I was struggling this week to come up with an idea or topic to discuss and decided to reflect on the season and all the writing and work I’ve done to come up with a useful formula and metric for points leagues. I think it’s better to be vulnerable and share the failures I had in order to get to this point instead of acting like I only succeed at fantasy baseball. The truth is I’ve learned that if you’re not on top of every single variable you can control that there are otherwise simply too many uncontrollable variables to just assume success. I must admit that I went into this season with an air of arrogance, and instead of going by some numbers or a metric I believe in, I ranked players based on instincts and some of those bad draft decisions cost me again. The truth is that I believe the lack of success drove me to get to work and get where I am now. I’d rather own it and learn from it in order to be even better, and part of that is being honest that I fell flat on my face and was also upset about it. So now I will do everything in my power to never let it happen again. At the end of the day my nature is that I’m a competitor, so it’s better to just embrace that it matters to me and that I’m dead serious about it. It has created a drive and hunger in me to work hard and pair action with my ideas instead of only letting it be an idea and nothing more. If I didn’t fail and have a bad record this season I’m not sure it would have pushed me to where I am now. 

It also doesn’t mean I’ve arrived, and to be frank I’m glad it doesn’t mean that. I’ve learned to be addicted to the process and place importance on that above all else. Whether the results follow or not, from now on I’m going to know the process is as good as it could have been. When I wasn’t taking action or making progress, it’s truly because I was focused on the wrong thing. I was only focused on the end goal and was already there in my mind, which is to do this as a profession and make money in some capacity. I strive to have a platform where my writing and analysis makes it to the people who will be happy to use it. The difference now is I’ve gained a love for the process, to the point that even if the end goal doesn’t come exactly how I envisioned it, the beauty is that I don’t care anymore. I know this is what I’m supposed to be doing, and for one of the only times in my life I’m pouring my full potential into this endeavor. I’m working hard to strive for greatness because I know I have the talent to do so. I don’t think that form of honesty is arrogance either, it’s more about being in tune with what my strengths and weaknesses are. This is something I enjoy to the point that I’m thankful that the process will never end. Maybe there will be a day where I’ve actually perfected a metric for points leagues, but I’m grateful in the meantime that I see it as a continuous equation that I can tweak and always find ways to make it even better and more precise.

I still want to cover some fantasy baseball related content, and also give an update to what I’m currently working on. I have made some real progress on creating a pitching metric where the final number would be comparable to hitters, and I’m on the right track and feel like I’m very close. That is exciting to me, because while the eye test seems to work well for me I’d still feel better if I had some sort of metric to go by as well. What I’m really excited about is that in this process I came up with the idea that I could actually use my metric to project full season point total for both hitters and pitchers, and that I could then use those projected point totals to easily compare hitters and pitchers to each other. While I can’t give anything away that I’m doing, I will have to wait until the end of the season to find out if my pitching metric actually works, and may have to problem solve and make changes to the formula in order for it to still be useful. Believe it or not, I am just as excited for the regular season to end so I can get to work on this and be ready for next season.

I talk about eye test because there is proof it works, like when I had to use the waiver wire to create a whole pitching staff. While my team is where I want it now and it’s firing on all cylinders, I didn’t have enough success early in the season in order for it to matter again. In other words, even for this year my plan actually worked in the end how I wanted it to, but I may have played the long game too much because I didn’t win enough consistently leading up to now in order for it to matter. This year taught me that in these head to head points leagues the margins are very thin, and because of that I lost a lot of close matchups this season. 

The good pitchers I had success in picking up this season are Merrill Kelly, Cade Horton, Ryne Nelson, Cam Schlittler, Trevor Rogers, Kyle Bradish, and even Jonah Tong. There is something that happened related to Tong I’d like to add as well. Twice this season I made the mistake of stashing a pitcher only to drop him right before he got called up, then someone else picked them up over me in FAAB. Those two pitchers are Jacob Misiorowski and Nolan McLean, and I remember thinking to myself before Misiorowski got called up that he was the one player where I’d be upset if he got called up and I didn’t have him. Unfortunately before FAAB ran next he had already debuted and dominated. I share that because it’s a mistake I have proof I learned from, and that’s what it’s all about in the end. Jonah Tong was that one pitcher available where I’d be upset if he came up and I didn’t already have him on my roster. The timing couldn’t have been better, as it came out two days after adding him he would be promoted for his debut, and at the time of writing this that debut is happening tonight, so I can’t wait to see it. Tong has dominated in the minors and has drawn comps to Tim Lincecum with his windup and delivery, and at his peak was one of my favorites. I’m confident that Tong is legit, and I look forward to writing about his debut next week.