because they were considered two of the best prospects of all time.
really.
I imagine their talent had something to do with it as well.
Pretty ultimate statement. Todd Van Poppel and Brien Taylor scoff.
this is a stupid comment.
I definitely agree with #1. I cut Morse last year and Medlen this year. I probably would have won last year if I didn’t cut Morse. This year I won- I cut Medlen when I needed a starter- for Marco Estrada. Estrada was good, but Medlen was simply lights out in the 2nd half and I would have put the league away much earlier.
Was Reddick a prospect this year? Man am I glad I drafted him.
The point holds, but it didn’t take Bruce “years” to reach fantasy relevance. He’s always been relevant, he just hasn’t always been among the very best outfielders.
Point #1 is huge. On July 21, I was in 4th place in my 12-team dynasty league, but a full 30 points out of first. My pitching was solid, but my offense included everyone (or so it seemed) that had gotten off to a bad start, been injured, or both: Pujols, Pedroia, Zimmerman, Napoli, Rickie Weeks, etc. I came very close to selling off whatever pieces I could for prospects and draft picks. But I didn’t, I believed in the talent. And got lucky, too…. Just looked it up, and 11 of my 12 core hitters improved post-ASB, five of them by 140 or more points of OPS, and I won my league. (I know, “Cool story, bro’…” but just wanted to reinforce Chris’ point.)
I came SO CLOSE to dealing Pujols in May. Now I’ve won the championship and I feel rewarded, even if he still was somewhat of a letdown on the whole.
I DID deal Pujols in May (for Ryan Zimmerman and LoMo), and finished 3rd in my league. Zimmerman came back somewhat, but I wonder if I could’ve won by hanging on to Pujols.
I dealt Pujols for McCutchen in a dynasty league in June . While McCutchen faded late,I just missed winning the league championship by 4 points and I really like McCutchen vs Pujols over the next 8 years or so .
The tricky thing about point #1 is that every year there are HUGE finds in free agency in the first weeks of April. This year in my main league, for example, Fernando Rodney, Allen Craig, Kyle Lohse, Chase Headley and Josh Reddick were all picked up in the first 10 days of the season. So it’s good to preach patience, and I think most owners that read FanGraphs realize that it’s a long season, but often times it behooves you to make a move sooner rather than later.
yeah, exactly. I too often practice patience with my draftees and can’t afford a roster spot for Peavy after 2 good starts and the numerous other examples from every year. Its one thing to be patient if the guy is sporting a hosmer-like inexplicable BABIP but its another thing to hold on to someone who you think should have trade value if he can just string a few weeks together and by the time he does you missed out on some break outs.
Beware of patience. Its way over rated.
Re point 1, I would argue that you could just as easily say cut bait when the right opporutnity arises. For everyone who dumped Goldschmidt or Ryan Zimmerman too early, there is somebody who hung on to Uggla or Hosmer way too long.
The secret is to hold the guys who turn it around & dump the ones who don’t. And pick up the ones who will continue to outperform expectations while letting somebody else take the flukes. See how simple it is?
The point to #2 is to not make the exception the rule. Shouldn’t that apply to #1 as well? You picked out a couple of players that reverted back to form, and then some posters pointed out they made great additions with guys that started off slowly.
OTOH, how many people waited patiently for-
Ellsbury
Lincecum
Lester, Beckett, J Upton, Napoli, Castro, etc.?
It’s been said before, but patience has killed as many roto teams as impatience.
I’d say the inverse of #1 has always helped me a lot. As in, pick up the free agents that other people dump after cold starts. It always seems like playing the waiver wire in the first two weeks pays the biggest dividends as people drop players who are underperforming their draft expectations.