How To Win More Often: Part One

I am going to assume that most of the people reading this article are not fantasy baseball newbies. There are lots of articles out there that give what I call the basic rules for fantasy baseball success. These include ideas like “Know Your League Rules”, “Be Prepared”, “Never Draft One Category Players”, “Stay Active and Make Trades” and “Don’t Panic!” all of which are solid ideas especially for beginners. But the rules I’m about to present are those that experienced and excellent players instinctively follow when they are not purposely breaking them. For the Advanced Fantasy Baseball Player the rules are a little more sophisticated and not following them can lead to mediocre performances from even the most knowledgeable player in a tough league. This is going to be a series of articles on How to Win More Often.

Trust Your Sources but Not Overly Much

You might subscribe to BaseballHQ.com buy the annual Fantasy Baseball Forecaster and believe that Ron Shandler and his cronies are the gods of this game. I wouldn’t argue much with you. But even the best of sites miss things and make mistakes. HQ for example has their system for analyzing players and they do not vary from it. I am not suggesting that they should but rather thinking about the flaws in operating that way such as missing players that do not fit their optimum BPI profile (or go radically against it) players like Alfonzo Soriano (pre-2006 anyway), Chien-Ming Wang or Jon Garland. This is why I suggest you not only develop a collection of good sources but also do some work yourself, which leads me to our next topic.

Have Solid Reasoning for Every Move You Make

Have you ever made a trade and looked back at it a few weeks later (or even a couple of days later) and not been able to figure out just what it was you were thinking? I think we all have at one time or another but it does not need to be that way. Every draft pick, auction bid, waiver claim, trade offer, trade acceptance or roster change of any kind should be preceded by a period of consideration wherein you measure the impact such a move will have on your roster by running it through whatever system you use whether it is comparing recent projections, looking at recent BPI’s, getting the opinion of your favorite advisor(s), just a very strong hunch or all of the above. The important thing is to actually understand your own reasoning before every transaction that you make. This will not prevent you from making bad moves but it will make it less likely and it might keep you from spending any time banging your head against a wall.

Look for more guidelines from now until draft day.