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Albert Pujols, Tim Lincecum and Roy Halladay were amongst baseball's best players again in 2009, but also joining them were Zack Greinke, Justin Verlander, Joe Mauer, Prince Fielder and Felix Hernandez.
Yankees' third baseman Alex Rodriguez believes that his relationship with Madonna will allow him to bring a championship to the Bronx in 2009.
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By Neema Hodjat
So a little over one month has passed in the fantasy baseball season and trade proposals have begun to fly around between teams. Jimmy Rollins? owners are being provided the chance to ?upgrade? the shortstop position by trading for Marco Scutaro. Hopefully, Rollins? owners will hit the reject button on those proposals. Not even a quarter of the baseball season has passed, so managers should not panic ? at least not yet. Instead, I suggest that you divide the fantasy baseball season into three trimesters by following this approach:
1) Evaluate your team?s needs (April ? May)
2) Acquire the necessary pieces to address your team?s needs (June ? July)
3) Manage your revamped team to the playoffs/championship
First Trimester: Evaluate Your Team?s Needs (April ? May)
Fantasy baseball, just like real baseball, is a marathon and not a sprint. You should take all of April and May to learn more about your team?s strengths and weaknesses. Players go through streaks, and sometimes these streaks happen to occur at the beginning of the season. You need time to decipher whether or not these performances will carry out longer term (i.e. these players have improved/declined), or if these players will gravitate towards their normal statistics (improving/declining statistics due to luck, etc.). Reverting back to Jimmy Rollins, yes, he has struggled mightily this season. However, it would be foolish to trade him for fifty cents on the dollar at this point in the season. He has a great track record, and will still provide solid numbers from this point of the season forward. Successful fantasy managers exhibit patience amid the turbulent waters.
To help illustrate the need for patience with your players, I will tell the story of two key players from my past fantasy teams (each classified as breakout candidates at that time). Player A, a pitcher, put up the following numbers in his first 11 starts in 2004:
Player A finished the 2004 season with the following statistics:
228 innings pitched, 20 wins, 6 losses, 2.61 ERA, 0.92 WHIP, 265 Ks (and also finished as the 2004 AL Cy Young winner)
Player B, a batter, had the following numbers at the end of April in 2006:
.208 BA, .274 OBP, 8 runs, 5 HR, 15 RBI
Player B ended the 2006 season with the following stats:
.321 BA, .375 OBP, 97 runs, 34 HR, 130 RBI (and also finished with the 2004 AL MVP trophy)
Sure enough, I received several lowball offers from league mates those years, who were hoping that I would panic due to these players? slow starts. However, I stuck with my instincts, and my patience was rewarded with championship runs during both of those seasons. Player A was none other than Johan Santana, and Player B was Justin Morneau. The point of emphasis here is that you need to give your team a chance to play enough games (which will provide you with an adequate sample size for evaluation) before you decide to jump ship or blow the team up. As a rule of thumb, give your team two full months (all of April and May) for evaluation before you make drastic changes. Otherwise, you may ship off players that you will regret, and you have a greater chance of incorrectly assessing your team?s strengths and weaknesses. Imagine the damage that would have been done if I had traded Santana after his first eleven starts. My team would have missed out on 18 more wins, 200+ additional strikeouts, an ERA under 2.00 and a WHIP under 0.80! That?s one way to kill a season.
In addition to evaluating your players carefully, you need to take a look at the league standings with caution. In a head to head league, player performance comprises only a part of the evaluation. Maybe your team sits near the bottom of the standings, but is this primarily because the players need to be replaced? Or has your team faced hot matchups, faced a tough part of the schedule, or has your team been losing many close statistical categories? For rotisserie leagues, you need to check for things such as teams exceeding the pace of innings pitched/games played (which will eventually result in a drop in the standings for those teams once they have used up all of their eligible games). This piece is not asking you to refuse to make trades during the first trimester, but only to do so cautiously.
Second Trimester: Acquire the necessary pieces to address your team?s needs (June ? July)
With the arrival of June, a third of the season will have passed, and you will have enough data to better evaluate your team?s strengths and weaknesses. At this point, you will be able to make more fully researched decisions as to which major trades, if any, to pursue. Again, make sure to consider all of the information available, and not just your team?s place in the standings, etc. When you have made your assessments, you then need to sort out not only which of your team?s needs are the greatest, but also which of your team needs will actually be strengthened the most by potential trades. For example, if you don?t have any closers, making a trade for Jonathan Papelbon may not make a whole lot of sense, even though your team obviously needs saves. And the cost of obtaining enough closers to make a difference will be prohibitive.
With your assessment in hand and your game plan ready, go find the teams that match up best with you for a trade. Don?t offer a first baseman to a team that already has Ryan Howard and Mark Teixeira. This sounds easy enough, but too many times I view trade proposals offering me players that I do not need. Find the teams that need the type of players that you are offering and start working from there. This will save time and lead to a better end result.
Third Trimester: Manage your revamped team to the playoffs/championship (August ? September)
Step 3 doesn?t require much explanation, as the heavy lifting will have been done by this point. You will now know your team?s strengths and weaknesses well, and to the point possible, you will have addressed them. This knowledge will help you in making managerial decisions (who to start/sit, etc.) as the season enters the stretch run. Make smart decisions, and watch as you reap the rewards of your patient, methodical approach to the season.
Key Assumptions/Points of Emphasis:
Please keep in mind that this trimester approach makes sense for teams that drafted well and did research prior to the season. Teams that were picked solely by computer autodraft or teams with inexperienced managers may need to make more moves early in the season. Also, just to make clear, you should closely monitor your league?s waiver wire from the beginning of the season. Every year several undrafted (or prematurely waived) players become key contributors for the season, and your may be able to address some of your team?s needs without having to make any trades.
Conclusion:
The three-step approach explained above should serve as a guide in managing your fantasy baseball team. Don?t overreact early in the season to a slump from one or a few of your star players. If you did research on a breakout candidate, don?t cut bait with the player after one slow month, as the light bulb often goes on for these players as the season progresses. You will often regret trading away a young player oozing with talent, but who happens to start off slow. Likewise, give slumping veteran players a chance to straighten out their season. The season is a long haul, so if you did your research prior to the draft, trust your gut and take the first two months to properly assess your team?s strengths and weaknesses before you begin to make major moves. Between free agent pickups and evaluation of player performance over a two month span, you will have a better idea as to your team?s actual needs, and will avoid arriving at premature conclusions. Once the second trimester has arrived and you have come up with a plan to improve your team, find the trade partners in your league that match up best, and make the necessary moves to upgrade your team. Your patience early in the season will pay big dividends down the line.
