The secret to winning at fantasy baseball is to always look for opportunities to make your team better. This may seem obvious, but it’s amazing how many people simply miss this.
Additionally, you ned to take advantage of opportunities to improve your team up to the end of the season. Many owners give attention to the draft only, others simply let their guys ride, some lose interest at the end, and way too many refuse to adjust strategy to fit the current realities of the fantasy baseball league they are playing in. None of those owners will win regularly because they haven’t gotten the memo that you need to work on improving your team from game one until game 162.
I’ll give you an example. I’m been near the top of a league I play in just about all season. I manage multiple teams, so it’s not the one I give most attention to, but I’ve been engaged enough to recognize early that several owners would hit the games started cap that you’ll find in most standard leagues. Although I was trending behind in wins, I knew that the other owners wouldn’t accrue Wins once they hit this cap and that it would give me an opportunity to make some late season noise in the Wins category.
I began streaming in an occasional pitcher last month in response. What didn’t occur to me was that a couple of the other owners would see they were reaching the cap and drop some quality pitchers as a result. I didn’t want to sacrifice hitting by trading it for pitching, instead relying on streaming in pitchers. But here were some quality starting pitchers suddenly just sitting in the free agent pool. What an opportunity!
What did I do? I took advantage of the opportunity to make my team better and picked up those pitchers, that’s what!
While this example might not describe your experience perfectly, the principles still hold.
- Get into a mindset early that your goal is to improve your team by whatever means necessary.
- Play the long game while looking for opportunities, big or small.
- Jump on those opportunities, regardless of where they come in the season. This means staying engaged right until the very end, taking advantage of one owner’s trash, which might be your treasure.
Keep your eyes open. One of the many fun aspects of roto style fantasy baseball is that there are always opportunities knocking, even at the very end of the season.