My articles are showing up everywhere for RotoTimes, this one was on their Hot Sheet. Here are some of the items discussed.

One of the most neglected aspects of decision making - in life as well as fantasy baseball - is considering what your opponent is thinking. The thought process must include consideration of the motives of our adversary. Without this paramount consideration, one cannot say that their decision making process was complete.

There are a multitude of auction decisions that must be made in view of how opponents will react and what strategies they will pursue. Here are three examples:

Unpredictability

I don’t mean in terms of planning but in terms of actually sitting there nominating and bidding. Reader of this site have seen this addressed before.

Drafting

How often in the fantasy world do you read strategy maxims such as “don’t draft pitchers early?” Generally this is sound advice. Pitchers are unpredictable by nature and are subject most acutely to the vagaries of chance. Yet, this advice can be very difficult to follow against tough competition. Why? Simply because they will follow it also.

When this occurs, the owner’s judgment must be decisively better than his opponents on hitters, as the only edge to the owner is that his selections are better than the others. Rarely against better competition can one say that their judgment is decisively better. So, a different plan must be constructed.

The best advice is to examine what your opponents will do and act accordingly. In a recent mock expert draft I drafted Erik Bedard in the third round, and drafted three starters in the first ten. Since we were dealing with experts, the correct assumption was that most would pursue hitting over pitching. This means that pitching would be undervalued in the first five rounds. Adjusting for this and drafting pitching means one can count on having weaker hitting than average.

Having weaker hitting than average is not a problem to be avoided in this scenario. This surprising conclusion is the result of my opponents pursuing hitting and all having good judgment; in that event there is no reason to think any one owner will dominate over the others.

Bringing Up Players in the Auction and Avoiding Bidding Wars

Sun-Tzu called the situation where an opponent is encircled a “death ground.” Someone has to fight to the death; they simply have no other choice. In this way an ostensibly defeated enemy can pluck a victory. Napoleon was a master of this; faking a retreat while holding part of his army in reserve. As the enemy chased, Napoleon’s reserve army would then come up behind the chasing enemy and would encircle them.

This is exactly what happens when you get down to the end of a positional ranking. It could be in an auction, or even in a draft when there is a run on a position. In a desperate attempt to get the player and to avoid leaving money on the table, a bidding war ensues.

When an enemy is cornered, they have no alternative but to fight, and to do so to the fullest. In fantasy terms, this means both players waste precious auction dollars in a situation that could easily have been avoided. This can be utterly disastrous for the loser, who not only is left with money that never gets spent but who also loses out on the player.

Avoiding this situation is merely a matter of astute planning and adjusting during the auction. It is always possible to sneak in one of your players in the middle of the auction after big money is spent and players are gearing up for the wild endgame.

The other option is to entice your opponent. This works very well against skilled opponents but not as well against the duller ones. The skilled opponent will usually seek to avoid being cornered, so if they are heeding the principles above then you know they are flexible and will try to avoid a bidding war. So use that knowledge against them.

In this scenario, bring up a comparable player to the one you are sitting on and don’t bid him up. Your opponent may very well take the bait. If you really want Homer Bailey, for example, and your opponent may force a bidding war, then bring up Johnny Cueto or Franklin Morales.

If your goal is a fantasy date with Amy Adams (which I wholeheartedly endorse by the way), I can’t help you there. But if your goal is a fantasy championship, thinking about more factors and your opponents is the path to success.