I am sure that many fantasy players are now curious about how or when they can acquire the recently drafted players, dreaming of getting next year’s Tim Lincecum or Chad Cordero. I once played in a league that allowed you to pick up any player at any time as long as they were under contract. That means that in that league you could pick up David Price as soon as he signed even though he never threw a pitch. In fact what happened was that the owners would snatch up these guys as soon as they were able. Occasionally this strategy worked, but more often it blew up in their face. Even outside that league, many players put undue emphasis on picking up minor leaguers.

On his BaseballHQ site, Ron Shandler wrote an excellent piece on Thursday. He made the observation, that those in mixed leagues have no reason to be following minor leaguers. This is advice that I have long followed myself and intended to write today regarding the draft until he stole my thunder.

In one of my leagues this year, a 12 team mixed league head to head based on points, one of the owners stockpiled Phil Hughes, Yovani Gallardo, Homer Bailey and Kevin Slowey, all in the late rounds of the draft. This league puts great emphasis on the two-start pitcher. So this owner has traded the potential of these pitchers for the actual, real return of two start pitchers in the first eight weeks. This is a disastrous outcome; and in fact this team is in last place. Of course, he also has Tim Lincecum and is at least seeing the profit on his performance. Did I mention that this is not a keeper league?

Note that even in a keeper league this is usually a flawed strategy. Though most owners would disagree, they are simply not correct in the vast majority of mixed keeper leagues. In mixed leagues, as I will discuss below, most rookie performance is replaceable with a lot less risk. In AL or NL only leagues pursuing these guys as keepers is valuable, but even in these leagues it is of much less value than owners expect. Occasionally you will see an owner who stockpiles rookies win, but it is rare, and almost never happens against tougher competition.

Why?? Fantasy baseball victory is about exploiting PERCEPTION and REALITY. The Fantasy General must simply be aware of this at all times, to fail to do so is the path to defeat. Minor leaguers are a prime area where the expert’s handling shines and others’ flounders.

Let’s take a look at Alex Gordon. Last year was my second year in my current high-stakes league. Year one I took over a disaster of a roster, and simply wrote the year off while I tried to rebuild. Year two I auctioned a group of minor leaguers, intending to trade most, and one of them was Alex Gordon.

Note that Gordon had no value to a team last year, aside from the potential to reap great profits this year. This is the kind of value that I am proud to let my competitors reap. The problem is that when a player is auctioned in a keeper league you generally can’t keep him forever (and if you can do this in your league these comments don’t apply!! I play in a league like this against Jeremy, one of our contributors).

From what I have seen, Baseball Prospectus had the most generous projection for Gordon; his projection was for .282 BA, 25 HR 84 RBI 13 SB. This is a nice projection but note that it is fraught with risk; Gordon is still a rookie and no matter how great his pedigree he probably had no more than a 50% chance to even be a league average player at his position. Would you believe that last year Gordon netted me Justin Morneau in a trade? I still have Morneau in this high-stakes league while Gordon is struggling.

I could expand on the decision making process that led to this deal, and maybe I will in a later post. But the point here is that Gordon’s projection, even if he met it, is replaceable in virtually all mixed leagues, and in AL only leagues the perception of the value of this performance is much higher than it is actually worth in an Auction. This allows you to trade up on almost all minor leaguers of sufficient reputation. You can get 90% of that production for probably 75% of the risk in virtually every 10 or 12 team mixed league. Yet, the perception of rookies is far greater than their usual performance. I know this first hand; as I was the proud owner of a $19 Jeremy Hermida last year.

Exploiting the psychology that attaches to rookies is a key weapon in the Fantasy General’s arsenal. What is this psychology?? It is simply, as Shandler put it (and my utmost thanks to Ron and BaseballHQ for allowing me to excerpt his article):

When we’ve polled our readership over the past few years and asked them their
underlying, core motivation for playing this game the #1 response has always
been “the challenge of proving my knowledge.”

You may find that this is what interests you. If so that is fine, just get used to never winning against tough competitors and never winning serious money. The Fantasy General must exploit his knowledge versus the perception of the masses.