FBM Musings
Creating Your 2026 Fantasy Baseball Identity For Success
“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”
— James Clear, Atomic Habits
Is it a new year new you?
Or, is it same stuff different day?
You get to decide.
The core concept to one of the most successful self-help books of all time, Atomic Habits by James Clear, is just that. You decide how you want to change. Not by setting some audacious goal. But, by casting small votes for the type of person you want to become.
If you want to truly have a transformative fantasy season, you need change your identity. That starts with changing your behavior.
Goals
Your behaviors and actions are forming your identity not just what you say you’ll do or post to social media.
We start off the year with a list of goals. But, goals are mostly something in the far future. They can more easily get lost or drop off because they are out of sight out of mind.
Now, goals are important as we want to have a target to aim for. However, we focus too much on the end goal and the deadline we want to do it by. We rarely, if ever, put our energy into setting a schedule for the small steps on how to achieve the larger goal. These small steps are the building blocks that form our habits and behaviors, and as a result, can change our identity.
As a new season approaches, most fantasy baseball managers have the goal of:
“I want to win my league”.
But, the winners and losers of a fantasy baseball league all have the same goal of wanting to win the league. What separates the winners and losers is not the end result, but the actions taken over the course of a season.
Consistent actions or behaviors put fantasy managers in positions for a higher probability of winning.
Behaviors
It’s the behaviors that the best fantasy managers consistently do on a daily and/or weekly basis that gets them results. Over the course of long season, these small actions are casting a vote in forming their fantasy baseball identity.
So, if you feel that your fantasy baseball game needs improvement, a question to ask is:
“What Would a Successful Fantasy Baseball Manager Do?”
Successful fantasy baseball managers don’t have the perfect projection model or insider clubhouse information to all 30 teams. Instead, they are consistent in their actions of player analysis, roster management, FAAB bidding, and “mining the news”. A successful fantasy baseball manager is a diligent fantasy baseball manager over the long-term.
The key word here is consistent not perfect. Every fantasy baseball manager will do the following over the course of a season:
make bad decisions
skip research sometimes
miss an injury announcement
make regrettable impulsive drops
These are things that no manager can escape.
Biases and novelty (think shiny new rookie syndrome) trickle into our headspace all the time. It’s a battle which some days you win and some days you lose. Having consistent habits that you fall back on, allows you to get back on a winning track faster.
Remember, every time you:
✅ check injury reports before setting your lineup,
✅ read an article about upcoming pitching rotations, or
✅ spend time evaluating your roster before making a waiver claim
You are casting a vote to be a diligent fantasy baseball manager.
“The two time-frames that matter most in life are
10 years and 1 hour.”
— James Clear
10 years is the big goal you want to accomplish. So, that would be equivalent to winning your fantasy baseball league.
1 hour is the small action you take today that is oriented towards accomplishing that 10 year goal. An example of this could be researching bullpens today to determine what teams have a stable closer hierarchy instead of a bullpen by committee. This increases your chances of accumulating saves which can help win one your league scoring categories.
We all want to be in first place at the end of September in our fantasy leagues.
So, what votes are you casting today that’s helping you achieve that goal?
Taking small actions shapes your identity and also proves to yourself that you are diligent manager, and over the long-term a successful fantasy baseball manager.
Thanks for reading.
Take care.