Sunken Cost Fallacy: The Importance Of Pivoting

You’ve probably drafted by now, and you’ve got one or two or twenty teams. Each of the teams are as beautiful as the last, even the draft where you took Gerrit Cole in the first round followed by Elly De La Cruz in the second round.

I can’t believe you spent $1800 on that team either, but here we are.

The truth is, I’m in Japan right now, and the thing I can teach you the most about fantasy baseball success isn’t player stats or who to draft first. There’s literally a couple hundred articles about that from the other authors on this site. Those authors are all very smart and good looking. Especially JKJ. That man is a hunk on wheels.

I’ve been at this fantasy analyst thing for nearly four years now. Sadly, that’s 1/10th of my life spent imagining that I’m a baseball owner. Logically, I’m about as qualified to run the White Sox as the actual owner. And the number one question I get is something like, “Should I drop Spencer Strider for Martin Perez? Strider looks cooked.”

I’m not even lying. People said to drop Spencer Strider in June last year when he struggled. Not me. I’m not people. I’m 90% robot and 10% recycled dad jokes.

So, to help y’all the best I can before the season starts, is to know when and how to pivot.

Today, I wanted to go to my favorite place in Japan: Enoshima. I love sitting on the rocks with a chu hai and watching the sun set over the ocean. Occasionally, hawks attack you. Hawks love chu hai too. Despite watching the weather reports and taking the local train out to the boonies of Kanagawa Prefecture, the rain wouldn’t let up. I had two choices: semi-drunkenly stumble back through Yokohama to gather ingredients for sukiyaki, or commit to the bit and go to Enoshima in the rain.

I’m pretty adventurous, but I tend not to drunkenly climb mountains in the rain watch clouds roll through and miss the sunset. I chose the sukiyaki. We made it with wagyu. You know, that expensive beef that people lose their minds over. We had nearly a kilo of wagyu for $30.

The rain didn’t let up. Even though I was 20 minutes away from my destination, I chose to pivot and go back. The choice was based on logic and emotion, and it turned out for the best. I could have considered the time and money spent going to Enoshima as something I wasn’t ready to admit defeat on, which would have made my choice a “sunken cost.”

In a sunken cost, you say, “I’ve spent X amount of time/money/draft capital on Y item, and therefore I can’t pivot away from it.”

In fantasy baseball, we see this by holding onto players even when they are under-performing.

A famous example of a fantasy baseball pivot that worked was when “The Robot” won the NFBC Main Event by dropping his first round draft pick Jacob deGrom mid-season. This was when deGrom started 2022 healthy but ran into arm troubles. The Mets reported multiple different diagnoses but adamantly claimed that deGrom would return to full playing time. What could be better for the fantasy playoffs than the top pitcher returning for the playoffs?

Except deGrom didn’t return. He sat out the rest of the season.

Are you ready to cut ties with the best pitcher in the league? Can you drop your first round draft pick? Are you ready to pivot? Or are you a sunken cost fallacy waiting to happen?

When answering the “Should I drop” questions, here’s my key thought process. I’d wager that each fantasy analyst has a different process. Sometimes it’s an informed process. Sometimes it’s gut feeling.

Injury Based Decisions: 

• Pitcher Elbows: Usually we’ll see a drop in velocity before elbow injuries. If there’s a drop in velocity and any mention of “sprain,” you’ll need to find a replacement pitcher.
• Pitcher Shoulders: Shoulders and backs can often be worked through with time, but that amount of time can vary greatly from pitcher to pitcher. When pitchers were still hitting, we saw guys like Jack Flaherty and Elieser Hernandez take nearly a year to return (or not return at all). I’d lean toward finding a new pitcher when your stud has a shoulder/back injury.
• Hitter Soreness: We hear a lot about non-specific injuries for hitters. Tennis elbow. Plantar fasciitis. Bilateral leg weakness. A lot of hitters play through these injuries with around a 10-20% reduction in their performance. If you can tolerate those deficiencies, then keep the player. Otherwise, find a new player.

Performance Based Decisions: 

• Pitcher SIERA: The baseball card stats (ERA, WHIP, Wins) of a pitcher are often non-scientific. A pitcher might have a 5.00 ERA and be completely healthy. Of course, people want to know if they should move on. If that pitcher has a 3.00 SIERA, then we understand that they’re simply unlucky and have a high chance of returning to normal. In this case, we should keep the underperforming player and wait for them to return to expected performance.
• Pitcher Wins: Wins are notoriously hard to predict. In recent years, we’ve seen the rise of Roleless Robs — non-starters and non-closers — who end up finishing in the top 10 Wins in fantasy baseball by virtue of pitching in a ton of games in high-leverage situations. A great pitcher can perform poorly in Wins, and a poor pitcher can perform great in Wins. If your top pitcher is performing poorly in Wins, I wouldn’t make a move. If you’re rostering a notoriously poor pitcher who has a lot of Wins (Kyle Gibson tends to be the poster boy for this), then cut loose and find a new pitcher.
• Hitter Average: I’ve pointed out before that Barry Bonds batted around .200 for nearly 40 games in the middle of his record-breaking home run season. Even the best hitters go through cold or unlucky steaks. If your under-performing hitter has a high wOBA, then we’re seeing poor luck. In this case, you keep the player. If your player has a jump in swinging strike rate, a drop in line drive rate, or a drop in wOBA, then you should consider dropping them.

The truth is: there’s no exact science behind this stuff. Gut feeling plays a huge role. If there was an exact science, then you gotta believe that we’d all be hanging out with Ippei Mizuhara making big bucks in the gambling business. Similarly, if it was an exact science, then bookmakers wouldn’t make bets because we’d know who’d win every game.

When it comes to knowing whether you’ve got a sunk cost or not, the truth is: your life experience will teach you the best.

Cheers all, and happy beginning to the season.

Featured photo by: Takashi Hososhima