Valentine’s Day

Sweetheart’s Day, right? Bah humbug. Somehow the older we get the less enthused we are with these dates. About the only thing sweet for me this time round is knowing that just around the corner is the opening of another year of Baseball Manager. Ha.

And that is nice.  If you’ve never played this game you too are in for a treat. For years I’ve played and it’s yet to get old. Unlike some of the beauties of my youth this game has aged well (sorry ladies). In fact, the game has actually improved. It seems to get a face lift each year and unlike some of those Hollywood stars that cause you to cringe when you see a picture of them too soon after surgery, these improvements look good.

Take this year’s treats. We draft two catchers instead of three, six relievers instead of five and the salary structure for determining those dime a dozen relievers changed so that we’ll have more money to spend elsewhere. What’s not to love?

This sounds like an advertisement and I don’t mean it to come out that way. But when you talk about something you love, that sometimes happens. So even though this is just a baseball game, it’s something I am really passionate about.

First thing every morning I check my scores. Baseball Manager plays a game each night using that day’s real statistics. How your players and your opponent’s players did that day is what you get in your game that night. How cool is that? No goofy points in this game. It’s all about hits, and walks, and errors, and pitching performances – a real box score from a “real” game. Totally sweet.

And let me tell you something about seeing those results each morning. For a while (I’m a little embarrassed to say it)…but for a while I either feel good or grumpy. I know…it sounds stupid. How can a silly little game make a grown man feel good (or a loss make him feel down)? I don’t know but it does. I’m going to call it the competitive nature but I love to win….and hate to lose. And so I try hard to see good things each morning. And no other fantasy game I know allows you to really have a lot of impact on that. There are so many things you can control – the draft, the lineup, rotation, which players are active and which are on the bench, free agent claims, trades…you even on a batting lineup versus the throwing hand of your opposing pitcher!

I’m telling you, you gotta try this game. Click here and check it out. You won’t be disappointed.

League Membership

My fantasy sport leagues have all been played online. But before there was an Internet I’m sure some of you played in leagues made up of friends and relatives. That must have been fun getting together every so often with everyone and talking about how things are going. The draft sessions must have been a blast.

But today probably most fantasy sport leagues are played online. And that can result in some great new friendships. Unfortunately, it can also have the opposite effect and you could get stuck in a league that can’t end soon enough.

Here is a suggestion when joining a league. Communicate with as many members of the league before you join. Find out about them as well as telling them about you. Basic demographic stuff is helpful – age, experience, etc.   Your main interest is reading the responses you get. You can tell something about people in the way they write. Do they write in short unintelligible phrases, is everything written in shorthand text, is the grammar something a 6^th grader would write? Those things are fine if that’s what you want, but if you are looking for a more mature league those red flags should send you elsewhere.

When I joined the Boise Summer League in 1992 in Baseball Manager, the fellow who started the league posted a note in the forum looking for members. He later told us that he made his decisions on who to invite based upon what they wrote. If they could string a few words together in intelligent sentences he asked them to join. That was some pretty funny stuff when I learned how he did it, but he must have known what he was doing because several of us still play together in that league twenty years later.

The flip side of things can also happen. Last year in a different league a new member joined. The league thought it was getting one person (a veteran some of us knew), but instead the team was run by the guy’s teenaged nephew. Okay….kind of odd twist but not much could be done about it. The young man talked a good game and assured us of his commitment. Things didn’t work out, he finished dead last in the league and ticked off several members at various points in the year. Not the best of times.

In short, be careful who you agree to play with as 162 games is a long season.

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Hold ’em?

Nope, we aren’t talking poker but rather how long to hold onto players on your fantasy baseball team. If you’ve played fantasy sports long enough you’ve probably noticed that certain managers win more than others. Why is that? Are they really smarter than you? Can they evaluate talent better than you? Two factors that separates perennial winners and losers in fantasy baseball are the quality and quantity of transactions made throughout the year. Losers tend to stand pat and only make a few moves to improve their club while winners constantly tweak their team. Some managers tend to be satisfied with their drafted team and develop an attitude that says these are my guys and I’m going to sink or swim with them. Unfortunately that’s a sure path to a losing season.

Rule #2 – Do not hold onto players not producing

None of us know which players are going to have good years. We all try to stock our teams with players we think are going to be good. But once the draft is over we need to stay current with how our players are doing. That takes time…something many of us don’t have…and effort.  We need to look for a replacement when a player isn’t producing. Sounds simple enough, right? It isn’t. We logically based our decisions on who to draft by a player’s past history. The assumption being that a player lives up to his average and doesn’t deviate much year to year. That’s a good assumption and unless a significant change has occurred (a trade to a different ballpark, injury, age, etc.) that’s as good a way to evaluate talent as any. The problem occurs when the player isn’t performing up to his potential (career averages). We think that a player not performing well now is just in a little slump and will surely start playing well soon. Therein lays the problem.

Week after week we put Joe Shmo into the lineup thinking that any day now he’s going to start hitting. And week after week he fails to produce. What should we do? It’s easy to look back and say it was a dumb move to play him but the point is what are you going to do about it? When do you know to bench the guy and move on? You can hope all you want that he’ll soon snap out of it…but you need to be prepared to move on when he doesn’t.

The manager who recognizes the situation early and proactively searches for a replacement is the manager who wins. Don’t just stand pat and hope for change. This is difficult. We like having name brand stars on our team. We especially like having guys we’ve heard about for years and who were top performers for more than a decade. We like to think that they are still that good and have at least one or two more good years in them. So it’s hard to trade those players or drop them into the free agent pool. But if they aren’t producing you have to do it, or at the very least you have to consider making a change.

Some fantasy baseball games charge extra for making transactions. That is certainly a deterrent to making a lot of moves.  Baseball Manager doesn’t and that lends itself to this type of strategy. Remember that all we are saying here is that you should be ready and willing to make moves when the situation calls for it. It doesn’t mean you can improve things. There may not be anyone willing to trade with you or there may not be a better player sitting in the free agent pool. The point is you need to be looking…constantly…and make the move when it presents itself. Don’t just keep sinking lower and lower just because so and so used to be good. If he’s not good now he isn’t helping you.