Pinch Hit Musings: 2021 Favorite #1

Some favorite musings from the past year.

The following musing was posted on May 7, 2021.

Can a Will Smith video help you become a better fantasy baseball player? The trick is to work backwards.

A Will Smith video can help you play the game of fantasy baseball better. Ok, so how?  As the video title states, it's all in "How To Train Your Mind To Get What You Want." Alright, so if you train your mind to allow you to get anything you want, then wouldn't we all just want to roster the best Fantasy Baseball players? That would seem like a silly mental exercise. Talk about fantasy!  However, it's at the 3:23 mark in the video where I particularly enjoyed the advice of putting the pieces to achieve your goals where you want them to be. No limits. And then, working backwards from the end point you want. From a fantasy baseball perspective, you can apply this advice by reverse-engineering two things: 1) drafting the most balanced team and 2) finishing in first place.

This reminded me of two great resources in trying to help achieve those goals.  One is Vlad Sedler's Interview with NFBC Hall of Famer KC Cha in the article  "The Exclusive KC Cha Interview".  The other is Rob DiPietro's the Pull Hitter Podcast Episode 45 with John Pausma and Douglas Gruber.  Amazing stuff in both of these that are well worth your time to become more successful in fantasy baseball.

In a snake draft, you’re at the mercy of waiting until it’s your turn to pick. So, even though you can’t roster all the “best” players, neither can anyone else. The end goal here is to draft a balanced team that can give you an opportunity to accumulate stats in all categories with the understanding and roster flexibility (e.g., think multi-positional players) that you will pick-up free agent players during the year due to injuries and poor performance on your team. A critical point in Vlad Sedler’s interview with KC Cha is the thinking and planning of drafting backwards. This for me ties into the notion of "put the pieces where you want them” from the Will Smith video. If you do the pre-season work, you can evaluate where the pockets of value for a position start and end. Start from your last pick, and then go to the beginning. This point may seem moot now that draft season is over for most, but the NFBC has Memorial Day Second Chance leagues that are available now if you want to give it another go.

As it relates to finishing in first place, you need a goal. A very helpful exercise is setting targets for each statistical category. When playing in NFBC leagues with an overall component, historically the general rule of thumb is finishing in the 80th percentile of each category will give you the best chance of cashing. As helpful as it is to have those target thresholds in mind when drafting, it didn’t occur to me to consciously strive towards that during the season. In Rob DiPietro’s Pull Hitter Podcast Episode 45 (one of my favorites I’ve listened to multiple times), John Pausma and Douglas Gruber described their process of how they track the 80th percentile outcome for each category on a weekly basis. By dividing the overall season into 26 weekly seasons, you can become more focused and deliberate with your free agent pickups depending on your category needs. Again, the message is clear. Once you get into the mindset of knowing your end goal, it’s much simpler to work backwards from that point to accomplish it.

Most of what has been described above are simple ideas, but not easy to accomplish. That's where the work comes into play.

Thanks for reading. Take care.