Small Ball: Fantasy Baseball Game Theory: Pulling the Landing Gear

As the calendar shifts toward September, I’m reminded of my elementary and middle school days when seeing Aug. 23 on the calendar was a stab in the heart.

Moments later, I’d get over it. That is, until I heard the back-to-school commercial jingle on the television. Sigh. I don’t miss that gut-punch feeling. I guess that’s one good thing about being an adult. 

Vibes, as the kids say, were much different in late-May and early-June as a school kid. Summer was around the corner! The excitement of family vacations, sleeping in and playing manhunt at night with friends filled your mind. So as you trudged your way into school every morning, admit it – you slacked off a bit. I can remember taking a few tests at the end of the year and putting my brain on autopilot. 

I’ve already locked up an A, or at the very least an A-. If I bomb this test, it doesn’t really matter.

Inevitably, my grades on the last few tests slipped a bit. Because, who really cares? In middle school, an A vs. an A- wasn’t going to remove you from college consideration. Heck, the only college consideration that mattered was which team I was going to choose as my next dynasty in NCAA Football 2004. I had my mind elsewhere, just like every other kid at that age when June hit.

This is a long-winded way of saying that the fantasy baseball season is ever-so-close to ending. The difference is, a few home runs, RBIs, wins and strikeouts can make the difference between  a happy offseason and an offseason filled with regret. This is my third-to-last article of this year’s Small Ball series. While I could wait to discuss end-game strategies in those final two articles, it makes more sense to do it now. Why does a pilot begin his descent roughly 30 minutes before landing and not five minutes? That’s kind of my point.

It’s time to pull the landing gear, trim the fat from your roster and make that final push. Here’s how I’m doing it.

Investigate Your Standings

Woah, woah. I thought people who checked the standings after every at-bat were doing it wrong. While that’s true early in the year, and even halfway through the season, now is the time to study your league standings like a final exam. Yes, another school reference. I know a lot of teachers, OK? 

At this point in the season, there are some categories that might be out of reach. Conversely, you might be comfortably ahead in others. If so, great. But remember, there are no points to be gained in the standings if you maintain your ground. Below, I’m going to discuss how to push yourself across the finish line and win a fantasy baseball title if you’re still in contention. For this exercise, let’s assume that you are in second, third, fourth or fifth place, meaning you are hanging out near the first-place line and/or the money-making line. 

Here’s an example:

Home Run Standings

• Team A: 260
• Team B: 255
• Team C: 253
• Team D: 247
• You: 234
• Team E: 220
• Team F: 216
• Team G: 213
• Team H: 210
• Team I: 199
• Team J: 196
• Team K: 189

This isn’t an ideal place to be. With only a handful of weeks left, odds are you won’t be able to catch Team D without a massive home-run binge. Even if you somehow caught Team D, odds are even slimmer that you’d catch Team C. Therefore, your absolute best-case scenario is gaining one spot in the standings. On the other hand, you’re safely ahead of Team E assuming you don’t go through a major power drought.

So what’s the lesson here? There’s no reason to go after players like Giancarlo Stanton or Max Muncy on waivers if they are still hanging out there. They are home-run-or-bust type players who won’t help you down the stretch.

Note: Picking up Stanton or Muncy could, in theory, make sense if you’re neck-and-neck in the RBI category. In that case, you could go after them for that production and hope you kill two birds with one stone if they go on a HR streak.

But for argument’s sake, let’s say RBI isn’t one of those tipping-point categories. Instead, here’s that same team example above in the stolen base category.

Stolen Base Standings

• Team A: 150
• Team B: 148
• Team C: 147
• You: 144
• Team D: 139
• Team E: 136
• Team F: 128
• Team G: 122
• Team H: 116
• Team I: 115
• Team J: 108
• Team K: 99

Now we’re cooking. While your points earned in the home run category are close to locked in, there’s some meat on the bone in the SB category for you to move up. There’s also some incentive for you to hold off Team D and Team E, who could catch you in the final few weeks.

There are two ways to ensure a solid finish in the SB category. One is obvious. You could search waivers for a SB threat. Think Johan Rojas, Dylan Moore, Xavier Edwards, Jacob Young. Some of them might already be rostered, but if not, they are top-tier targets for the team above.

The other way to sustain/improve your SB production is to alter your own lineup. Let’s say you’re someone who has played Freddie Freeman at 1B and just got Tristan Casas back in your lineup. Yay, Casas! He’s locked into your CI spot, right? Perhaps you should rethink that moving forward. If you have someone like the disappointing Ke’Bryan Hayes on your bench (at least before he went on the IL, it makes sense to play that stolen-base threat ahead of Casas the next few weeks. I know that feels gross, but even if Casas smacks 3 homers next week, it’s likely less valuable than 1-2 stolen bases from your speed option. 

Here are some other theoretical bench-for-starter swaps you could make:

• David Hamilton (SBs) for Ezequiel Tovar
• Cedric Mullins for Tyler O’Neill
• Jacob Young for Nick Castellanos
• Maikel García for Isaac Paredes

Managing FAAB

We have the best weekly FAAB article out there, and it’s an excellent resource for NFBC bidding on Sunday nights. Blind bidding is a tricky and unpredictable exercise. The good thing about late August and early September? You can throw those bid ranges out the window.

If you’re someone who still has $200-300 of FAAB budget, I’m going to use a phrase that many fantasy football content creators use nowadays: Just get your guys.

Perhaps someone frustratingly dropped Nick Pivetta because they couldn’t deal with his inconsistency on the mound anymore. For someone who’s in need of strikeouts and already punting ratios, that would be a pretty nice get in FAAB. The bid range for Pivetta might say to spend $35-50, but remember, that’s for the average bidder who might not have excess funds. If you need the strikeouts, and you have the funds, go wild. Bid $100 on Pivetta. Almost no one will do it, and you leave yourself some room for error in case someone has the same thought process as you. The most important thing is that you do get him. Those extra strikeouts could make the difference between third place vs. sixth place in the K category at the end of the season. What’s a few extra bucks with little time left in the season?

OK, so what about those who are down to $50 left in their wallet? Obviously, there’s a different strategy involved. You still need to go after the players who will help you most in the standings. But understand, you’re unlikely to outbid others for said players. Maybe you’ll get lucky (which is why you should still bid even if you’re unlikely to win that player). More than likely, you won’t get your first choice(s). That’s fine. There are still ways to help your team down the stretch.

The best way to do that is to project what’s most likely to happen in a week or two, not what’s most likely to happen now. If you’re in need of a starting pitcher/streamer, look two matchups ahead. You might find a borderline option who’s lined up against the Dodgers this week and won’t command a high bid. But that same player may have a two-step the following week against PIT/MIA. That becomes an attractive option, and one you could likely win for $2-3 based on the more imminent Dodgers matchup.

If you’re in need of position players, take a look at which prospects are likely to be called up in September and try to get ahead of the curve now. Our own Vlad Sedler was able to victory lap on Twitter when he grabbed Jackson Holliday with no resistance ahead of his call-up and subsequent tear with the Orioles:

It will take some research, but speculating on a September call-up with a $1-2 bid can’t hurt you if you’re low on funds. It could be a major boost if you guess right, though.

Don’t Give Up

*Resisting the urge to quote Jim Valvano*

It’s cliche, and it might sound cheesy, but this is really important. It’s so, so, so easy to follow Step 1 of this article, look at your league standings and hang your head.

I’m 15 RBIs away from the next guy, that category is dead.
I’m 6 wins away and 9 saves away from gaining any ground. That will never happen.

Yes, those are legitimate obstacles. Being down on yourself is perfectly reasonable. We’re humans after all. That shouldn’t stop you from trying. I’ve seen so many fantasy managers give up toward the end when they think their efforts are futile. And that’s a huge, huge, huge mistake.  Why’s that? Because other teams in your league will inevitably do just that – give up.

A quick investigation of my three NFBC leagues uncovered some very interesting information about my opponents. Many of them, even teams near the top of the standings, have IL-eligible players littered throughout their starting lineups. Even NFBC managers give up late in the season. You just never know. Some of these NFBC players are managing 10-15 teams and don’t have the time or resources to keep up with their fifth-place team that they view as out of contention.

If those particular managers/teams are the ones directly ahead of you in categorical standings, then 15 RBI might not be that big of a hill to climb! If the team above you has 2-3 IL players stuck in their starting lineup, and you fill out your roster to the best of your ability, you could be gaining roughly 54-72 at-bats per week on that squad. I like your chances of making up 15 RBI in five weeks with that type of edge, assuming your team is relatively competitive.

Most of us will look at the standings and assume that everyone ahead of us is going all-out through the finish line. That’s simply not true. Even if the teams ahead of you are fielding a full, healthy lineup, there’s no guarantee that they are looking at the waiver wire with a magnifying glass trying to squeeze out every last bit of production. If your competition is treating these final five weeks like I treated tests in June back in middle school, the gap in the standings isn’t nearly as wide as it might appear on the surface. So don’t give up. Seek out every possible at-bat, every possible two-step and every possible save opportunity. 

Final Thoughts

If you follow the steps above, I guarantee you will enjoy the final few weeks of the fantasy baseball season. I can’t promise they will work, but at least you’ll know at the end of September that you managed your team until the final out. Sometimes, that final out can make the difference between making money or walking away with $0.

I promise you, there are a handful of people in your league who have already replaced their fantasy baseball bookmarks with bookmarks of their fantasy football league page. Don’t be that guy (or girl). At least, not yet. But if you must, we have some great fantasy football content here at FTN as well. Make sure to sign up! Adam Strangis and I will be all over the Discord this fall, like we were last season.

For those still in baseball mode (like me), hit us up in the Fantasy Baseball Discord where we’ll be closing out championships.