This is a topic that always fascinates me, especially when discussing trades early in the season. Everyone usually thinks they have a good team, no matter the actual objective merits.

Why is it that everyone thinks they had a good draft? In my high stakes league we approached a team about a trade and the owner responded that he was happy with his team and wasn’t looking to make any moves. This is smart if he did, in fact, have a strong team objectively. But did he?

The problem arises as a result of player evaluation and methodology. Let’s take ten owners and assume for the purposes of this example, that three use Baseball HQ, three use Baseball Prospectus, two use RotoTimes and two use other forecasting and draft methods.

Each owner will have his own differences of opinion with even their own methodology, which is to be expected. For example, one of the RotoTimes readers may differ with the RotoTimes projection on Ryan Howard, or Daisuke Matsuzaka. So even in the context of their individual methodology every owner has his own subjective judgments that color his draft or auction.

It is these subjective judgments that pose the biggest barrier to team evaluation. Each owner is viewing his team through two prisms, that of the overarching methodology of their basic projection method, and that of their own subjective judgment.

It is this subjective judgment that plays the biggest role. Every owner, no matter how skilled, thinks that their judgment is to be trusted. So they try to maximize their team’s “value” using their methodology and their subjective judgments. An example of this that frequently occurs is the evaluation of average pitchers. One owner may think Mark Buehrle, regardless of forecasts, will have an ERA close to 5.00. Another may think that Buehrle will have a 3.50 ERA. So when each evaluates his team, the first owner will say that the second did poorly by getting Buehrle and the second will think that he did very well by getting Buehrle. This comparison leads each to believe he got the better of the deal.

The result? The owner that was approached for a trade, referenced above, passes up on a possible improvement to his team, which by any objective standard needs the improvement. It is worth noting that he didn’t even want to discuss it; it was a blanket “my team is fine so I don’t want to trade yet.” He may be cursing his bad luck come May when things even out and the water seeks its own level.

The only solution is to be absolutely ruthless in your objectivity when analyzing your team. One should not be willing to give his risky players the benefit of the doubt in all circumstances; a pitching staff that relies on Philip Hughes, Ian Kennedy and Johnny Cueto is not likely to get league average or better performances out of all three no matter what the forecasters think and no matter what the owner thinks. Relying on risk minimization though the operation of chance is the mark of a poor fantasy player. Ruthless objectivity must be the goal, and if you are objectively strong then ruthless commitment follows.