In my April 2 column, I told you the amount of time you spent in in-season management of your fantasy baseball teams will show up in the standings. Today, I want to drill down on this subject and give you three tips on how to manage your team. Let’s start here – if you’re not keeping detailed records of player statistics, transactions and observations, you’re not serious about this.
You might be wondering why I added observations to the list. The reason is that your real-time observations are the most valuable piece of information. Recently, I wrote: “Brendan Rodgers sucks. He’s out of the lineup for a third straight day and the writer notes he isn’t feeling up to playing. I can understand because if I was playing like him, I wouldn’t feel like playing either.”
I don’t want you to think I’m always negative like I was about Rodgers. Here’s what I wrote about another player: “I can’t believe that I got Ryan O’Hearn for $2 of FAAB. He homered for the third straight night. I guess people were avoiding him because the Orioles are using him on the strong side of a platoon. They’re going to have a hard time keeping him on the bench now.”
Can you understand now what I mean about observations? My observations on Rodgers will make it that much easier to cut him in my next FAAB run. I drafted Rodgers in the 26th round of TGFBI because the pundits were singing his praises and talking about his upside in Colorado hitting in the heart of the lineup. But it’s more important to know what’s in the heart of a man.
Okay, let me offer some tips on managing your team from now until the end of the season. Some of these tips are practical and others deal more with impractical things like human emotions. These were pitchers you drafted in the first few rounds for the purpose of getting saves.
MANAGING YOUR FAAB DOLLARS WISELY
If you’re going to make your team better after the draft, the most important thing is to add talent. If you’re in a FAAB league you know every dollar you have counts because there are only a certain number of dollars. FAAB stands for “Free Agent Acquisition Budget” and everyone is allotted a certain amount to spend in free agency for the year. In NFBC leagues, you get $1,000.
A thousand dollars may sound like a lot of money, but those dollars must last for six long months. The biggest mistake a manager makes is to spend his/her FAAB dollars like a drunken sailor. In my first month in TGFBI, I saw $300 and $400 bids. But then I saw these managers running out of money by the All-Star break. They were broke and couldn’t add new players.
In my mind, I have determined an average amount that I can spend each week – $40. I can go over some weeks, but then I’ll need to spend less than on other weeks. If I bid $130 Sunday night and acquire hot-shot rookie Andy Pages, I’ll go $90 over budget. I’ll need to spend no more than $10 of FAAB in three other weeks to offset the expenditure and stay in my budget guidelines.
“But Thomas,” you say. “I lost Framber Valdez and Bobby Miller. “I’ve got to spend big bucks and get Rangers rookie sensation Jack Leiter this weekend. He can save my season.” Oh really? Consider the fact that players garnering triple-digit bids return value less than 25 percent of the time. You can put in a “keep ‘em honest” bid, but don’t break the bank on an unproven player.
The bottom line is that if you’re going to spend precious dollars on a player, you need to be spent wisely. To make the best use of your FAAB dollars, do your due diligence. You’re never going to know the exact dollar amount needed to beat everyone else but consider factors like position scarcity, current player performance and track record and the team need of other managers.
Another factor to consider in determining your FAAB bid is how long you’ll keep the player. The better the player and the longer you plan on keeping them, the more they’re worth. The more highly-touted prospects called up will go for more as well. Streamers typically go for much less. I’m not a fan of streaming in a weekly league, but those that stream don’t spend very much.
CHECK YOURSELF BEFORE YOU WRECK YOURSELF
You’re not a computer, and fantasy baseball is more than just statistics and spreadsheets. Being a fantasy manager means you agree to climb on an emotional rollercoaster and ride it until the end of the season. Losing Spencer Strider, or Devin Williams can put even the most stoic manager on a tilt. Trust me, I know how it feels – I drafted both. But it’s not the end of my season.
In a perfect world, you want every player you drafted to stay healthy and produce every night. But we don’t live in a perfect world, do we? The reality is that even our players will fail to produce squat in even a third of the games this year. Baseball is streaky. Players go on hot and cold streaks all the time. Just because a player goes 0-for-16 doesn’t mean he should be dropped.
I’ve seen managers spike drop a player in a fit of anger only to see him catch fire right after that. I’ll never forget drafting Marcell Ozuna last year in the 20th round of TGFBI and watching him hit about .085 in April. After a month of this, I couldn’t take it any longer and dropped him. He went on to hit 40 home runs, drive in 100 runs and make a fool out of me. Lesson learned.
On the other hand, don’t hang on to a player for weeks because you’re sure he’s going to pan out. I watched managers make this mistake with Jarred Kelenic a few years ago, after he was called up. Some managers continued to hang on to him after he was demoted to AAA, still clinging to the hope he would figure out how to hit major league hitting. It hasn’t happened yet.
DO YOUR HOMEWORK AND BE REWARDED
My wife was a great student, from elementary school through graduate school. I was a mediocre student, from elementary school until my last undergraduate class. Jennifer made straight A’s. I made B’s and C’s. Jennifer isn’t that much smarter than me, although her IQ is probably higher. The difference was that she did her homework every day and was prepared for every test.
Fantasy baseball success, like many things in life, is predicated on how much time you put into it. If you start studying the player pool a few days before the draft, you’re just like me back in my school days. I would be up all night cramming for an exam and then wonder why I only managed to get a C. Your draft will yield similar results, and you’ll never win a championship.
If you’re reading this column, you’re probably a serious manager. As a serious manager, your homework is research. Whether you’re doing research for your draft, or doing weekly research as part of your in-season team management, what you put into it is what you get out of it. Those extra hours will pay off in discovering the deep sleepers who make a big difference to your team.
Doing research is more than looking at basic statistics. The average manager will look at a player’s batting average. The superior manager will look at a player’s batting average on balls in play (BABIP). An average manager will look at a pitcher’s ERA. A superior manager will look at a pitcher’s ERA+ (the latter number reflecting home ballpark and league environment).
The manager who is serious about in-season management will spend the weekend looking at the upcoming weekly matchups. He/she is taking a look at the projected starting pitchers, ballpark factors and home/road splits. For hitters, it’s also looking into how much contact they’ve been making, what their quality of contact looks like and how their plate discipline has been trending.
The best managers are looking at things like projected starting lineups, current K-BB%, ballpark factors, opponent K% and what type of quality contact they’ve been giving up when their starting pitchers take the mound. The best managers always look deeper into their starting pitcher histories than others do. They are looking for durable pitchers who can go deep into games.
I hope these tips will help you win a championship. Just remember that winners are always willing to pay a price. For the casual fantasy manager, playing for fun in a home league, you can still have a great time. You may even win your league – if everyone else is just as casual about it as you are. But if you really want to win at fantasy baseball, you’ve got to work hard and smart.
Thomas L. Seltzer, AKA Doubting Thomas, writes about baseball and football for CreativeSports. Be sure to follow Thomas on Twitter@ThomasLSeltzer1.
