Another difference lies in what positions you are evaluating. In fantasy baseball, everyone focuses on hitters. As a matter of fact, you can peruse the messageboards and see that most managers believe that picking pitchers is some kind of mystery, an alchemy of sorts… I would be willing to bet that most managers spend about 80-90% of their time studying hitters.
Baseball betting is completely the opposite! As a bettor, you will spend 80-90% of your time studying the pitchers. The lineup sometimes never comes into play because of the quality of the pitchers, like on Monday night with Jake Peavy. Now, there are many fantasy managers who will study the pitchers on a weekly basis to optimize their rotation. This analysis is basically the same between the two, except in fantasy you are going to need to project over a week where bettors are to able do analysis up to game time.
At the end of the day, these are the only two significant differences between preparing for the two.
I suggest that to get better at your fantasy game study the daily information as a bettor would. You don’t have to bet, but make mental notes of the best and worst match-ups. Keep a log of who you would have picked. When you look at the boxscores from the previous day, take the opportunity to review the match-ups for the day and maybe even upcoming games. It increases your awareness of pitching.
On the other side of the aisle, study the hitters the same way that fantasy managers do. Take it down to the minutest of details. This will help to increase awareness of how pitching affects hitting, and vice versa.
Personally, I am a fantasy manager who hates to not get a return on my most valuable asset – time. What I do is bet on games to keep my focus on the daily ins and outs of the game and to keep myself in tune with what is happening on the mound. I only bet $5 on a pick. I need to keep up with what is going on in the game, and that takes time. The FAAB period on Sundays takes time. Watching the games takes time. At least if I am doing well, I am making a return on my time by betting. As you can tell from my past results in the NFBC, I haven’t earned anything here.
BTW, if you don’t bet but you are playing in the NFBC, either you have a lot more money than I do or you just haven’t realized that you made a $1300 wager.
Fortunately, I learn well from my mistakes. Many, many moons ago, I started down this path as a football bettor, then basketball, then hockey, and then baseball. I learned very quickly how to throw away money at a young age. Football killed me. Basketball was worse. Hockey was a way to regain myself, which always resulted in more losses. But baseball was my way of making part of it back. I took too many losses and eventually wisened up. I cut out basketball and hockey altogether. The only time I will bet basketball is the Las Vegas draft. And then, I try to hide my measly little $10 picks from everyone, which I mostly don’t hit. Football is a different story for a different time.
Back about nine years ago, I found fantasy baseball on Yahoo. I was so overwhelmed by it that it took over my gaming addiction. I’m not hooked on making bets; I’m hooked on competition. Yahoo’s fantasy baseball saved my life. I stopped betting completely for a couple of years. I thought a lot like Jim Ferrari said – fantasy baseball was all the action I needed. And then came fantasy football, fantasy basketball, and fantasy hockey… Totally different outcome from betting though: I conquered all. That was just enough for me to sit back in my own mind and say, “I’m the man.” I did a search one day for pay leagues, because I was sure they had to exist… And I found the NFBC. I put up two $1250 bets and got my butt kicked. Ah, humility at the price of $2500…
I figured that if I could put up two big bets like that, I might as well start making my little bets as well. And the rest is history. Fantasy has made my betting better; betting has made my fantasy game better. Since 2004 I have steadily improved on my bankroll. I started with $200 in 2004 as an initial investment in betting. I started making $5 bets, because I needed to get a little bit of a return on my time. Besides, the big important bets were the ones that I had laid on myself in the NFBC. In 2008, I’m starting my season off with a $796 bankroll. When you think about the percentages, it’s not a bad return at all. But trust me there are a LOT of $5 bets in there.
Since 2004 I have gone from 188 of 195, 233 of 300, 186 of 330, and 147 of 375 in the NFBC. I am pretty grateful to have been around so many good managers that taught me many lessons. I don’t think my improvement is bad at all, considering I stepped into this not ever being in a live draft or an auction, not having any idea that you needed to evaluate all of the players, not knowing that you needed performance targets, and not knowing that there was a very strong core of serious players out there. I came in blind, but now I stumble around much wiser.
Keep an open mind and learn how to effectively use your tools.
I also want to take a moment and send out some thanks to people who deserve it. Once the dust settles after the first few weeks, it is going to be analyzing, picking, and studying everyday, so I may miss out on a chance to do this.
Thanks to Gene McCaffrey for all of the encouragement in the auction each year. Also, Gene, thanks for this idea. You said it best in an interview with Jeff Erickson, “I found the best way for me to research a player was to write about him.” I agree, and to take it a step further, I found its the best way to play the game.
Thanks to Greg Ambrosius for giving me a place to play that game and a notebook to write about it in.
Thanks to Perry Van Hook for sitting next to me nearly every year in that auction and allowing me to steal just one tidbit of your experience each time. It was from Perry that I realized that your evaluation sheets needed to be divided up into positions. Laugh if you want, but that was a monumental break-thru for me. Watching Perry really taught me how to work my way through a draft with just some paper, magazines, and pencils.
Thanks to Shawn Childs, for never being a dick to a newbie. Most everything I have learned about drafting and playing the game, I have learned from watching or talking to Shawn. Shawn is the Bobby Cox of fantasy baseball, or you can pick whoever you think is the greatest manager. And thanks to Kevin, many-many-many thanks to Kevin (whatever his last name is), for making me feel comfortable when I dove into that pool of sharks for the very first time. He loosened me up and then the rest of you took advantage of me. I know how this game works
Thanks to Eddie Gillis for showing me that magic still exists in the game. It isn’t just about numbers. He gave me a pick to start the 2007 season. I had my own and was foiled. Eddie’s pick became mine, and Carlos Beltran turned out pretty darn good for my team. I targeted Eddie all of last season, and for a good part of it, my team stayed ahead. He got me in the end, but the race kept me active long after my team had lost hope.
There are many more…