“Whoever occupies the battlefield first will be at ease, whoever occupies the battlefield afterward and must race to the conflict will be fatigued.”–Sun Tzu

One key to any game, be it fantasy or otherwise, is knowing when you need to make your strategic decisions. You do not want to be forced to make a deal when under duress; namely you must forsee what will happen and occupy the battlefield first.

Recently in my fantasy league I was presented with the following scenario. Overall my AL team was first in offense. However, my roster left something to be desired. Despite being near the top in all offensive categories, I was lacking in one key area:

Dioner Navarro TB C
Kenji Johjima SEA C
Justin Morneau MIN 1B
Ian Kinsler TEX 2B
Brendan Harris TB SS
Troy Glaus TOR 3B
Nick Punto MIN 1B/3B
B.J. Upton TB 2B/SS
Esteban German KC OF
Carl Crawford TB OF
David DeJesus KC OF
Corey Patterson BAL OF
Shin-Soo Choo CLE OF

This is a power-lacking offense that has been buoyed by some early season surprises. Plus with Glaus having foot problems, it could get worse.

I targeted David Ortiz, and in fact completed a trade for him within a day. In a competitive league against smart owners, you do not want to wait until you are desperate (you may even find that no one wants to help you via trade); always seek to move early and from a position of strength. By attacking weaknesses when in a position of strength, you may be able to do a deal that doesnt reek of desperation, and you can take advantage of the fact that other owners generally want to wait and see what happens to their players.

One of the guys I traded was Stephen Drew. Off to a terrible start of course; but what could be expected from him?? A look at his stats from last year revealed that despite his superficially good numbers, he only made contact 76% of the time and walked 6% of the time. His minor league numbers are also suspect:

A–.389/.486/.738
AA-.218/.301/.386
AAA- .284/.340/.462
ML-2006 .316/.357./517

Aside from A ball (in Lancaster where just this weekend the Lake Elsinore team won 30-0 (!), he had never been super in the minors, and well exceeded his minor league stats in his trial in the majors in 2006. According to Ron Shandler’s xBA metric, his performance in the majors last year equated to a .271 BA not the .316 he hit, and he was “lucky” to the tune of a 36% hit rate (30% is the norm, so this suggests a regression to the mean).

So what to do?? One option is to wait. This is what most people would do. But it appears that there is a very significant chance that he is overrated at least for this year. He might very well do fine in the future (and he probably will) but for right now it appears he is overrated. If you wait on players like this you should be sure to look and analyze at their whole record (a good comparison to him is his underperforming teammate Carlos Quentin).

Be sure when you decide to stand pat you are doing so on the basis of a full analysis of a player. Do your own analysis. And get to the battlefield early.