I like fantasy drafts as much as anybody. In fact they’re my favorite thing about playing any fantasy sport. That being said, drafts probably get an inordinate amount of attention when it comes to winning and losing fantasy leagues. Especially with the decreased emphasis on starting pitching in Major League Baseball and the prevalence of streaming pitchers as a fantasy strategy, in-season moves are at least as important as the draft, if not more so. With that in mind, let’s look at seven common in-season mistakes and how to avoid them.
- Overreacting to the first month of the season
Every year some players come out of nowhere to put up huge numbers early in the season, and while they can sometimes maintain a torrid pace, those hot starts often fizzle into nothing. Remember when everyone was losing their minds about Didi Gregorius and his .327/.421/.735 line in April? Did you give up on Edwin Encarnación after he batted .160/.243/.350 in April? He only finished the season with 32 home runs and 107 RBI. There are several examples like this every year, and if you sold low on Encarnacion when he was struggling, or traded away a good player to pick up Gregorius while he was hot, you probably hurt your chances of winning a fantasy championship.
To avoid this mistake, try asking yourself: If this happened in July, would I notice? Would I care? Would I act on it? It is easy to overreact to early-season performances because that is all of the data we have for that season. When you see Didi Gregorius near the top of the league in home runs on April 30, it stands out. When David Peralta hits 10 home runs in August, how many people really notice? A huge month in April isn’t any more important than a huge month later in the season, but it gets a lot more attention. This thought exercise is a great way to try to put early-season numbers in proper perspective.
Of course, some early-season numbers are worth reacting to. One way to try to determine if a small sample is an outlier or indicative of future performance is by looking at the underlying numbers. For more help in that area, check out the Jim Bowden’s Fantasy Baseball Draft Guide articles Understanding BABIP, Understanding Swinging-Strike Ratios, Beyond ERA: FIP, xFIP & SIERA, Understanding Contact Rates, Understanding Exit Velocity, Understanding Sample Size, Understanding Launch Angles and Learn to Use GB, FB & LD Rates.
- Giving up on good players in May
This is similar to the first mistake, but in some ways it is actually worse. You spend a high draft pick on a veteran player with a proven track record, and you manage to avoid the impulse to panic when that player is terrible in April. Then, your veteran continues to struggle in May, and you finally give in and trade him or—even worse—drop him altogether. That player goes on to turn his season around in spectacular fashion and finish with overall numbers that look remarkably similar to his previous seasons.
This has happened with at least one prominent hitter in each of the last four seasons, not to mention several pitchers. I expect there will be at least one prominent example in 2019 as well.
Paul Goldschmidt was a consensus first-round pick at this time last season, and I had him ranked sixth in my personal rankings. He batted .209 with seven home runs in April and May, and plenty of fantasy owners panicked. Goldschmidt proceeded to bat .330 with 26 home runs the rest of the way, and anyone who traded him away at the end of May almost certainly lost that trade.
Andrew McCutchen was the poster child for this mistake before he was replaced by Goldschmidt. On May 23, McCutchen was batting .200/.271/.359. He went on a tear from there, and by the end of June he was batting .283/.369/.495. When the dust settled on the season, McCutchen had topped 20 home runs, 80 runs and 78 RBI for the seventh consecutive season.
Brian Dozier didn’t have quite the same track record as Andrew McCutchen , so when he entered May 25, 2016 batting .199 with four home runs, it was understandable that he had been dropped in quite a few fantasy leagues. That being said, he hit 51 home runs combined in 2014 and 2015, so it shouldn’t have been completely surprising when Dozier starting mashing home runs in June, finishing the season with a career-high 42 homers.
Carlos González batted at least .295 with 23 home runs in every season from 2010 to 2013, but he batted just .238 in 70 games in 2014. When he struggled to start 2015, fantasy players panicked. Gonzalez was batting .201/.284/.319 with four home runs on May 26. He finished the season with a career-high 40 home runs and a .271 batting average.
At the very least, a proven player who is struggling midway through May still needs to be owned. That means if you drafted him, you shouldn’t drop him. At least trade him for something. If you didn’t draft him, you should bid on him if he hits free agency. Even if you aren’t willing or able to buy low in a trade, you should make room for those kinds of players on your bench.
For more examples on why patience is important and how it can help you win your fantasy league, check out Dom Murtha’s article in Jim Bowden’s Fantasy Baseball Draft Guide.
- Needing to win every trade
This was one of the top rules in Justin Mason’s Fantasy Baseball Trading 101. If you haven’t read that article yet, you definitely should. That being said, only making a trade if you are clearly winning it is one of the major in-season pitfalls you can make, so it is worth taking an in-depth look here as well.
By winning the trade we mean actually coming away from the trade with better assets in the aggregate than you started with. You don’t want a fair trade, or a trade that helps both teams, or one that fills a need. You want to get $1.25 on the dollar. We have all been there. If feels good to trade a couple of prospects who never end up panning out for a stud who can help put you at the top of your keeper league for years to come. Those just shouldn’t be the only trades you make.
On the face of it, there is not a whole lot wrong with trying to win every trade. If you win every trade you make, you will give yourself a pretty decent shot at winning your leagues more often than not. That being said, you can focus so much on winning trades that you can miss out on winning the league.
To avoid making the mistake of needing to win every trade, try asking yourself two important questions: Does this trade make me better? And, is it the best I can do?
If you really need strikeouts, and you have a good third baseman stuck on your bench most weeks, then it might make sense to trade Anthony Rendón for Rich Hill , even if nobody would have Hill ahead of Rendon in their fantasy rankings. If Hill is the best strikeout pitcher you can get for Rendon, then you should probably do that deal rather than waiting for a deal that you can brag about. That other trade may never materialize, in which case you failed to get the most out of your assets. You may have lost the Rendon-for-Hill trade in a vacuum, but it would have given you a better chance to win your league.
- Overvaluing your own players
This is a natural phenomenon psychologists refer to as the Endowment Effect. We overvalue the player we are giving up and undervalue the player we are potentially getting back. Every fantasy player should try to fight against that impulse. Avoid it by: consulting fantasy rankings or, as I stated at the beginning, asking the pros at Fantasy Alarm. We can tell you if you are asking for too much for Javier Báez , or if you need to be able to let go of Marcell Ozuna .
- Mismanaging injured players
There are basically two different ways to mismanage injured players. The first involves spending roster spots on injured players who either aren’t that good or will be out for too long to help you. On the other hand, you may drop a good player simply because he is injured right now, only for that player to make a big contribution to another team once he is healthy.
One of the best ways to avoid this mistake is by knowing yourself. If you are the type of fantasy player who tends to hold on to injured players longer than you should, you need to know that so you can guard against it. In that same vein, if one of your greatest strengths as a player is picking up players during the season and riding them to victory, then you should play to that strength. Feel free to be more aggressive in unloading injured players, confident that even if you lose a good player who could help you later, you can acquire healthy players through free agency or trades who can help you now.
Another way to decide if you should hold onto an injured player is to do the math. This is a little time consuming, but sometimes it can be useful to look at an injured player and project what stats you think you can get from him once he is back healthy, and compare that to what you can get in a trade or on the waiver wire. You don’t have to do precise math, but a rough estimate can give you an idea of whether or not you are making a huge mistake.
- Hoarding Stats
This mistake is specific to head-to-head or roto leagues, and it can go hand-in-hand with trying to win every trade. In a roto league, you want to finish the season with the most strikeouts, or the lowest ERA. It doesn’t matter if you finish with one more strikeout than second place or 100 more, you just want the most. Even so, I see fantasy players every year who keep racking up strikeouts, saves, or stolen bases when they should be trading some of the players accumulating those stats for help in other areas.
Usually, if a player is hoarding stats, it is because they cannot find a trade they can win. They know they don’t need Jonathan Villar for the rest of the season to still win in steals, but they cannot find anyone to pay full price for him. As we discussed above, the winning move is to trade Villar anyway.
The other issue is that fantasy players often don’t take the time to look at whether or not they really need Villar. Let’s say you are halfway through the season and you have 30 more stolen bases than the next guy. Barring an absolutely monster season, we can probably say Villar will not steal more than 20 bases in the second half. You can probably lose those 20 steals and still finish on top in that category, or pretty close to it. At the same time, if you can add a strikeout pitcher, you might be able to gain a handful of spots in the standings. At least once a month, you should look at the roto standings and see where you can potentially gain ground and where you might be able to sell off a player or two.
This can actually be easier in head-to-head leagues. If you are consistently hitting twice as many home runs as your opponents, that is an obvious position of strength to deal from. If you lose ERA several weeks in a row, you need to address that part of your team. Of course, even in head-to-head leagues, it can be useful to look at the season-long stats to see how you compare to other teams. Maybe you have lost strikeouts consistently, but you are still in the top half of your league in the category for the season. You might not need to chase strikeouts, since your luck will probably turn around sooner than later.
- Picking up every rookie who gets called up
Chris Bouvier will have a lot more on this subject in his Draft Guide article Utilizing Minor League numbers. That article gives you some tools to help you discern which rookies are worth pursuing and which ones can safely be ignored. When in doubt, ignore. More often than not, a prospect will start out slow in his first big league action.
Even if a prospect is exactly as good as his hype, which almost never happens, it is much rarer for it to happen right away. Mike Trout is on his way to a Hall of Fame career, but he batted .220/.281/.390 in 40 games as a rookie in 2011. Anthony Rizzo was even worse in his first big league season, batting .141/.281/.242 in 49 games with the Padres that same year. And these are top prospects who became overwhelming success stories. We aren’t even talking about failed prospects or lesser prospects with big minor league numbers. I was as high on Scott Kingery as anyone last season, and he was a complete disaster, with eight home runs and 10 stolen bases in 147 games after he had those exact same numbers in 63 games at Triple-A the year before. Taking a chance on a high-upside rookie can pay off, but grabbing several rookies in one season is a good way to end up at the bottom of the standings.
Navigating the regular season may not be as sexy or exciting as nailing your fantasy draft, but it may be even more important. All of the mistakes listed above are pretty common, but they are easy to avoid once you have identified them. If you can avoid all seven of these in-season mistakes, you will be well on your way to winning your league.