Zen And The Art Of Fantasy Baseball: The Practice Of Purification – Or, My Bad, LGJ

The Moment of Zen:

No spiritual, ethical, or other ennobling practice that I am aware of pretends that humans are perfect. We aren’t. And most practices, at least that I’m aware of, have teachings telling us not to overlook our imperfections but instead to acknowledge them and use the practice in question to find some form of absolution.

Buddhism has multiple practices calling on us to acknowledge our mistakes and move forward from them. Today, I’ll discuss the Four Opponent Powers, a purification practice that I suspect could benefit anyone, from any spiritual tradition or lack thereof, religious or secular.

We make mistakes. A lot of them. Some of them are completely unintentional, yet we later realize something we have done, even with the best of motives, has hurt someone. Sometimes, our mistakes are, well, exactly what we intended to do. Humans do unwise, hurtful, even cruel things to others. Perhaps one of the main differences between an ethical person and an unethical person is what happens once we become aware of the error, whether it be a significant one or even a misstep that might be barely noticed.

Purification with the Four Opponent Powers gives a sort of mental roadmap for working through something unfortunate, even bad, that we may have caused. As the name implies, there are four steps – four powers acting in opposition to bad karma we may have created.

1. Regret

This step is essentially as simple as it sounds: once we become aware that we have brought emotional or physical harm to another person or to ourselves, we acknowledge it and feel regret for it. To do so, we have to take ownership that our action, likely based on ego or delusion, caused the issue without being defensive or evasive. That ownership – truly feeling apologetic – is key; otherwise, the other powers can’t come into play.

2. Reliance

In a Buddhist sense, the “reliance” step involves relying on our spiritual practices, the model set by the Buddha in his lifetime, or a mentor who can help us find better awareness and wiser action.

In a secular sense, this might look like relying on the foundation of your moral code, returning to it, to help us move forward with determination of doing better.

3. Remedy

The “remedy” stage won’t necessarily “fix” the problem – some problems we create can stick around, or perhaps the person we hurt has no desire to talk to us even to hear our apology. Instead of solving the problem that was created, the “remedy” step requires putting positive action into the world. Working in meditation to show more compassion and patience, for instance, might be a good direction. Or perhaps doing volunteer work for others. Neither option undoes whatever has been done, but it at least introduces the possibility of good karma, for the wrongdoer perhaps, but also ideally for the one affected by our misstep.

4. Resolve

The Power of Resolve is the practice, not just a momentary decision that we might eventually forget, of creating the true determination not to cause the same type of issue again. Does this mean that we’ll now be pure, good, perfect? Alas, we will still be human with all of the foibles that come with it, but we’ll also be guided by better awareness of the potential impacts of our actions, a stronger sensitivity to the needs of others. We will likely fail again in some way akin to what we have determined not to do, but the “resolve” stage will make us more likely to recognize the issue sooner, perhaps heading off unnecessary pain for someone else.

How in the world does this apply to fantasy baseball?

Short of finding ways to collude or other methods of cheating in fantasy, the Purification of the Four Opponent Powers might feel mostly unnecessary in the game we play. I would argue that there are moments with our competitors when we overstep, out of enthusiasm, competitive spirit, or simple ignorance. But, in most situations in our game, the worst we do might be to hurt someone’s feelings about a pick, rush them when they are on an extended draft clock (such as a 2- or 4- hour clock common in many fantasy leagues), or give them a lowball offer in a trade negotiation. Not particularly serious in most cases, but more avoidable if we have resolved to be more aware of others’ needs.

Where I find the Four Opponent Powers most useful in fantasy is probably in discussions with ourselves. As I have suggested in multiple articles, we tend to be our own worst critics, a tendency that almost certainly isn’t constructive in any way. Another potential use of the purification practice is when we are wrong – which happens a lot when creating draft strategy, analyzing players, and coming up with FAAB bids. 

So, let’s look at one of those options: What happens when we’re wrong about a player? How easy is it to blame the player for “his” failure? It is tempting to ignore our own role: The problem couldn’t have been my analysis or my game play overall. Instead, the player failed, or there was bad injury luck, or my pitcher wrecked my ratios in an early-season blowup, and I just couldn’t recover from the damage done. In each case, we demonstrate a lack of willingness to simply accept that our choices didn’t work. Making excuses doesn’t allow us to express sincere regret. As excuses are offered, there is little likelihood we will seek to strengthen our analysis or draft decision-making in order to have our “practice” to rely on. This, of course, could be followed by a lack of willingness to create remedies for future decisions, along with resolve to be a more disciplined fantasy player.

My own purification practice has led me to revisit Luis Garcia Jr., a player that I wrote about right before the 2025 season started. I liked Garcia’s upside, but I argued he was not a good pick where he was going in drafts (early 100s in ADP). My main premise was that I didn’t think he was going to continue to run after a 2024 season in which he racked up 22 SB. And I gave plenty of stats to support my argument. Here’s a glimpse: 

Here are a few numbers: 1, 0, 3, 9, 22. Those are Garcia’s stolen base numbers the last 5 seasons. Does anyone notice the outlier?

Here are a few more numbers: 11, 12, 11. Those are his minors stolen bases in 2017-2019. The 2024 total of 22 SBs still looks like an outlier. Can he steal? Sure. His in-game sprint speed clocks in at around 27 ft/s, which is ok, certainly fast enough to steal. But let’s consider one more set of numbers: 5 of 27 (18.5%), 4 of 13 (30.8%), 4 of 7 (57.1%), 2 of 2 (100%), 1 of 2 (50%). Those are his caught stealing numbers in the majors: 51 SBA, 16 CS. He has been caught on 31.4% of his attempts since getting to the Show. Those aren’t numbers that have managers excited to give the green light.

I then went on to say I thought the Nationals might compete for a wild card spot, so I doubted the manager would be willing to let him continue running. Yikes, I missed that one slightly – the Nats were terrible, just awful. Oh well.

But the more important miss was that Garcia did indeed run. In fact, he put together a solid all-around season: .252 BA, 16 HR, 67 R, 66 RBI, and 14 SB. 

But, I suppose I was right with the overall point, that Garcia wasn’t worth his draft price. According to the 2025 Razzball Player Rater, the young second baseman finished as the 170th overall player – pretty much exactly where I suggested he should be drafted.

But here’s where I went wrong: as soon as I saw that I was right about his draft price, I essentially ignored all the things I got wrong. I barely registered his solid season, and especially not his 14 SB. I just wrote him off completely. In fact, as drafting season came around this year, he wasn’t even on my list of players I might draft. I overlooked that he was going for the cheap price of early 200s ADP – he was simply erased from my mind. It’s amazing how denial can sneak up on us.

Only recently, out of semi-desperation to draft a 2B, did I look more deeply at Garcia’s numbers from last season. While his 16 HR and 14 SB with mid-60s R and RBI wasn’t worth an early 100s pick, it would be a significant value at an early 200s ADP. So, I begrudgingly looked deeper into this 2025 season as well as his 2026 spring training. And guess what – the dude is good. He maintained a 2025 EV of 90.2 mph with a 9% Barrel% and a 45.8% HH%. Those are the kinds of numbers I love. His contact skills were solid as well: 80.7% Contact% with an 89.9% Z-Contact%. Those are the numbers of someone who is likely going to maintain his hit tool. His O-Swing% is a bit higher than I would like (37.6%), but he made contact with those pitches a third of the time, and his CSW% wasn’t terrible at 24.5%. Someone with those types of numbers going around 220 ADP is an absolute no-brainer, yet I hadn’t once considered picking him up. In draft after draft after draft.

So, I offer my apology to Luis Garcia Jr. Maybe he isn’t a great player, but he’s plenty good. His spring numbers make him look like even more of a steal at his price: In 32 AB, his HH% is up around 50%, and his Barrel% is nearly 20%. His BA doesn’t reflect the way he’s hitting the ball, and he isn’t showing good patience at the plate, but Garcia has an extended track record of doing exactly what he did last year. Not to draft him is silly, especially since the decision was based on my desire to be right about a call I made a year ago. So I regret my actions – I’ve now relied on the data and am ready to remedy my short-sighted thinking from earlier in draft season.

Let us hope I maintain my resolve. Did I mention he’ll soon be eligible at 1B? I now resolve to get him on my team as much as I can.

Until next week. –ADHamley