Marketing hates me. When I pitched a new series to Truss, I said, “I’ll make it drool with SEO syrupy sweetness. People will click on it without even knowing it. We don’t even have to install the RazzTrojan.exe file on people’s computers anymore!”
Truss responded, “Dude, half our views are on mobile. We’ve elevated to .apk. People will put their Apple Vision Pros on and wake up to 24/7 Razzball Content from the Razzie News Network, powered by HIMS.”
Trade secrets aside, I really doubt this is true. First, if any Razzball reader had enough money for a Vision Pro, they would have chucked it at a Main Event entry already (now with 95% less cousin involvement!). Second, our astute readers would never, ever fall for AI thirst trap articles.
Rather, we fall for human-generated thirst trap articles. This is an article about that.
What I Like (About Bad Fantasy Advice)
Eventually, this space will turn into something about players that are useful for your fantasy team. But right now, pitchers and catchers have barely clocked in. The remainder of position players are either showing up as I write, or sometime in the next few days.
Shut your Twitter feed down (because Twitter is hell now) and ignore all the baseball news for fantasy purposes. Enjoy the news for personal enlightenment purposes.
But EWB, you say, I’m learning so much about how to win my fantasy season by watching men throw from flat ground.
No. No you aren’t.
Alex Manoah jumped 60 spots in ADP among big money players after this pic dropped:
Big money players and their early season draft posturing affect non-money players. When March rolls around and you and 11 of your smartest friends show up to Fantrax and find Alec Manoah at Rank 212, suddenly you’re spending the last round of your draft debating whether to draft the guy who got chased out of rookie ball and was shut down for arm soreness in 2023.
Manoah hasn’t faced a live batter in 2024. Hell, he’s barely faced a catcher’s glove, and he’s jumped from “dart throw” territory into “playing on your $1800 buy-in on your main event team” territory.
But EWB, that’s just one guy, you say.
OK.
In 2023 pre-season baseball, which unheralded player torched opposing pitchers in nearly 50 AB, landing a 1.258 OPS, with a .788 SLG? ESPN drafters ate him up, where he popped into the top 350, putting him ahead of Mitch Keller, Kenta Maeda, and Brayan Bello.
That unheralded masher? Hanser Alberto. Finished the 2023 season with a handful of at-bats for the White Sox and a .220 average. He’s a free agent right now.
Want another? How about the guy who launched 6 dingers in 38 at bats, plating 14 RBIs — nearly twice as many runs created as Pete Alonso?
That was Mike Brosseau. Another guy who landed just a handful of at bats in 2023, and he’s going into the 2024 season as a minor leaguer for the Royals.
Spring Training matters to your soul. It does not really matter for your fantasy baseball team.
Any long-time Razzball reader knows that it takes more than a weekend of mashing to make reliable data.
I’m the Problem (It’s Me)
There are two ways to draft your team: logically, or emotionally.
Fantasy baseball is a game, and games are supposed to be fun. If you want to draft Byron Buxton to your team because you love watching him play whenever he’s on the field, then draft him. Who cares at what ADP. You want to have fun with your team, so draft him.
Emotional drafting is about going out there and building a team to which you will pay attention. Fantasy baseball takes time, which is the one thing we can’t get more of. If you’re spending your precious time (and potentially money) on a team you hate, and that you want to ignore everyday, then stop what you’re doing. Either find some players you like, or find a new owner. Games are games, and if we’re not having fun, then go do something fun.
Logical drafting is about maximizing win percentage. For logical drafters, winning is fun, rather than who is on the team.
But logic is susceptible to marketing. How many of you logical drafters are thinking, “Well, Alec Manoah is in the best shape of his life, and that floaty thing makes him look like he’s having fun. Maybe I should draft him ahead of Bryan Woo, Aaron Civale, and Charlie Morton.”
So, you check the internet to find out expert opinions. Here’s one, and here’s another. I’ll save you the clicks: best shape of his life and draft him aggressively.
The thing about content creation is that we need a topic. We need to write about a player, and take a side. And there are a lot of us. So if you have a concern about a player, you look up opinions, and you can probably find a hot take on literally anybody. I just spent a few minutes checking the past “sleeper” posts on Hanser Alberto and Mike Brosseau. I’ll save you the time: Yeesh.
If you look around the internet long enough, you’ll find people telling you to both draft and avoid every player in MLB.
So what do you do?
Avoid the Noise
Every player has hot and cold streaks. It’s normal.
During Barry Bonds’ 2001 record-setting season for home runs, he had a nearly 30 game period where he batted .202 and hit 3 homers. 116 plate appearances. Nearly 17% of his season. Can you imagine the “fade” articles that would have appeared if we all weren’t using ProForums and GeoCities sites?
Spring training is a hotbed of news noise. It’s when the target market of baseball news-watchers pay a ton of attention. It’s when journalists and fantasy mavens are watching grown men throw at 80% speed. How many video clips of sprint drills are you watching right now? Here’s a post from a journalistic bastion of integrity owned by a major multimedia company discussing this year’s new MLB fashions. And here’s the free-to-all summary of that article posted by another major company. And then here’s the summary of the summary by a fan writer.
The Inception echo chamber gets you clicking. The internet game of telephone. The message is garbled by the time it gets to you. All you hear is the title, and the clickbait, and the attention-grabber.
Remember when Randy Dobnak had a new slider that had a 22% whiff rate in 2022 spring training? You probably don’t, because Dobnak hasn’t played major league ball since he developed that slider. He’s a non-roster invitee for the Twins organization this year though, so you’ll get another chance to hear about it.
The key to fantasy success is to hold onto Barry Bonds when he’s cold and avoid Randy Dobnak when he’s hot.
How do we do that?
Logically, we pay attention to data samples. This is why I’m a bit worried about Corbin Carroll this year, and gave you a bunch of similar hitting profiles to target later in the draft.
Emotionally, we check ourselves. We ask — am I holding onto a player out of sentimentality? Or am I holding onto a player because of somebody else’s opinion?
Remember: at the beginning of the draft, everybody’s winning percentage is equal. In a 10-team draft, everybody has a 10% chance of winning. By the end of the draft, the numbers will change slightly. That guy who drafted Alec Manoah as SP5 probably has an 8% chance of winning. But did you take advantage of that slip? Did you take Aaron Civale, as Coolwhip suggested this week? Or did you grab the hottest bat in spring training, like Hanser Alberto?
Because the last thing you want to do is give yourself an 8% chance of winning too. Surely, there’s a shark out there who now has a 14% chance of winning, which is nearly double your odds.
Spring Training kicks off this week. Are you in the best shape of your life? Yes/no/maybe so? Are there spring training success stories that you’re absolutely drafting? Let me know down in the comments, and maybe Grey will pop in to smack some sense into your noggin.
