Blogging With The Enemy

I’m not sure if you’re all aware of this or not, but several of the guys from my own league read this blog. I’m sure the first thought coming to your mind is ‘whoa, doesn’t that kill your chances of winning?’ Well, to date it hasn’t! But no, in the end, I don’t think it will kill my chances of winning in the same sense that I don’t think other guys from your league reading this blog will kill your chances of winning. Fact of the matter is, prior to writing this blog, I gave the exact same advice to the guys I play with anyways. They’d shoot me an email and ask an opinion on a deal, or opinion on their team, and I’ll offer up the truth. In the end, it’s that personal decision that each of us makes that really separates the winners and the losers. Let me further break this argument down into three parts:

1) Access to the Analyzer

OK so they definitely have a leg up using the Team Analyzer versus not using one. But truth be told, my league has played this game so long that the Analyzer just creates a spreadsheet application for something we’ve all done for years: build a well balanced team. It’s nice to have the numbers right in front of you, nice to be able to pick them apart and analyze different moves, but most of these guys were doing something similar anyway, be it through a crude spreadsheet or just by eyeing it out. Moreover, I don’t think I win often because I can construct the most well rounded team. Let’s put it this way, doing so might put me ahead of say 75% of my league (and yes, that’s a nice bump) but the other 25% either by chance or design still have well rounded teams and competing with them is just as hard as competing against everybody. Moreover, we’ve discussed the different strategies that go into using the Analyzer. Maybe in baseball this season, one of the teams ‘punts’ stolen bases, maybe another ‘punts’ saves, and maybe I try not to punt anything. These are three different variations using the same information, and the one who executes the best is the one that wins.

2) Access to the Buy Low / Sell High strategy

One of my counterparts in the league said it best, after reading some of these blog posts, and while discussing our Mike Miller for Gerald Wallace deal. “Hey man, you took a lot of risk on that deal and Miller got injured. Things could’ve played out differently, I could’ve dealt you Vince Carter instead and you wouldn’t have made out nearly as well”. He is absolutely right. We’ve gone over this before; there is inherent risk in this strategy and you have to be careful about how you pull it off. No doubt some people out there did get unlucky, buying low on Vince, Jameer, Harris, and KG at the same time and having them all continue to play below their potential. Risk = Reward, but execution and implementation are what counts most.

Moreover, when we issue a Buy Low guy, we’re talking about a player that has caused his manager a lot of grief. They’re in that awkward position of having to start them (because they drafted him) yet watching him kill their team. These managers are dying to trade this player away. We are swooping in with an offer that relieves them of this anguish and man, you gotta trust me, no matter how many times you thieve em, they’re still going to ink with you. Sure there are some that will say ‘I’m never trading with you again, you always thieve me’, that’s fine. Not everyone is going to feel this way. The kid I got Blake Griffin off of, he won’t feel that way. More importantly, when you make an offer for a buy low player, the manager owning that player doesn’t have any options. He can either trade with you, or he can hold the player. It’s not like everyone is coming out of the woodwork asking for this guy. No, instead they want to have the Sell High players.

3) Access to my Draft Strategy

This one is tough, cause I play auction drafts. These guys will know my strategy from the outset and they can bid players against me. I love it! This is what makes auction drafts fun! This allows for a whole new avenue of Misdirection bids to throw them off the target. Maybe a guy like Al Horford comes up for bidding and maybe I start bidding on him heavy. Maybe one of these guys spots it and starts bidding against me. Maybe I run the price way up (now knowing he’ll keep upping the price) then just stick him with the player at ‘too high’ of a price. Then I’ll move on to my real target and this guy has no money left to get aggressive against me. Moreover everyone else just saw this guy go toe to toe with me and get stuck with a player he didn’t even really want. That’s a lesson in and of itself!

One quick side note here. With regard to Tier One players, and how much to spend on them in an auction draft. It’s true, there aren’t a lot of these guys, and people will bid against you for them. This will happen no matter what, but if they know you have no price ceiling, they’ll keep pushing. If all the Tier One players go off at ‘too high’ of a price, the guy who gets stuck with him is going to have to make a midseason trade. After all, common sense tells you if you spend 50% of your money on one guy, you’re in a heap of trouble. So use this as a guide, we all remember the CP3 post I laid out, basically valuing him in terms of players. Thus it makes sense to say, I won’t spend more for a Tier One player than it would cost for two Tier Two players. At that price, we begin to become indifferent. Use mock drafts and whatnot to try and get a sense of what the number is, and plan with it. I know I’ve told you the importance of getting a Chris Paul or Albert Pujols, but I’ll take a Dirk and a Wade for a total of $80 versus a Paul for $100 any day.

WE win in fantasy sports because of one thing; WE have a better idea about the future than everybody else. If we are wrong about that idea, then we learn from our mistake and move on. If there are two, or three, or four of us in your league, then you’ve got some competition and you gotta really work to get the win. But trust me, in the end it will be all that much more satisfying beating good competition. The ONLY way THEY will ever stop us from winning is if the entire league shuts us out from trading all together. Trust me, that’s not going to happen.