Luck is My Middle Name! Too Bad My First Name is 'Bad'

[DOUGHBOYS]

Happy New Year!
I'm so baseball minded, or rather fantasy baseball minded that now, 'Happy New Year' means to me, that exactly half the off season is gone. Or in a fantasy sense, half of the studying/drafting season is over.
Some of us have a draft under our belts already. Never did understand what 'under our belts' really meant. But people say it.
Some, who reside on the Dark Side, are just now getting into the swing of things and are studying now or taking the plunge into drafts.

Let's talk about these drafts and something that drafters don't like to talk about.
Luck.
Funny thing about luck. Some tell us, it's right around the corner, but they never tell us WHICH corner.
Our luck could be different. There is this thought in paraphrasing an author...
"Luck is simply the advantage a drafter gains in executing the correct course of action.”
This infers that luck is gained as long as we have the right strategy. But, it doesn't always work that way.

Then, of course, there is this...
“Do ya' feel lucky, punk?”
Almost all of us have thought this to ourselves as we take an injury prone player or a player that most do not like.

Luck is mostly perceived. Like 'value' is at a draft.
I like this story......
A boy left home when he was 18. The day after leaving home, he was hit by a car while crossing a street. He was clinically dead for three minutes until doctors revived him. He was hospitalized for three months.
Finally, sufficiently recovered, he asked the nurse where his clothes were. She handed him a bag. In the bag were all his clothes except for his underwear.
"I'm sorry, Sir, when you were brought in, we had to cut your underwear from your body."
She handed him a new pair of underwear (hospital bill cost of $99.95, no doubt) and told him that maybe this pair of underwear would be luckier than the last.
40 years later at age 58, he confided to friends that he had worn that same pair of underwear for the last 40 years.
"Why!!?" His friends asked.
"I haven't died in these underwear, not even once!"

For some reason, we'd rather think that drafting is mostly skill, but luck permeates.
One kind of luck is 'hidden value'. Hidden value is more important than 'value' itself.
Dalai Lama once said, 'Sometimes not getting what you want, is a wonderful stroke of luck'. And although Lama would have probably sucked at fantasy baseball, he defined 'hidden value'.
Let's say that last year, we went into drafts with three players high on our lists.
Matt Kemp, Mark Teixeira, and BJ Upton.
We come out of the draft pissed off. We got snaked every time a player we liked was about to be drafted. Instead, we settle for Chris Davis, Carlos Gomez, and Matt Carpenter. We were pissed, but that hidden value carried us to a league Championship. Baseball season is long. By the end of the season, we wonder how we could have been so smart to have Davis, Gomez, and Carpenter on one team, yet so dumb to have Kemp, Teixeira, and Upton on most of our others.
Like 'value', hidden value is not realized till the players start putting up stats. It is only then that we realize that our secondary type players should have been placed in front of our primary players.

Another luck is 'collective stupid'. This is 14 other drafters being stupid to fit your needs. They aren't bad drafters.
These drafters just don't seem to like the same players we like. It results in dream drafts. At least, till the season begins.
Everybody high on our list was obtained.
We wanted CarGo in the first round. Got him.
We wanted Wright in the second round got him.
We wanted Scherzer in the second round too, and got him in the third.
We wanted Puig in the third round. Got him in the fourth round.
Some call these 'value picks'. But they are more than that. They are gifts. They are players already targeted, coming at a discount price.
When coming out of a draft like this, we are almost giddy. Thinking we may have a dream team. But, for some reason, nobody else agrees.
The season tells the story in whether we were lucky to get those players. Or worse, we find out that the 'collective stupid' was not the other 14 drafters, it was us.

Some sharks like to dive in to the kiddie end of a fantasy pool. They'll see 14 names unrecognized and jump in thinking that they'll feast on the guppies. It's a Fantasy version of 'Shark Week'.
They are trying to force a 'collective stupid'.
That shark is usually disappointed. These guppies are not like other drafters. With most drafters, there is a flow to the draft. Every player is taken within a certain time frame. Not so with guppies.
Guppies might hear a rumor or read a roto world report that makes them think more of a player than they should.
The sharks favorite pick might be Chris Sale in the fourth round. But, a guppy just saw an update on Sale and drafts him in the third.
Another favorite, targeted for the seventh round is taken in the fifth. And it goes on and on.
The shark thinking he would eat up all the guppies comes away from the draft, hungry. He may have a lot of 'hidden value' on his roster, but for now, he is anxious to find another draft. A draft with minds more like his own.

Good luck in finding your own luck.
We are 43 days from those magical four words, 'Pitchers and Catchers report'.
57 days from the first spring training game. 89 days till real baseball season starts. There are two promotional games in Australia before.
At the least, we can stop referring to these players as 'next year's players'. Next year is now. And we are that much closer to something we are lucky to have and all want.
Baseball Season.