How many times have you said, after the end of the fantasy baseball season “I should’ve taken this or that guy whom I felt was due to this kind of great season”, or some variation of this type of statement? I know I’ve done it quite a few times and it was always said with a bitter aftertaste in my mouth because it was a reminder of failed opportunities.
Take Justin Steele, as a personal example:
hat was a 2021 pre-breakout Steele tweet, in which I wanted to summarize how highly I regarded him after a complete breakdown which had some objective findings on his potential. I wasn’t completely sure that he was going to be the solid pitcher he has turned to be, but I could not get out of my head the idea that he would be successful soon.
Yet, the number of Justin Steele shares on Carlos’ fantasy baseball teams for the 2022 season: 0. Yikes.
Why on Earth didn’t I draft Steele everywhere, given his very affordable cost? What could have restrained me to not get as many shares as possible? Bluntly put, I was a coward.
Every time I was drafting in the southpaw’s range, there seemed to be a “safer” or “higher floor” option that supposedly made more sense; every time I chose that path, instead. I always found a good excuse to justify getting cold feet. Double yikes.
The funny part about it is that I was recommending everyone and their mothers to go for Steele in my Twitter feed but I, myself, was not able to pull the trigger accordingly. Why was that? Maybe some sort of lack of confidence in my analysis? Actually no, it was something worse, it was over-rationalization.
Over-rationalization and over-simplification are the evil twins that devour and destroy most of the analysis you can find around the web. In this age when we can make our thoughts disguised as analysis easily available, it is extremely possible that those works will suffer under the influence of one of these two problems, or both.
This is a truth that I learned the hard way after a couple of years when I started publicly sharing my ramblings, but I was not fully aware of it until the Justin Steele impasse. I had done calculations, investigations, qualitative and quantitative analyses of all kinds over Steele, which backed every single reason for him to have substantial improvements but I would always find some apparently good “reason” to go with some other option at draft time. Always.
“He only throws two pitches!” Yes, but so does Tyler Glasnow and he rocks. “He doesn’t light up the radar gun!” Well, you don’t need to if your pitches are deceptive enough. And on, and on, and on.
I found myself reasoning beyond what was reasonable, over-rationalizing. Triple yikes.
This lead to a resolution on my side: Never again. For the 2023 draft season I had done all the important due diligence on another pitcher, poised to have a solid season according to my analysis, Pittsburgh’s now-ace Mitch Keller. I drafted him everywhere I could at great cost and, while he had some unevenness in his full performance, he was extremely helpful in keeping me competitive almost everywhere.
I have come to terms with what “gut”, for fantasy baseball endeavors, means to me: If you did your homework, your gut will tell you if you are not over-rationalizing or over-simplifying. Some people will say that’s actually the experience talking, which I won’t argue against.
If you feel like some player has something which seems to be under-appreciated (or for instance, over-hyped), don’t just leave it there: Dig deeper into the stats and research and back up your hunches with data, facts, and hypotheses. If your findings keep telling you the same story, do not chicken out on yourself, go full on with your decisions and play the game as you intended to from the beginning…unless you want to keep lamenting about “what ifs” by October.
Of course, we will always be around to help you, which could make your decision making process easier. But do not be afraid of trusting your own experience–that’s invaluable as a mean to turn yourself into a great fantasy manager.
Thank you for reading
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