May 14, 2009
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7. Have some guts. No, seriously.
The best general managers in the bigs never shy away from pulling the trigger in order to make their team exponentially better. Last year, I traded Matt Holiday for last year’s “Mr. Perfect” Brad Lidge of the World Champion Philadelphia Phillies. I generally stray away from taking hometown players because it leads to cheering for the wrong reasons. “Come on Chase, you can hit for the cycle! I just need a triple from you to win that category this week!” Yea, you know EXACTLY what I am talking about.
Either way, I was desperate for saves so I made the trade even though my offense suffered in the long run. By the way, I won the league after a brutal championship series. Trust me, the saves helped. But all in all, when managing your team and you need to make a big trade, be like Nike and “Just do it.” Have some guts. No, seriously.
6. When you over-analyze, you lose. BIG.
This is my third season of fantasy baseball and I have learned, for the most part, to just let your lineup work its magic. There are still instances when I over-manage and I get killed. Here’s a recent example:
Last week, I had the pleasant opportunity to see a midweek, midday National League Central division contest between the St. Louis Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates live on FSN Pittsburgh. This game pitted two of my starters against one another in Todd Wellemeyer of St. Louis and Ross Ohlendorf of the Bucos. Both of these players are on my team in a 10-deep team NL-only league. Yes, talent is scarce in this league so any starter with a sub-5.00 earned run average and three or more wins at this point is up for grabs.
So going into this game, I figured I would do a bit of research beforehand to give me an edge. I refused to start both guys because I knew this would not be a pitchers’ duel. But here was my mistake: I started Ohlendorf because as of May 7, Wellemeyer had an ERA over eight in three home starts. I checked Ohlendorf’s history against the Cardinals lineup and it revealed nothing to be scared of. Just four runs batted in against him in some 23 at bats or so.
I started Ohlendorf. He plunked Ryan Ludwick and Albert “Can you hit the ball any further” Pujols in the sixth inning. He went from giving up just one earned run, to five in a matter of minutes. Wellemeyer on the other hand went seven strong innings and gave up just two earned runs. Go figure. Never micro-manage like I did. That is why I finished dead last in my rookie year. That is the morale of this story.
5. Go ahead, be desperate.
If Joe Maddon sits B.J. Upton for a week and the Tampa Bay Rays go on to lose four of their next five games because his replacement, Gabe Kapler made devastating errors in centerfield and went 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position, then fans and management will begin looking for his replacement. If you make that same ridiculous move and start reserve centerfielder Reed Johnson, hitting .224 as of May 12, of the Chicago Cubs that week, then you just get ridiculed by your peers. Especially if Upton goes on to hit .400 with nine runs batted in that week. But what if he was hitless in his last 30 at-bats with 19 strikeouts in that span? You would be desperate, right? Go ahead, it’s okay. It is only fantasy baseball after all. Not like you’re in charge of the American League Champion Tampa Bay Rays like Maddon is.
4. Do not, I repeat DO NOT, read the fantasy columns on ESPN.com.
Tristan Cockcroft, Matthew “the untalented Mr. Roto” Berry, Eric Karabell, and Jason Grey are all pretty much just as useful as your last draft pick. Get what I am saying? Good. They get paid an honest, hard-working man’s salary to tell you about a guy that you have no chance of getting because someone else picked him up off the waiver wire two weeks ago. Do not tell me about how amazing Jordan Zimmerman was in April, 2-0 with a 2.38 ERA, when the bloke in my league checks his team once every two weeks. By the time I present him with a meaningful trade offer it will have expired. Can I get paid their salary to tell you to pick up Justin Upton, in the midst of an 18-game hitting streak, in case some idiot decided to drop him, please?
3. Pedro Martinez is not coming back. Get over it.
Does more need to be said here? Probably not, but I will add that your pitching staff will not improve at all if he decides to take another crack at pitching professionally. His fastball hasn’t cracked 84 mph since he left Bahston and his legs are so done that he can’t keep the fastball down. I don’t care how much how movement your fastball has. If it’s below 86 and up, big league hitters will crush it. As much as I hate the New York Yankees, I hate the Mets THAT much more and I am still terribly glad that Brian Cashman decided to pass on him and let the kids from Queens fail miserably by signing him.
2. If you do not keep up with the waiver wire, you WILL lose. Period.
In mixed-league, both AL and NL, formats, it is a lot easier to add and drop players as you see fit. There is always another closer, or another second baseman just waiting to be picked up and replace whoever you currently have. But if you play in an NL-only or AL-only format league, you live and die by who you decide to pick up in the waiver wire. Meaning, you might want to keep up on injuries, hot streaks, trends, etc. If not, you just might miss out on the next Jay Bruce, the young, talented outfielder for the Cincinnati Reds, just as I did last summer. This leads me to my final point…
1. It takes hard work to win in fantasy, duh!
I’m always inviting friends to join my big-time money league, because it takes a big spender to shell out $25 for an NL-only league on ESPN.com. Most of them reject the invitation because of the time commitment that it takes to play fantasy, especially if the league allows for daily lineup changes. “Too much work, man,” is the response that I usually get, which is fine because I know my friends are lazy and would much rather play fantasy football. But if you do decide to play fantasy baseball, whether you are in a mixed or single-league format, be ready to put your hardhat on because it will take some work. By work I mean research (aka surfing MLB.com, baseballreference.com, etc.), “Googling,” and getting to know Karl Ravech, John Kruk, and the rest of the Baseball Tonight crew. I have said repeatedly to friends and professors alike, that if I spent nearly as much time studying as I did working on my fantasy team, I would have a 4.0 GPA. Easily. Get ready for a long summer and plenty of time in front of your monitor/notebook if you want to win in fantasy. Duh!
*In case you were wondering why seven points, Pedro Feliz, third baseman of the Philadelphia Phillies, wears number seven and I cut him after two weeks. Obviously his .370 average was not enough to stay on my roster. I prefer players who hit .250 such as Emilio Bonifacio. This will probably haunt me for the rest of the season. Therefore the seven is an ode to Pedro over at the hot corner.
2011 Fantasy Baseball Home
2011 Fantasy Baseball Rankings: Catchers - 3/14
2011 Fantasy Baseball Rankings: First Basemen - 3/15
2011 Fantasy Baseball Rankings: Second Basemen - 3/16
2011 Fantasy Baseball Rankings: Closers - 3/17
More 2011 Fantasy Baseball Rankings to be posted soon.
NFL Picks - Nov. 23
2025 NFL Mock Draft - Nov. 20
NFL Power Rankings - Nov. 19
Fantasy Football Rankings - Sept. 4
