Fantasy Baseball Tips from the Worst Team in the NBA???

Bear with me for a bit as I venture down an unusual path for Rotographs.

I’m not much of an NBA fan. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve pretty much devoted my fandom to Major League Baseball, the NFL, and college football & basketball. I’ve watched about 10 minutes of my hometown Pistons this year. A couple weeks ago I caught a late night Warriors game so I could have the Steph Curry experience (nope, didn’t even tune in for #73).

Despite the NBA not being on my radar, about a week and a half ago I kept seeing mentions about the “Hinkie retirement letter” in my Twitter feed. A lot of them. As soon as I determined that “Hinkie” was Sam Hinkie, General Manager for the Philadelphia 76ers, I said to myself, “Don’t care, moving on now.”

Then the next night, as I was walking around the house getting my Fitbit steps in (#dadlife), I saw this tweet from Jonathan Bales:

I’ll stop now. In short, this might be the greatest thing I’ve ever read. Highly recommend if you want to be +EV at life.

— Jonathan Bales (@BalesFootball) April 7, 2016

If you’re not much of a DFS player, you may not know Bales. He’s the author of the DFS series “Fantasy Football for Smart People” and “Fantasy Baseball for Smart People” and has become quite well known for all of his work in the DFS arena.

You don’t have to be a DFS player to enjoy Bales’ work (this is not a DFS article). I don’t have much time to play DFS regularly, but I love his work and thought process. So I had to go down the rabbit hole to see what he was talking about…

And it was this darn “Hinkie retirement letter” again. The greatest thing he’s ever read? Now I have to check it out.

The Letter

If you haven’t read it, here’s a link to the letter at ESPN.com. I would recommend taking the time.

I’ll cherry-pick some pieces from the letter below. But if you’re not going to read the letter and want the Cliffs Notes version, Hinkie was the GM of the 76ers. The worst team in the NBA. Historically bad.

This letter was written by Hinkie to the investors in the 76ers franchise explaining what went wrong and why he has decided to resign from his position. And it’s really good. Hinkie quotes Abraham Lincoln, Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger (Buffet’s business partner), Elon Musk, Bill James (yep, that Bill James), Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon), Howard Marks (a world-famous drug smuggler), Max Planck (Nobel Prize winning physicist), and more.

All of the quotes relate back to Hinkie’s job of General Manager, his philosophies on performing that role, and insight into his decision making process that the investors likely were not aware of. And if you think about it, we’re general managers of our fantasy teams. So maybe we can learn a thing or two from this interesting guy.

Let’s take a look at some of the major themes I identified in the letter.

Zigging and Zagging

A competitive league like the NBA necessitates a zig while our competitors comfortably zag. ~ Sam Hinkie

What basketball axiom is most likely to be untrue? Take it on and do the opposite. ~ Sam Hinkie

Do we really need to draft hitting early? Are we really better off spending about 70% of our budgets on hitting and 30% on pitching? Could I be better off paying for saves?

Zagging can also mean drafting the flawed players that nobody else seems to want (Billy Hamilton, Chris Carter), the players others are afraid of (Masahiro Tanaka), and pursuing the discounted players coming off poor performances (Starlin Castro, Jacoby Ellsbury, James Shields). If a closer run is nearing completion, don’t chase. Consider zagging and snatch up that hitter that fell a round later than he should have because of that run.

You can’t gain an advantage doing the same thing everyone else is doing.

I also really enjoyed this…

To attempt to convince others that our actions are just will serve to paint us in a different light among some of our competitors as progressives worth emulating… ~ Sam Hinkie

I had to read if five times to understand what Hinkie’s saying. But he’s referring to criticism and those that laughed at what he was doing. In other words, you may be better off to have people think you’re crazy for a while. Don’t try to convince them that you’re doing the right thing. If you do explain yourself they may see the light faster, eliminating much of your edge.

Consider Non-Baseball Sources of Inspiration

…cross-pollinating ideas from other contexts is far, far better than attempting to solve our problems in basketball as if no one has ever faced anything similar.

Yes, we’re playing a fake baseball game. But similar problems and decision-making activities exist. In professional sports, other fantasy sports, and in the real world. Heck, I’m taking an NBA executive’s resignation letter and applying it! There are surely many other sources of ideas and strategies we can tap into.

I’m regularly struck by the similarities between fantasy baseball and the stock market. Sure there’s some statistical analysis and understanding of baseball that’s required, but there’s an aspect of buying and selling that we don’t talk about enough. I’m sure this is why Hinkie mentions his admiration for Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. You’re not just cutting that struggling pitcher or trading high on Trevor Story. Every trade or transaction should involve gauging market value, intrinsic value, and perception.

Are you familiar with Fred Zinkie’s work? He’s a competitor in the Tout Wars and LABR industry drafts. And he does extremely well in these leagues every season. Why? He’s a notorious trader. Much more active than any other single manager. And I presume he’s a master of understanding and exploiting shifts in players’ perceived and true values.

The entire business world is always trying to “buy low” and “sell high”. It’s not just us. What ideas can we take from them?

Track Your Progress

…Keep score. Use a decision journal. Write in your own words what you think will happen and why before a decision. Refer back to it later. See if you were right, and for the right reasons. ~ Sam Hinkie

This sounds like a lot of work. And it’s a bit out there. But I love this idea for two reasons. First, it seems like a slam dunk idea for a future Rotographs post, “Look at How Dumb These Decisions of Mine Were”. But more importantly, it really does seem like a path to improving. I rarely even do a detailed end of season retrospective analysis. And even if I were to try, it’s difficult to do without the context of each decision that was made. You can look back at your draft and your end of season roster, but it’s hard to fill in the gaps about how you got there.

It might even be good to log decisions you did NOT make. Players you specifically avoided at the draft. Trades you declined. Players you were about to pull the trigger on adding but decided not to. As Mike Podhorzer pointed out, deciding to do nothing is a decision too.

Document your thought process, the players involved, and the ultimate decision. Not only will this be insightful to look back on at the end of the season, but I’m sure it will also help you think through and make better decisions now.

We’re Playing a Zero Sum Game

At one point Hinkie likens the NBA to a stock market that NEVER changes its daily value in 30 years. Unlike the real stock market that does steadily increase in value, that fake stock market and professional and fantasy sports are zero-sum games. In order for you to succeed, someone else has to fail. There is no “tide that lifts all boats”.

…the only way up is to steal share from your competitors. ~Sam Hinkie

That means you have to find some way to have a differentiated viewpoint from the masses. And it needs to be right. Anything less won’t work. ~ Sam Hinkie

This might be my favorite thing in the letter to think about. Let’s say you’re in a reasonably competitive 12-team home league. Or even a highly competitive NFBC 15-team league. Chances are 75-100% of the other managers in your league are pursuing a strategy VERY SIMILAR to you.

If all 12 or 15 teams are pursuing VERY SIMILAR strategies, isn’t this just a game of luck? At that point it’s where the ace lands or what side the die stops on. Is your Jose Berrios bet going to pay off? Or is my Trea Turner gamble going to hit?

You can differentiate yourself by taking several of these smaller gambles and hoping that your viewpoint pays off. But if everyone in the league has access to Rotographs, Tristan Cockcroft, Mastersball, and Baseball HQ, are those small flag plants on specific players big enough to differentiate ourselves and significantly increase our chances of winning? Maybe we should be thinking even bigger.

I’m spit-balling here, but could it be that more volatile or offbeat strategies like punting a category, drafting five stud starting pitchers to start the draft, going extreme stars and scrubs, or executing the Labadini Plan increase your chances of winning? They surely reduce your chances of being in the middle of the pack. But might your chances of winning be higher?

I’m not convinced that’s the style I want to play regularly. But it’s interesting to consider in extreme circumstances. Here’s an example of when it might work. In a keeper league of mine, one manager came out of the draft with a pitching staff that was clearly inferior to the rest of the league’s. He was not going to win with that staff. Since then he’s retooled and his staff is now includes Luke Gregerson, Jeremy Jeffress, Shawn Tolleson, Kevin Jepsen, Hunter Strickland, Tony Zych, Lucas Giolito, and Tyler Glasnow (he rounds it out with Gio Gonzalez and Ervin Santana). And we don’t have an innings floor. He went from a staff that had no chance of being respectable to one that I can see has a path to success.

It can be difficult to dream up what these strategies might be. That’s why applying several of these ideas I’m presenting can help. Revisit the “consider non-baseball sources of information” suggestion above. What strategy used in the NFL or the business world could we warp and transfer to a baseball league?

Pursuing Upside and Not Closing Doors

About upside and the chance of breaking out:

Looking at a player with an estimated 10% or 20% chance of being a star over the next three or four years can’t be written to zero – that’s about as high as those odds ever get.

Shortly after that last quote, Hinkie continues…

You have to find a way to get comfortable with that range of outcomes. If you can’t, you’re forced to live with many fewer options to choose amongst which leads over the long term to lesser and lesser outcomes.

I want to hone in on his comment about limiting ourselves to fewer options by not seeing the possibilities relating to certain players. I definitely do this. I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I know I have a filter that just will not allow certain players to be on my team.

I’m not always cognizant of it, but the filter seems to eliminate players on the edge of some extreme. Or it picks up on some small piece of information and overweights it. Billy Hamilton… not enough of a contributor in other categories. Jacoby Ellsbury… hurt too often. Carlos Martinez… shoulder injury last season, won’t touch him. Huston Street… eh. Danny Valencia… can’t be real. Joc Pederson… too much of a batting average risk.

I’ve closed the door on those players. They simply can’t end up on one of my teams. This could be a good thing. Maybe I’m properly assessing risk on these players that others aren’t. Or maybe it’s a bad thing. There are paths to a championship with players like this.

I may be overweighting the down sides of these players and not seeing the upside at all. Hinkie wasn’t talking about fantasy baseball when he said the highest odds of a breakout ever get are 20%… but it’s probably not far off.

There probably is a 10-20% chance Martinez goes bonkers this year. Than Hamilton hits .290 and steals 80 bases. And I view them as 0%. I’m seeing things as too black and white and not as the shades of gray that are really there.

Wrapping Up

I learned a few things about myself after reading the letter. At times I feel like I’ve read almost all the fantasy baseball strategy talk that’s available… Hopefully I’ve opened the door to some new possibilities.

What “non-baseball” areas do you see a similarity to? What outside sources do you pull strategic insight from?