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.

Commitment

“What’s more important? Hitting or Pitching?” You hear it asked all the time in major league baseball AND among fantasy baseball enthusiasts. Here’s the answer – commitment. Huh? Yep, I threw you a curve there. But I’m telling you, you can have the best strategy in the world, have a super draft, make shrewd moves during the season, and pull off the most spectacular trades but if you don’t stick to it day in and day out you’ll fall apart at the end.

I’ve seen it happen time and time again. A manager will be right in the thick of things all year long and then come mid-August and September their team fades away. Commitment means making the same kind of moves late in the season that you did early on. It’s hard to do sometimes. Other things in life creep in. I can’t imagine what’s more important than one’s fantasy baseball team but some people find that family, school, and work need some attention especially when they’ve been neglected since opening day in April.

Seriously, don’t give up. Last year my Red Lions team in Baseball Manager was 15 games out of it in early August. I figured I didn’t stand a chance…AND I almost gave up. But I didn’t. I kept at it and lo and behold started winning. One winning streak after another and before I knew it I had climbed into 2^nd place 2 games out with a week to go. I didn’t win the pennant but I sure made that last week interesting.

So, hitting or pitching? Yep, they’re important but they both come in second place to the real key to winning – Yogi’s famous words, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”