Kicking Rocks: Micromanagement
Maybe the reference is lost on some here as the movie dates back to 1977, but during the original Bad News Bears movies, the second installment “Breaking Training”, the boys find themselves playing against some Texas Little League team at the old Astrodome. But the game gets called due to time constraints and little foul-mouthed Tanner, in protest, refuses to leave the field. The umpires chase him around in some Keystone Kop-like silliness while the entire stadium chants, “Let them play” until the higher ups finally acquiesce and the boys are allowed to finish their ballgame. I bring this up here because I am that Astrodome crowd. You are those higher ups. And your fantasy team is running around the field right now, cuttin’ and runnin’ and flinging bases at you just trying to finish the game.
They say that idle hands are the devil’s playthings and that couldn’t be any more true as it is in fantasy baseball. Owners become so obsessed with playing the waiver wire and swinging deals that they simply are incapable of just letting their team play for a few weeks and seeing how it goes. But are they really helping their team with all of this player movement? Some may be. But a lot of times, they’re just spinning their wheels and in some cases, actually doing their team a disservice.
Fantasy Owner X sends me an email and says that he is in need of starting pitching. His offense is stacked, but could really use some help in strikeouts, wins and maybe even some help with his ratios. He has a trade on the table that would send Josh Hamilton to a rival owner in exchange for Matt Cain and Josh Johnson. There was some other filler in there as well, but this was the crux of the deal. He linked me to his team, I saw where he was in the standings and it all looked good for him. So he made the deal. Good, right? Well no more than a week later he emails me and says that he was offered…and accepted….a deal where he trades Gio Gonzalez for Adam Dunn.
I’m stupefied. Did you not just say that you needed pitching help? Did you not just say that your offense was stacked? Is it that you have so much confidence in Cain and Johnson that you can rid yourself of a starter having a breakout, career year? Or is it the buyer’s remorse setting in that you fear your offense will lag too much without Hamilton? Whatever the rationale is, it’s probably wrong. You’ve come pretty close to going back to square one with your pitching and while you’ve probably gotten back most of what you lost in home runs and RBI, you’ve just started to slowly bleed points in batting average.
Or how about the guy who just can’t stopping making add/drops? It seems like each and every day he’s picking up this part-time closer or that new A’s first baseman. It goes beyond simple player streaming here. We’re talking borderline OCD. If you already have four closers on your roster, then who cares if Tom Wilhelmsen just got the nod over Brandon League? Is Juan Oviedo worth a look in a Miami? Sure, if you HAVE NO CLOSERS! If you have four established ones, then no. If your team is strong and there’s no real reason to make a move, then don’t. There’s a difference between grabbing a guy you don’t necessarily need in order to block a rival owner and then there’s just making moves for the sake of making moves. And at some point, when you’re screwing around with this senseless player carousel, you’re going to make a mistake. You’re going to think you’re being savvy and pick up some guy because you just read some post on Rotoworld claiming he was going to see an increase in PT and because you don’t have room on your roster, you’re going to end up dropping someone that you shouldn’t and another owner, like me, is going to swoop on in and reap the benefits. That’s how I ended up with both Ian Desmond and Rafael Soriano this year.
Don’t get me wrong here, though. I applaud the active owner. I love seeing people get into their team so much that it becomes a way of life. That’s what this game needs. But show some patience, people. If you need to make a deal to improve your team, make the deal and let them play. Give it some time to see if it’s working for you. If you pick up a guy from the waiver wire, do it with purpose. Make your pick-up and let him play. It’s not always good to micromanage. In a time when everyone is so quick to pull the “small sample size” card when discussing a player’s performance, you have to give them some time before deciding whether they are right for your team or not. Don’t be those higher ups stifling the youth of today. Be that little, foul-mouthed kid running around the field and fight the urge of the quick hook. You brought these guys onto your team for a reason. Now let them play.
Howard Bender has been covering fantasy sports for over 10 years on a variety of websites. In addition to his work here, you can also find him at his site, RotobuzzGuy.com, Fantasy Alarm, RotoWire and Mock Draft Central. Follow him on Twitter at @rotobuzzguy or for more direct questions or comments, email him at rotobuzzguy@gmail.com
In my money league, I have 71 moves. The closest to me is 40. Yeah, I’m that OCD owner. I blame my phone since I have access 24/7 to my teams. and I can’t help myself.
You’re preaching to the choir my man. I’m at 48 moves, but a limit of 57 looms. I can’t help myself either. I’m done moving until the end unless there’s an injury.
98 moves. 14 trades. I am this guy. In 2nd place and trying desperately not to resist making moves at the same rate in the 2nd half.
122 moves, 5 trades. Average is about 40-50 moves in this league. I’m just trying to do whatever I can to get out of last place after spending too much auction money on injuries and ineffectiveness.
Honestly, you are probably in last place because you’ve made that many moves.
In daily line up leagues you can continuously make pickups based on match ups at a weak position or to cover for injuries so it’s definitely not necessarily a bad thing to make a lot of moves unless of course you picked up peavy and replaced him with minor in April and then picked up Desmond but dropped him for a lies. Etc etc
47 Moves, 3 trades. usually i send out 3-4 trade offers per week.
It all depends on the activity of your league, if you have wavier sharks in your league, you have to keep up. If you are in a fairly casual league (or had an amazing draft) the “just let them play” theory might work for you.
I am not sure in which leagues Desmond and Soriano are being dropped or who they are being dropped for but, in leagues where you pick up Chris Nelson for a 3 game home stand to fill in a MI spot, then drop him for a Travis Blackley home start (100% fictional example) is the kind of league that you can rack up 200 moves pretty easily.
I always have one or two disposable roster spots on my team, leagues are won with waiver/FA pick ups.
Honestly, it sounds like the author is just sick of being beaten to the punch.
I am in 8 leagues this year, and in only one is the “moves leader” not in the top 3rd of the standings, and that same top 3rd usually has twice as many moves as the rest of the league. Coincidence?
Correlation doesn’t equal causation. The people at the top making a lot of pick ups are probably the guys that follow their team closer and are ready to pounce as soon as someone is dropped, called up, demoted from the closer role, etc.
161 moves so far, and will probably eclipse my 240 from last year. And I’m in 1st place. That being said, I don’t touch my core players. Just work on the peripherals, try to maximize every stat I can get. I do think there is value to what this article says.
This is where I’m at. 6×6 roto, I’m in first by a ton now (2nd place team faded badly over June), and I’m at 106 moves. He has 87, and after that, the high is 39. IP is one of my league’s stats, so streaming a starter or 2 every day really does help, as does constantly picking up relievers whose teams are playing on a given day and having them start as opposed to a starter on rest or a reliever whose team isn’t playing. My league uses K/9 and K/BB, so maximizing Ks like that really is important, especially since I sadlydrafted Haren, Lester, and J Zim (great, but low Ks on a few too many days).
Plus, being OCD over this stuff is fun. I’m not one for trading much, though. I haven’t even been in a trade all season. I’m just making sure my lineup is filled out and I’m taking advantage of as many opportunities as I can, without touching my core.
I am half-OCD, half “stock trader”. I’m constantly talking trade to try to find guys I feel are undervalued by other owners. Some of my deals are to fix holes, but the majority are just what I consider “value buys”. For example, I had Jason Kipnis for $6. LOOOOOVE Kipnis for both now and the future (it’s a keeper league). However, I was able to make a deal where the opposing manager treated Kipnis as an upgrade over his $19 Ian Kinsler. I love Kipnis, but I still think Kinsler is better, so I was able to swap Kipnis and $14 Anibal Sanchez right before he turned into a pumpkin for Kinsler and $7 Carlos Beltran. I wasn’t looking to move Kipnis, but I couldn’t pass up that value.
As for waivers, I HIGHLY recommend FAAB; it takes some of the OCD-ness out of playing the waiver wire, and it’s also been so much more fun than a regular waiver wire. If you’ve never played it, give it a try!
Agree with this. One important but rarely noted benefit of being very “active” with trade offers is you quickly get a feel for how other owners view your players and their own, thus you get a great feel for the true “market” value of players in your league. Every owner is different and the more you’re out there trying to gauge interest the more you learn about the competition.
I lead my league in moves, occupy the last playoff spot. I spent way too many keeper picks on non-producers. My league tracks Holds but a lot of owners punt them. So each week I’ll add or drop a reliever based on my opponent. I’ll also look at who has been terrible for a month or more and try to replace them. Then there’s the waiver deals…like picking up Fister a week or two ago after bad luck made his ERA ballon a bit. You gotta make those moves!
As for being patient, I thought I’d been about as patient as I could be with Youkilis. I kept him over the winter figuring he’d come back strong. Put up with about a full year of sucking. I think I dropped him about an hour and a half before he was traded. That one hurts.
I don’t trade much but pulled an epic win by receiving Bryce Harper for Bryan LaHair. I’m sure it looked pretty good at the time.
Yahoo Public 5×5, 113 moves, in 1st place by 16 points.
Soriano, Rodney, and Trout have been my waiver gems, but I also made a stupid mistake to drop Freeman during his power outage (and news about a lingering hand injury) only to keep Morse, Goldschmidt, and Ike Davis.
Of course Freeman goes off once I drop him. Grrrrrr.
I seriously couldn’t disagree anymore with this article. “Who cares if Whilhelmsen is the closer if you have 4 closers?” How about because he’s one of 30 closers in the league and hasn’t given up a run in like 30 innings straight??? You pick up these guys then trade them for other pieces.
The guys who sit on their hands and refuse to trade are dead meat in a competitive league. That’s the path to 7th place. Lame.
Agreed. Because wilhelmsen was my 5th closer, i could include kimbrel in a package to get trout. Closers are valuable currency in some leagues.
Seconded. If you’re in a moderately active league, you should almost certainly drop a bench player to grab a closer. You should then (theoretically) be able to flip one of your closers for a better bench player or improvement over a starter.
The times that this falls through is in a league with bad owners who don’t improve their teams or lack common sense. I once followed this strategy of waiver-wire scouring to turn my two drafted closers into 6 closers. I then had a lot of trouble offloading ANY of the closers for anything useful. So, league conditions matter a lot, particularly for just the level of market activity.
ESPN released a study of their on line leagues last year where they correlated the number of moves to what place the team finished.
The data clearly showed that the teams that make the most moves finished highest, on average, in the end of year standing.
I would add, as a Rotis player since the mid 80’s when I did stats by pad and pen, the smartest owners understand that change comes very quickly and much quicker then other owners suspect. If one is not making regular moves to improve their weakest links, then one is missing excellent opportunities.
Make moves frequently, but also concentrate on who your weakest players are so as to maximize the return of landing a quality pickup. If you do both those tasks well you will regularly be a money team in your league.
Selection bias – those who make fewer moves gave up on their team mid-season
FAAB.
I’ve had 57 moves in my main league, about 20 more than the next guy, so I’m probably that guy this year. But to be fair I missed the draft and the autodrafted team basically needed full time replacements at C, 3B, SS, LF, Two SP and Two RP. I had to try a number upside-seeking options to even hope to field a competitive team and many didn’t work out. But now the team is pretty solid and I’m only 6 games out of a playoff spot in that 20 team deep league, so I can stop making so many changes.
Oh my goodness, this is a great article. I’m exhibit A in this scenario. I’ve made far too many waiver moves and even more trades. I’ve been in third place for most of the year and haven’t been content. Recently, I moved Price (whom I received for Fielder earlier) for Papi and Betancourt, because I lost some power after moving Beltran for Lee. Add into the mix my trade of Bum for Castro after losing Tulo. Here’s another- Sori for Zobrist a couple week ago. Originally moved Zo for Gardner; we all know what happened. Too much over-thinking for sure. Ugh, I feel cheap. I held out for so long too!
I dropped Mike Trout. In several leagues
We installed a cap of 40 moves in our league. The main reason for doing this was to cut out streaming and make pitchers that were drafted high worth something again. After a few years of this I can tell you that it has made most teams better as they can’t just go wasting moves to pick up the flavor of the week and actually have to put some thought into their moves. Some teams (like myself) use a majority of their moves early in order to correct draft mistakes and get a jump on potential hot or break out players while others use theirs more towards mid-season to help with their push for the playoffs. Either way it has worked out well and dispite being one of the first people to use their moves up, I enjoy the cap, it adds an extra challenge and I endorse others to set a f/a cap of their own. That’s my 2 cents…..keep the change.
Making moves is what keeps me interested in the league throughout the year. If I’m not actively doing something, then I’m just watching stats… not so interesting to me. The added benefit is that few players maintain a high level of performance consistently, month in and month out, throughout the entire year, so holes will develop in your lineup as the year goes on, a solid contributor for 2 months falls off the map and someone else is on the wire who could pick up the slack… that’s a large part of the fun for me.
I understand the skill involved in working with a moves cap, and I appreciate that, but it just doesn’t interest me personally, and I rather enjoy the skill of following the current developments and spotting the next hot streak before someone else and being able to profit from it.
In a tough ESPN standard league, I have about 150 moves. I have been streaming one SP slot, frequently utilizing 2 or 3 RP who are not closers, swapping them for hitters if needed on Mondays and Thursdays, and then generally swapping back the next day. I’ve executed two trades. My first two picks were Longoria and Tulowitzki, so I made several add/drops trying to cope with their injuries.
dude, you so read my mail. I’m at 73 moves and the next closest is 54 (who is, coincidentally, in 1st place to my 3rd).
I’m just shuffling to try and buy ERA and steals to close the 20-point gap between me and #2 in the league. thanks for calling me on my OCD.
Ha, micro-managing is how I picked up Jason Heyward two weeks into the season.
For my part, I had what turned out to be a terrible draft. Between J. Upton, Zimmerman, Hosmer, Kendrick, Bourjos, and Walker, and then a lack of out and out dominance from Kershaw who has been merely good this year, and losing Madson and Santos to season ending injury… A month into the season I was in last place with no particular hope for a turnaround.
I started making moves at a furious pace, grabbed a few key pieces (Trout, Rios, Aaron Hill, R. Soriano), held on to my top rounders since no one wanted to buy low on Upton or Zimmerman anyway that have since turned it around to various degrees… I now own less than half of the players that I originally drafted, I’ve moved solidly into the middle of the pack, and I’m leading the league in moves. I’m still working my way out of the deficit in batting that I started with, but I’m easily the fastest riser in those categories over the past 6-10 weeks.
I’ve made a few boneheaded moves, mainly centering around not hanging on to pitching value in an effort to bolster my batting, and I’ve dropped a few players rather than hanging on long enough to see them become strong producers, but so far my strategy has been working for me. I have hopes to finish in the top 3, but really anything in the top half is fine with me.