(*) MASTER NOTES: Charlie Blackmon and dumb luck
Apr 25 2014
My friend Steve Moyer has this gripe with most fantasy leagues. He talks about spending all his time preparing for the draft, doing painstaking research so he can assemble the best possible team on Draft Day. He makes sure every roster spot is filled by a player with some redeeming quality, from top to bottom. He approaches the process with a high level of contextual insight and precision. Steve has connections to people within the game so his opinions are well-founded.
The upside is that he knows the player pool as well or better than any of us, giving him a leg up on knowing when it makes sense to go an extra buck. He prides himself on his ability to navigate the end-game, and his teams invariably include at least a half dozen $1 players.
The downside is where Steve runs into trouble. Since his roster is so meticulously constructed, he is loathe to cut bait on anyone too soon. And when surprise players emerge during the early weeks of the season, Steve is the last one likely to jump on a speculative bandwagon.
His gripe is that other owners, who perhaps do not draft well, have natural dead spots on their roster. It leaves room for them to chase an April free agent and easily cut one of their players. If that free agent turns out to be a season-long breakout, they've undeservedly benefited from a sub-par draft effort.
Steve says, "Fantasy leaguers should not be rewarded for having a crappy draft."
Last year, Jean Segura and Patrick Corbin were two of those players. This duo went undrafted in most mixed leagues, or at best, went in the end-game. Both hit the ground running last April and were impact players by season's end. Any fantasy owner who lucked into rostering them derived the type of undeserved benefit that Steve complains about.
Jose Fernandez was another. While he was on the long-range radar of most fantasy teams, it was a surprise when the Marlins promoted him from Single-A ball in early April. Any owner who managed to grab him out of the free agent pool essentially landed themselves a Kershaw-caliber commodity... for the cost of a blind FAAB bid. And if your team was constructed like Steve's—where all nine of your pitching slots were filled with players of good perceived value—you would have possibly passed on Fernandez and yielded a championship-impact player to one of your competitors.
In short, that stinks.
This year's early candidate for dumb luck pick is Charlie Blackmon. This 27-year-old has gathered sporadic major league playing time each year since 2011 but has never seen even 250 ABs in a season. He was always a mid-level prospect, but has been perennially absent on draft lists due to the crowded Rockies outfield and his 200-point OPS home-versus-away split.
Yet three years ago, BaseballHQ.com reported: "Blackmon looks like one of those sneaky prospects who isn't highly regarded but makes slow progress and winds up being a solid major leaguer." We might be seeing that now, but the timing of his emergence looks like another undeserved dumb luck free agent pickup.
Could he put up a 30-30 season for the winning team in your league? Heck, it's Colorado. Anything is possible.
How do you prevent or minimize these situations?
One way is to draft deep, creating long reserve lists. That increases the odds that an out-of-the-blue breakout is drafted onto someone's roster. Of course, a player like Blackmon would probably have been drafted so late that he'd still be a dumb luck pick.
Another way is to delay your league's first free agent transaction period until May 1. That gives everyone a month to assess their draft roster and a month for April anomalies to wash out. If Blackmon goes 1 for 20 between now and May 1, the picture will look very different. But if he maintains, at least his acquisition cost will be more thought out and justifiable.
Finally, there are the one-month leagues at Shandler Park.com. While they are a nice ancillary contest if your primary teams are struggling, they also have the benefit of limiting dumb luck.
Charlie Blackmon was a $3 player in the April competition but was only rostered by three of the 690 teams entered. His current Rotisserie value is $41, a huge $38 profit. Note that every team has to decide which 32 players to take into the season, so Blackmon was drafted by those three owners on purpose. They deserve to benefit from his hot month.
Now, his price tag for May will likely be in the $20-$25 range. At that price, he could still return a nice profit if he keeps up his current production. But that's the type of decision you have to make when considering him for May.
In the monthly games, dumb luck has a shelf life of... one month. I think that might sit better for my friend Steve.
The price list for May games will be published this Monday, April 28. The deadline for May entries is the following Sunday, May 4, at 9 pm ET. You can play for as little as $9. Higher stakes games are available too. Head over to ShandlerPark.com for more information.
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