Everyone prepares for the fantasy baseball season
differently. I love this league because I know for a fact that there is more
passion behind it than any other fantasy league I play in. But it doesn’t mean that
everyone puts the research in to actually know what is going into a player’s
ranking. The rub is, more research has not necessarily led to more success;
i.e. better drafts or player pick-ups.
In this age of information, it begs the question: does
studying more actually make you smarter, or does it just make you think that
you are smarter?
There have been extensive studies into this topic, not just
in the fantasy landscape, but in academia, biology, and even the stock market.
The answer is that it depends. The more trained you are on a subject, the more
likely you are to make a more informed decision on a subject, but that doesn’t
make your decision correct. What matters is statistical relevance. I won’t try
to get into what statistical relevance means only to have our in-house
Industrial Systems Engineer, Dean Nordhielm, laugh out loud at my ineptitude on
the matter. What I will say is that over the course of this league’s history,
studying more helps and researching matters. However, over the course of a
single fantasy draft with 21 selections, or one fantasy year worth of pickups
where maybe 10 to 15 of them included more thought than, ‘oh, he’s been hot, I
want him,’ luck is far more in play.
Exhibit A: Justin Upton. Michael spent hours before the
draft researching 2016 projections, ranking sets, and maybe even watching some
spring training. He found market inconsistencies that didn’t align with player
statistical projections, he found where yahoo was particularly low on a player
and went on to target that player in the draft, in this case that player he
targeted was Justin Upton. Well…. then the games started. Justin Upton has been
awful (his 2 HR game yesterday notwithstanding), having the worst statistical
year of his career, at a time when he should be in or damn close to his prime.
The research didn’t work here. A similar case could have been made for Andrew
McCutchen or Carlos Gomez, both were statistical bargains on draft day that
have flamed out in varying levels of catastrophe (McCutchen – passable, Gomez –
cuttable).
Exhibit B: Jean Segura. Segura has been a player panned by
projections makers for the entire year. He got off to a scorching start in
April and was considered a sell-high by most of the industry, citing historical
performance and the way he was beating his underlying numbers (think back to
our BABIP discussion over the All Star Break). The difference is, he hasn’t
cooled off. Segura is having his best batting average year by over 20 points,
he’s about to set a career high in HRs and already has his most SBs since his
rookie year. His walk rate is up and his strikeout rate is flat. When Keith
picked Segura up back in April, he never could have dreamed this would
continue.
This is an example of where we just don’t know. This is
fantasy, its fake baseball. We can put all the effort in the world into trying
to figure out what these guys are doing and are going to do, but sometimes…shit
happens.
OK let’s turn our eyes to the playoffs. It is looking pretty
locked in that Dave, Dean, and Cory are all sitting pretty. They are each 20
games clear of the 5th place team with three weeks left in the
regular season. Paul just keeps winning…more about him coming up later. Michael
is deep in the murderous part of the schedule we’ve been talking about. Michael
is 11.5 games behind Paul in 4th place. Michael just needs to keep
within earshot heading into the final week matchup when these two teams play
each other.
The consolation bracket chase still has work to be decided.
Max sits in the 7th spot, 6.5
games ahead of Keith who is in 9th, and is playing pretty good ball
right now, he is sitting well. Arthur is 12 games behind China Basin Bombers
who are continuing their fall. All 4 teams are still alive for the final 2
spots in the Consolation bracket for the #1 draft slot selection. It’s great to
see 3 of these teams still playing it out. Thank you for keeping your
attention. That’s what makes this league great.
This is getting kinda long, but there were some interesting
aspects to the matchups last week, so here is a recap:
BJ stayed hot and took down Keith. Keith had a decent
offensive week but his pitching just isn’t competitive right now.
Cory took down China Basin but he didn’t look too great
doing it. High HR totals and his elite pitching got him the win.
Dave’s team is starting to look more like a first place
contender again, but that isn’t where the fun stuff happened in this matchup.
Max lived up to his namesake award and didn’t pitch enough innings. I actually
take back what I said earlier about Max playing good ball….he was a week ago,
but this week was awful. Cmon man. Dave gets the illustrious 14-0 here but with
a heavy asterisk. Max should have won most of the pitching categories but was
blanked on account of not hitting the pitching innings minimum.
Paul stayed scorching hot and held off a hard-charging
Arthur team. Giant offensive numbers that will get a shout out later overcame
poor pitching numbers for Paul to get him a necessary win to stretch out his
lead on Michael.
Dean edged out Michael in one of the crazier fantasy weeks I
can remember. Michael got off to a incredible start in pitching. He had a 0.40
ERA through 20 innings pitched and Dean’s pitching was scuffling so Michael got
greedy and kept throwing his pitchers. Well, then Jacob DeGrom allowed 8 runs
and that same night 2 of Michael’s closers gave up 5 more earned runs. Dean’s
offense was on fire through Saturday and led the matchup 12-1 or so going into
Sunday. Dean cooled off on Sunday and Michael won most of the tight categories
back to keep his playoff hopes alive. In
most weeks either of these teams put up numbers that would have been monster
worthy, but instead…
Monster of the week: Paul. 108 R+RBI, 93 H to a .335 AVG, 18
HR, high walk and low strikeout totals, plus he had over 50 pitching Ks with 8
saves. Big numbers from the hottest team around right now.
Max of the week: with his first one in awhile, Max wins the Max of the week. No team moves from Max this week led to abysmal offense and missing the innings pitched limit and getting shut out 0-14. Well played, sir.
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