Well, That Was Painful

I’m not having my best fantasy year — more on that another time — and so I found myself on the edge of my seat this last weekend, trying to make sure I made the playoffs in three leagues. (Two others I’m cruising in, and the remaining seven or so are roto). In one of the close head-to-head leagues, I was victorious and squeaked in on the last day. In another, I found out I had another week to make my case. And then there was that one. I won my weekly matchup 7-3 on the last week and felt good about it. The guy ahead of me in the standings lost his matchup 3-7. I went and did the math.

My team had a 118-98-4 record. His team had a 118-96-6 record. I was out, in the closest final standings situation I’d had in a head-to-head league.

Before I get cool story bro’ed, there’s more to this than just my fantasy team. There was at least one universal lesson hidden within all the pain.

One lesson is easy. Keep your eyes wide open when it comes to your chances of making the postseason in your league. If you’re in it, it makes sense in a keeper league to mortgage some of your future to prepare your team for the playoffs. If you’re in fourth in your division, trying to get in it but sitting one spot out — as I was — then it’s probably better to hold your keepers and play it close to the vest.

I didn’t do that. I felt like my team, built on a stellar (and cheap) outfield in this OBP league run by Marc Normandin — Josh Willingham ($18), Curtis Granderson ($14), Yoenis Cespedes ($12), Ben Revere ($3), and Matt Joyce ($5) — was gelling. Garrett Jones and Ryan Howard were making first base word, my overpriced Ryan Zimmerman was doing just enough, Jason Kipnis ($4) looked good, and my rotation — Yovani Gallardo ($27), Zack Greinke ($25), Chris Sale ($9), Matt Harvey ($3), Ryan Vogelsong ($1), Shaun Marcum ($1), and sometimes-fill-in Joe Blanton ($1) — had just gotten Brett Anderson off the DL ($1).

So I sold Brett Anderson for a Dan Haren rental. Yeah, that was painful.

Haren did fine for me over the last two starts, but it didn’t mean much. And now I don’t have Brett Anderson. I’ll probably be fine in this keep eight, and it might have been worth the shot — Anderson hasn’t managed to turn his stuff into an average strikeout rate, and his success is built more on the great ground-ball rate and control, which can get BABIP-iffy for stretches and has reduced fantasy upside by definition. But every good start next season will twist the knife in a little further.

Perhaps the lesson learned from that particular trade is that an incremental upgrade with two weeks to go before the playoffs is not worth much.

Or maybe it’s just important to know your settings well. Because, if you didn’t spend the first half of the season nursing Ryan Howard and Brett Anderson along on a short bench, you might have actually been in the playoffs easily. Seriously. I spent all but one of my FAAB dollars shuttling through shortstops (Dee Gordon, Andrelton Simmons, and Ruben Tejada), trying to find first basemen (Lucas Duda, Garrett Jones and many more), and finding closers ($59 over the course of ten closer-related transactions), sometimes picking up players I had dropped just a few weeks before (Sergio Romo twice). Six bench spots, one DL spot, and I had two roster spots I was willing to punt for a half season or more? Maybe having Brett Anderson in the first place was a dumb idea. Or maybe I should be blaming Ryan Howard.

(Also, it’s worth noticing how much money I spent on closers, even though $16 was my single-transaction high ($16 on Ryan Cook, $11 on Tom Wilhelmsen and $11 on Santiago Casilla). That was probably a direct result of going cheap with my closers on draft day. My bullpen going into the season: $7 Brett Myers, $17 Jordan Walden, $5 Greg Holland — I spent $2 of FAAB Getting him back later in the season — and a $1 Joaquin Benoit. I strained a trap patting myself on the back when I got all those closers in FAAB, but $59 is a lot of money. I would have laughed if you suggest I spend over half of my auction money on closers, and there I was drip-drip-dripping my way into way too much money spent on closers. So sometimes it’s worth spending another couple of bucks on a closer in order to keep from spending FAAB money on em later. Oh, and I coulda kept Greg Holland for a while… if I had another bench spot for him.)

With my last dollar, once the games were done, I bought Tyler Skaggs. Why not, he might go on a run and be keeper-worthy for some squad. Maybe he’ll get me some value back, and hey, I had room for another $1 pitcher. I had been holding that lost dollar for a two-starter in a crucial playoff matchup, but because of a variety of reasons — mostly Brett-Anderson-related — that wasn’t going to be.

And yes, that transaction was painful. But that’s just part of the whole, glorious package with fake baseball.

Am I over-reacting out of pain? Is Brett Anderson the cost of business? And did you get into your playoffs, or do you just avoid head-to-head because of the randomness of it all?