Being a Good Fantasy Baseball League Member

Something tell me that these people can all co-exist in a fantasy baseball league. Photo Credit: Mark L. Baer-USA TODAY Sports

It’s here. Every team in the league has an official record, meaning baseball season is underway.

Since the season is here and we’ll be playing fantasy baseball from now through September, it seems like a good time to go over some things that we as fantasy players should not do if we want to be good members of our leagues.

Things may work against you over the course of a fantasy baseball season.

• The Draft may have been scheduled for a time that you just couldn’t make and the autodraft may have completely messed you up.
• One of the guys you’re competing with for a league title may end up on the right end of a bad trade.
• A league rival may land a star that was impulsively dropped during a temporary struggle because he had a higher position on the waiver wire.

Those are just a few things that come to mind. Certainly, any number of things can go wrong throughout season, and that doesn’t even take into account things like injuries that happen on the field. If you play enough fantasy baseball, you’re going to hit a hard luck season or two. The kind of season where.

1. All the big breaks seem to work against you.
2. All the big breaks seem to work for your biggest rival, or rivals.
3. Gasp. Both!

I’d suggest that when stuff like that happens, you vent to some of your best friends and confidants in the league. When stuff seems to work against you in life, that’s what you do, right? Right. Apply the same ideas to fantasy baseball.

If you want to be a good fantasy baseball league member, here’s what you do not do.

1. Do not constantly gripe about it on the message boards

Maybe make some reference to the bad break when it happens, but throw an “lol” or “haha” in there, just to disarm the rest of the league. It seems strange, but it’s a good way to stay in the good graces of the rest of the league.

Let them know that you’re frustrated, but don’t leave them with the feeling that they need to take cover from you if they happen to bump into you at the Grocery Store. Don’t get people texting/emailing/talking about whether they want you back next year. Bad breaks happen. Don’t take them too seriously and definitely don’t take long to get over them.

2. Do not try to make the beneficiary feel guilty about it

Think about it this way. If you and a friend are a fan teams going against each other in a playoff series and your team loses, do you really want to hear him rubbing your face in it for the next several years? I’m guessing no. Get the good natured trash talk out of the way during the series and when it’s over, celebrate with your fellow fans. The same logic applies if your team loses. Don’t sit there and try to make your buddy feel guilty because his team got a questionable call or two.

Similar thinking works in fantasy baseball. If your buddy beats you, you don’t want him rubbing it in to you. We know people do stupid things. Maybe someone dropped Troy Tulowitzki after a rough series and your buddy/rival stuck with Brandon Crawford used his position at the top of the waiver wire to nab Tulo. Then, of course, Tulo got hot, led this guy to a fantasy championship while you finished in second.

It stinks and that kind of stuff happens every year in fantasy leagues. But don’t try to make the guy who ended up on the right end of it feel guilty.

3. Do not imply that what happened was done with hurting your chances specifically in mind

It seems so basic but it seems to be an exceptionally hard concept for people to grasp. There seems to be a few of these guys in every league.

If a police car goes by my bedroom window at 4 am with the sirens blowing, it probably will make me up, but that doesn’t mean the cop did it for the specific purpose of waking me up.

The aforementioned Tulo example may have hurt you, but the chain of events was not likely done in order to keep you from winning and nothing else.

If you honestly think it was, it’s time to change leagues. If it happens again in the next league, it’s time to look in the mirror.

4. Don’t check out of the league

You signed up for a full season, play a full season. Just because you’re not going to win doesn’t mean that you dropping out won’t have an impact on who will win. You may not care about finishing in 7th or 8th place, but everything your team does has potential ramifications on the championship.

Nash went over this in the etiquette of trading and I don’t really want to repeat everything he’s said but if someone offers you a trade, you at least owe it to him/her to log on and decline. If you’re just not interested in trading, decline and say something like “not interested in making trades.” That way, he doesn’t waste time trying to come up with another offer.

LM’s, if you need some ways to keep owners involved, here are a few ideas.

5. Don’t Make Life Difficult on the LM 

Maybe this is a personal issue for me since I am an LM and have been annoyed on more than one occasion here. But being an LM is not a full-time job. LM’s have jobs and families just like everyone else.

Don’t gripe to him every time something goes wrong, demanding he fix it. That doesn’t mean you can never say anything to him, but if it’s something that can be resolved without him, give it a try.