NFBC Message Boards

I go into a draft thinking about how my hitting will look.
Yet, everyday during the season, the first thing I check after the standings is if I have a pitcher throwing that day.

I hate drafting closers (spellchecker thinks not a word, stupid spellchecker doesn't play fantasy baseball).
Yet, I hate paying faab for them more.

I hate drafting judys.
Yet, I'll pay for them during the season.

Anytime somebody else picks somebody with an injury history, a smirk forms
Yet, if I take an injury risk, I have confidence he won't get hurt again.

Before a player is on my team, he'll be lucky to hit 10 home runs
Yet, afterwards there is a way he can hit 15.

Everybody else marvels at a web gem.
Yet, I'll marvel that again it was MY player who was robbed....again.

I'll think it's ok that my guy has eight errors in six games, I don't care, he's still hitting.
Yet, the Manager benches him.

The announcer thinks it's a shame that Pujols gets hit with the pitch.
Yet, I find it a great way for my pitcher to avoid pitching to him without affecting his WHIP.

My wife asks how I can keep up with eight games on a split screen.
Yet, I'm fuming about the one they're not showing.

I'm smart enough not to start Gio in Texas and start Moreland,
Yet, Gio gets bombed and Moreland hits a grand slam,
Double Yet, the rains come and wash away the stats,
Triple yet, stupid Mother Nature!
Quad yet, but I hold no grudges and let things go easily.

Classic, the life and times of a fantasy player

"Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball..."

-Jacques Barzun

Baseball is an incubator of ideas. Think of all the social trends that have been visible and in some cases partially precipitated by baseball. Entertainment as big business. Babe Ruth as icon and as marketing machine. A laboratory for unions and monopolies. For race relations. The power of the media to define the narrative. Baseball is a place for us to see ourselves reflected the game on the field and off.

I first encountered the Barzun on a calendar I got in high school. One of those where you tore off a page and got a different quote every day. It was only recently that I discovered this quote goes on to add: "...the rules and realities of the game..."

I find the adendum about rules and realities particularly interesting in that baseball is currently reflecting back to us the new thinking on economics. I think economics is very much about rules and reality. Moneyball. Data. Quantification of the unquantifiable. Principles and observations.

When you (Doughboys) write:

Before a player is on my team, he'll be lucky to hit 10 home runs
Yet, afterwards there is a way he can hit 15.

you're very elegantly stating a theory put forward by Daniel Kahneman, who won a Nobel Prize in economics (and who is a psychologist by trade), called the Endowment Effect. It says, basically: you put more value on stuff you have than on stuff you don't have.

I like fantasy baseball because it gives us regular guys a place to think about these new economic principles in the same way that we used calculating batting average to figure out long division. It puts be context to the concept in a way that brings it home.

There's one last part to the Barzun quote: "... and do it by watching first some high-school or small-town teams." I think the other thing that makes baseball such a good laboratory is that the same rules apply almost everywhere. Not just the literal rule of the game but the principle that shape it as well. The game at a high school level falls under the same forces of chance and sample size as the major league game.

Excellent stuff, Steve.
You should post more.

Thank you, sir. You're providing a lot of great content here. Thoughtful and entertaining. I appreciate the opportunity to piggyback some of my thoughts onto your good work. I'll probably be around posting from time to time as the season ramps up.