What I like About Fantasy Baseball

Fantasy baseball is beginning again. Let’s celebrate! Photo courtesy of M. Seamans.

Okay, I admit it, fantasy baseball has me completely hooked.

That’s probably not much of an admission, since you’re either familiar with me and the site, or you’ve stumbled onto a fantasy baseball site and probably deduced that someone writing about fantasy baseball is probably a fan. Still, it did need to be said.

As the new year is here and spring training is now in full flight, I figured I’d take some time to tell you just what I like about fantasy baseball. To start that, a little autobiographical information.

About me

I was born in San Francisco, California on July 30, 1985….Okay, this is going to be long enough, so we don’t need to go that far back. Here we go.

Unlike Nash and Clave, the fellow founders of this site, I am a writer. That’s not to take anything away from them and their skills at all, but they have other jobs, I don’t. If I’m not writing about fantasy baseball here, I’m writing for my local newspaper.

In the summer of 2011, I took a job with an online sports writing company. It’s not a big secret or anything, but I don’t want to name them here because I don’t want people to mistake this as sour grapes. It’s far from it.

As a matter of fact, I really enjoyed that job, I just ended up writing about similar stuff every day, often times more than once per day. Now, make no mistake, I am not claiming that this was a grueling job, it wasn’t, but it got a little monotonous at times. Towards the end, I really didn’t enjoy writing for anything or anyone that much. Why was that? I’ll tell you that I’m as big a sports fan as anyone you will ever meet, but it can get a little stale, especially when writing about sports that play several times per week (ie: every sport but football), or sports that play once a week with a lot of time in between games (ie: football).

It was towards the end of my tenure there that Clave came up with the idea for this site. We all contribute evenly but make no mistake, this site is his brainchild and he needs to be commended for that. While I agreed to it, I have to admit that I wasn’t very enthused about writing some more, especially about sports. But this site’s been up and running for more than a year and I can wholeheartedly say that I not only have no regrets about agreeing to write for this site, but I am significantly more enthused towards the process of this than I was a year ago at this time.

So, what changed? Well, I enjoy working with Clave, Nash, and our new (and great) additions, Mims and Will, very much. But honestly, there’s a little more.

What do I love about fantasy baseball?

Well, it combines the best elements of covering every sport. You have the urgency of a sport like football, there is always advice to give. Real baseball doesn’t really have that until after the trade deadline, if even that early. Perfect example: The 2012 World Series matched the Tigers and Giants, two teams who were each 10-10 after 20 games. I know that there wasn’t any talk in San Francisco about dumping Buster Posey, Matt Cain, and Madison Bumgarner. While I wasn’t there so I can’t say for certain, I doubt that there was ever talk of dumping Miguel Cabrera, Prince Fielder, and Justin Verlander in Detroit, either. Just a hunch.

But in fantasy baseball, there is significantly more urgency. If someone’s stars get off to a bad start, there’s almost always some thought about dumping them. So, even if the advice is to “Chill out and remember that it’s a 162-game season,” there is always something to be reacting to, even in a sport where things don’t seem to matter much day-to-day, like baseball.

There are other elements, too. Clave is right, he and I have never met in person yet we still consider each other good friends. I don’t see Nash more than once or twice a year, but I still consider him a good friend, as well. These were friendships started in many ways through fantasy baseball.

But I’ve played other fantasy sports with both, what makes fantasy baseball stand out?

How fantasy baseball is different than other fantasy sports

I need to get something off of my chest first. Recall the 2012 AL MVP Debate. Mike Trout dominating the new stats vs. Miguel Cabrera dominating the traditional stats, notably the Triple Crown ones. Not only did everyone have an opinion, but those who favored Trout were not only less than impressed by the arguments in Cabrera’s favor, but they actually made it seem as though those achievements were negatives. The reverse was true with Cabrera backers to Trout’s stats.

I say that because I actually see similarities with fantasy sports people. Yes, fantasy baseball is my favorite fantasy sport. No, it does not mean fantasy football is awful. As a matter of fact, I enjoy fantasy football, I just prefer baseball. I’d also prefer to drive a Mercedes Benz, but it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with my Honda Civic.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, I love the day-to-day grind of fantasy baseball. I think it does a good job of separating the really devoted players to those who just play for the sake of playing.

I admit that this is a double-edged-sword, as I get frustrated with people who check out after a few months if their team isn’t any good. I’m not talking about people who make a mistake and forget to set their lineup for a day (I am the person who forgot to activate Matt Cain, my favorite player on my favorite team, when he threw a perfect game). But I like that at least at the top of most leagues, you’re competing with very serious players. If someone wins a fantasy baseball league, he’s a good owner, period. That’s not necessarily true in other sports.

You can’t be a bad owner but be successful in fantasy baseball. Granted, it doesn’t need to be a massive time commitment, but you do need to check your lineup every day, to be sure that nobody’s done something stupid like over-stream and cut a good pitcher, or that someone’s nagging injury doesn’t become a DL trip. It happens fast in baseball because they play every day.

The Best Players are the Best Fantasy Players

Again, this is not an attack on fantasy football, but I’d like to show you some of the NFL’s best passers (by yards) in 2012. Matthew Stafford (second), Tony Romo (third), Josh Freeman (ninth), Carson Palmer (tenth). I’ll grant that if you look at touchdowns, the stats are truer to how these guys actually rank as quarterbacks, but there are still several guys who are way out of position. Does anyone remember 2009 and 2010 when Kyle Orton was a valuable fantasy quarterback?

In the NFL, you have more garbage time points that contribute to fantasy points. I lost a fantasy matchup this year (and in turn, missed the playoffs), because Jason Witten scored a touchdown in the last minute in a blowout loss to the Bears.

I’m not saying that never happens in baseball, but garbage time points aren’t anywhere near as prevalent. Remember that great hitters fail seven out of ten times. Great power hitters sock about 40 homers in 600 or so at bats. Conversely, quarterbacks complete well over half of their passes. So, it’s a lot easier to pick up points in a sport like that. By extension, it’s easier to pick up cheap but valuable (oxymoron, I know) fantasy points a sport like that, making some average players look like stars.

Let’s take a look at the top players from 2012 in all five standard fantasy baseball categories.

Before we break that down a little bit, let’s do the same thing with pitchers.

Okay, steals and saves are kind of black sheep categories, and I wouldn’t let Adam Dunn within 10 miles of my fantasy team. Actually, unless he was that close because he was an opponent, I wouldn’t let him that close to my real team, if I was running one. But most of these guys are people you’d want on your real team if you were a general manager.

Any one pitcher can have a great start, just like any hitter can have a great day. But because those games don’t mean as much over a fantasy baseball season, the cream is a little more likely to rise to the crop. One great baseball game is one out of 162. One great football game is one out of 16. You don’t need to be a genius to see which sport is more impacted by one game. Ultimately, I enjoy playing a fantasy sport where I know that the list of most valuable players will look similar to a list of the sport’s best players. It doesn’t stop there.

It’s Less Dependent on Draft Luck

I don’t mean to say that other sports don’t have sleepers every year, they do. But the nature of baseball, and fantasy baseball, is that you rely far less on one or two players than you do in other sports.

In a fantasy football league, you can often tell who the top teams will be just in the draft. If someone has an early pick and grabs on of the few true elite running backs, and then gets one of many big stat quarterbacks in the second round, that person has to screw up in a big way to not be competitive in the league.

In baseball, I’ll give a bad owner both Miguel Cabrera and Ryan Braun as a head start still guarantee that I’d have the better season. Actually, I’d be pretty confident that I’d have the better team coming out of the draft, and I don’t consider drafting my strength.

You need to be able to put a complete roster together if you’re going to compete for a title. Lord knows, I’ve tried to just go hitter heavy and it didn’t work. You need a complete roster and you need to maintain it throughout the year. So, the season isn’t really going to be dictated by where you pick in the draft.

Ultimately, all of this is what makes fantasy baseball appealing to me. I love competing in all fantasy sports but if I had to choose one, America’s Pastime would be it.