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19
May
2009
The Death Of The Buy Low PDF  | Print |  E-mail
Fantasy Baseball Blog
Written by Mike Podhorzer   
This is usually my favorite time of the fantasy baseball season as we are now through more than six weeks of games and owners are beginning to truly panic. Su ddenly it is no longer a slow start, but an extended slump that has owners legitimately concerned about their players. I would guess that just two or three seasons ago, the popular "buy low" trade was rampant in leagues, as more knowledgeable owners took advantage of the less informed using concepts such as BABIP and LOB% before they hit the mainstream. Unfortunately, as statistical one-stop shops like FanGraphs and fantasy baseball blogs and websites like this one have increased in readership, the ability to pull off a buy low trade has become nearly impossible. Thus, I am officially announcing the death of the buy low trade.

At this time of year, I always compile a list of pitchers to make an attempt at buying low. In the past, I have been quite successful, which is one of several reasons why I spend little on pitching at the draft. This year, in an ironic twist, Jon Lester appears near the top of my acquisition list. I call it an ironic twist because going all the way back to the 2008 pre-season, I have made it known that I was not a fan of Mr. Lester. However, his skills so far this season are superb, and he is actually pitching better than he did last year. Sadly, luck just has not been on his side this time around. Accordingly, I have been sending out trade offers for Lester over the last week in both of my leagues, but with no success. In fact, what inspired this article was a post published on our message board yesterday that included the following:

I've received nonsense offers the past week, especially for Jon Lester (I read the Yahoo! Sports pages too-I know he's a 'buy low' candidate) and unfortunately this has been a growing trend.
I bolded the important part. Having never read a Yahoo! expert article this season, I was curious to learn exactly what their writers said about Lester, so I went searching through the archives. Lo and behold, I found the below from an article published on May 14, just a couple of days before my offer was sent:
Market Value: Strong Buy (all leagues) 

Lowdown: Baffled by his recent rocky efforts, Lester believes the sinister side of Lady Luck is to blame for the misfortune. According to his horrifically unlucky .394 BABIP, the starter’s assumption is correct.
Sure enough, Lester is indeed flagged as a strong buy candidate and the author even mentions his ridiculously high BABIP. With this type of analysis available everywhere now, fantasy owners don't have to do any in-season research themselves anymore and could simply read the free articles from the very website where their league is hosted. When everyone is telling you to buy low on a player, you better believe said player's owners will not be giving him away cheaply. This kills the advantage the more advanced owners have when they have come to these determinations on their own. Instead of trying to make a trade with the Lester owner in my league, apparently I am actually attempting to make a trade with Yahoo's Brad Evans.

So what is an owner to do now that the playing field has been leveled during the season? What does this mean for the balance between luck and skill when determining which factor is more important to winning your fantasy league?
  • The draft is more important than ever before. If you draft a perfect team, then you won't have to even care if you can buy low or not because your team will have no holes in need of a fix! On a serious note, the skill level gap between owners is most exposed during the draft and although it will continue to decrease, it still exists. This gap will manifest itself even more as the player pool deepens. The gap though will be much smaller during the season given the wealth of fantasy advice sites to make decisions for you. As a result, you must utilize your knowledge advantage during the draft by calculating your own values based on your own projections (or by using mine that are published on the premium site), and not falling victim to groupthink and the consensus opinion.  
  • Not everyone who writes for a fantasy sports site and is given the title of "fantasy expert" actually knows any more than the typical message board poster or casual fantasy owner. Their analysis could be weak, leading to incorrect conclusions, and this is where you could take full advantage. If your league mates are blindly taking this author's advice, find out what he is saying and then exploit it. Is the author telling you about a pitcher not to sell high on, while endorsing his opinion with poor supporting evidence? If you happen to own this pitcher, it is time to celebrate and start offering him around to every other owner. Your league mates who read this author's advice and always listen to it will jump at the opportunity to acquire this new breakout star, whereas you will know better and look forward to watching as this pitcher crashes down to Earth...on your opponent's team. IN a world where one site called Johan Santana a "breakout player" there is plenty of bad advice out there.
  • Luck plays more of a role than ever before and one season's worth of results in a fantasy league is hardly an indicator of fantasy baseball playing ability. This was the case in the past and it is even more so now. The sample size required to determine fantasy baseball skill level continues to increase.
It is no fun when the statistics you have prided yourself on learning, understanding and applying to fantasy baseball go mainstream and your brother's friend even asks you if you are going to name your child BABIP Podhorzer (yes, I was actually asked this). What has happened with this proliferation of fantasy advice sites is akin to sitting at the poker table where everyone is sitting with a chart of the odds in every possible situation. There goes the advantage you had from being able to calculate such odds in your head! Instead of crying and whining about all the luck involved in fantasy baseball, we need to continually look for new ways to maintain an advantage over lesser skilled owners.
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written by Brian Joura, May 21, 2009
Wow several things I want to chime in on here.

I think that Draft Day should be the most important determining factor in any fantasy owner's success, so I have no problem with that.

If owners are smarter then perhaps I'll stop getting ridiculous trade proposals. I'm in favor of that, too.

And perhaps people will learn that with trades you're trying to win the league or get a money spot. It doesn't make a difference if you "win" the trade, too - you've got a bigger goal in mind.

There's always room for strategy and creativity and yes, even hunches. I think these things tend to increase when the knowledge playing field is more level.

And even if everyone has identical knowledge, or access to knowledge, there are still different ways to interpret all of the various numbers.

You want to trade for Ricky Nolasco. I want to trade him away. I don't think that makes either one of us necessarily wrong, and obviously it would depend a lot on what we were able to get in our respective deals. But it is an example of how two people looking at mostly the same numbers can come to different conclusions.

Somebody wrote an article on FBG last year, I'm guessing you or Pat, and the theme was: Sometimes Regression Takes Awhile. And it's hard for me to imagine that people won't have differences of opinion over that concept.

The first commenter said that it made trades harder. And maybe it does. Or maybe owners just need to adjust their trading styles and instead of looking to swindle the other team they learn to focus on deals that help both clubs.
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written by MikePodhorzer, May 20, 2009
It seems like this year more than ever before owners are holding on to their bad luck/high ERA pitchers like Lester and Nolasco. I even made a play for Verlander when his ERA was around 9.00 with no luck. Verlander even sucked last year so you'd think there was a reasonable chance his owner would give up on him. It's quite annoying.

Then I just read on a message board that someone traded Jason Bartlett and Hunter Pence for Matt Holliday and Jimmy Rollins! Maybe I just play in the wrong leagues coz that trade is insane.
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Well Said
written by Eric Gehman, May 20, 2009
Even though it comes off as a bit gripey at times, this is definitely true - mainstream fantasy analysis from all the major "service providers" (ESPN, Yahoo, CBS, etc.) has brought the concept of luck into the minds of almost all owners and has ruined the strategy of the game. There's nothing more frustrating than reading the player news of a guy you're targeting and seeing that ESPN published an advertisement about how you should buy low on said player. When the owner doesn't even have to go looking for this kind of advice anymore, the game ceases to be enjoyable. I'm in a fairly competitive keeper league right now with some friends and no one will trade players because they're either waiting for their luck to turn around or are certain that said player has yet to realize their potential. It makes it impossible to work out a deal, even when two teams have compatible/complementary holes and strengths. Talk about frustrating!

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