Dumb Decisions You Have Made

In my very first preseason draft in my Dynasty league, I picked up a 19-year-old fireballer named Tim Lincecum in the late rounds. He sat on my bench until his late-season call-up a couple of years later, in which he was stellar.

I apparently have no sentimentality. Fast-forward to the beginning of the following season. I am leading the league pretty handily out of the gate, on the strength of outstanding pitching across the board. However, I don’t trust pitching to carry a team for a full season, so I make the brilliant decision to trade young Tim for Jim Thome and Jeff Francoeur, to bolster my lagging offense. I went from first to eleventh pretty quickly. The guy who now has Lincecum absolutely dominated the league last year.

I’m an idiot.

almost every year…since I didn’t ever like the “closer” idea and how specialized a game MLB has become.

so, I lost almost every years cause my “saves” category was down if not out. so, I overcompensated this year by drafting too many of them….oops

Got Howard as part of a pujols trade (good trade as I got lots of good young guys). Then after Howard had his first big season… I had the bright idea to trade him for Carpenter/David Wright. Carpenter made one last start and then went down for a long time. I cut him. The guy who traded him to me drafted him last year and got second place with Carpenters spectacular season (and with Howard)… Meanwhile David Wright sucks.

Because I needed pitching help, and my CF slot was already set for the long haul with Chris Young. Uh, yeah.

What I learned from that experience is that I’m a terrible fantasy owner.

Usually I like to hold on to my ML picks, but for some reason I just didn’t trust him… so I traded him away so that I could keep Bobby Crosby on my team… now, top that! :) I think I’m still having nightmares…

Two bad ones:

1) I traded for Albert Pujols in a 16-teamm 40-man roster dynasty league. Gave up a very young Ryan Braun, Andrew Miller, Aaron hill, 2 first rounders and 2 second rounders. My thought process at the time was that I had longoria at 3rd, so I could afford to move Braun to fill up first base for a decade. I’m now super weak in the OF and wish I had Braun every day

2) Traded for Liriano during his ridiculous stretch in 2006 or 2007 or whenever that was. Gave up Justin Upton and Sanchez (pitcher who went from Detroit to NYY, forget the first name). Similar story to above, very weak OF and I wish I had Upton every single day

Also drafted Rickie Weeks in the second round of our initial dynasty draft (probably like 25th overall) and drafted Delmon Young two rounds later

i’ve been playing fantasy baseball since 1987 so I have made plenty of bad calls, but few worse than in 2005. I didn’t have a good team that year so I was looking to pick up anyone that might help me next year. A spot opens up among my pitchers and this rookie from Boston comes up by the name of Papelbon. So, I pick him up and he does pretty well for a few weeks. Then some other guy comes along or whoever was on the dl comes back, I don’t remember which. Anyway, one of my 11 active pitchers has to go. Looking at Papelbon I think to myself, no way is he a keeper at 10 for next year. So, on to the waiver wire he goes. He was drafted at 17 by someone else to begin the 2006 season and the rest is history. Ouch.

The lesson is that upside manifests itself in surprising ways sometimes, and you don’t let a guy like that go unless you absolutely have to—which i most certainly didn’t.

In the thick of a title run in my dynasty league, I dealt Matusz, then in the minors, for Oswalt last June. I was looking to shore up my staff for the rest of the season and good pitching is crucial in this league — more so than in your average league. You go nowheres without it and at the time I had a lot of guys having better/much better years I wasn’t expecting and wasn’t sure they’d continue… i.e Grienke, Wainwright, Wandy, De La Rosa to name some. So getting an established arm who was a top 15-20 starter in my league the year before was appealing. Guys like that don’t get moved much in this league.

Awful trade. Oswalt wasn’t even that good in the 2H and missed time with the most famous balky back in the league. Matusz was up sooner than expected as well. The short term benefits were nil — worse yet, Oswalt was shut down the week before my title game — and the long term loss figures to be substantial. I also was a sucker and fell prey to the other owner threatening that a competitor was also in on Oswalt, a claim I doubt was true in retrospect. What I wouldn’t give to have that trade back, especially since I didn’t even win the league even though I ended with the most wins and most points, both quite comfortably. I lost to an inferior team by 20 pts in the title game.

In a highly competitive 12 team 15 keeper dynasty league, I have made a few mistakes losing long term value for short term gain. Some examples:

Mistake:
Traded Phillip Rivers for Joe Adai. Had Carson Palmer as starting QB, needed RB depth for playoff push. Rivers is a stud, Palmer a passable starter and Adai will be a platoon RB.

Correction:
Traded Adai for two firsts ( Wells, Harvin) Traded Brandon Jacobs for Aarron Rodgers
Wells and Harvin should exceed Adai’s output for the forseeable future and Rodgers is a stud, while Adai and Jacobs should continue to need to split carries.

Other mistakes listed:
Passing on good trade offers for aging Vets like Marshall Faulk, Clinton Portis, Alge Crumpler and various others

Correction:
This past year I parted with my longtime team captain London Fletcher for Vernon Davis.

I know this was fantasy football but it could help with dynasty baseball as well. Learn to spot when a vet is declining but not too much to still get value, and don’t trade away future studs for depth now.

Traded sabathia for vernon wells when sabarhia had that horrendous start his last year in cleveland, he went on to own the al and nl the rest of the year while vernon got hurt and sucked the big one

I really wanted King Felix so the owner offered me Felix for Paul Konerko. I was leary of the trade since I had some young kid named Morneau as my only 1b option. I turned the trade down and countered with Carlos Beltran for Felix & he accepted.
Since then, Konerko has fallen apart and I cut Morneau at the end of that season.
I still own Felix and will for awhile, but I have never forgotten the “what could have been”.

This is the only one that really stands out for me: I had drafted Justin Verlander in 08 and stuck it out the whole year with him and his 4.84 ERA. In 09, the person who had drafted him dropped him early on after a rough start. I picked him up, but his next start was against the Yankees…I didn’t want to go through what had happened in 08 again, so I dropped him the next day. Almost immediately after dropping him, he caught fire and had a Cy Young quality season.

I was offered Mark Reynolds for Mike Napoli. I turned it down because I thought Reynolds would lose the 3B job soon.

Didn’t work out too well.

In my dynasty league, picked up Mike Stanton, then a couple weeks later convinced myself that i needed Clayton Richard more. So I dropped Stanton, another owner picked him up and he’s been untouchable since.

I also traded away Mark Reynolds for Hiroki Kuroda a few years back.

Maybe I need a new hobby…

I came out of my rookie draft one season with Howie Kendrick, Dustin Pedroia, Matt Kemp, and Kendry Morales. Since I drafted two 2B, after Pedroia’s first full year I traded him off, thinking that Kendrick had a higher upside. Granted I pulled in a draft pick that netted me Kevin Slowey, but in retrospect I would have held on to him.

I trade Barmes for Dunn, the moment the trade passed, Barmes got injured in the freaky venison accident.
I won the league thanks to Dunn.

I barely remember the year anymore, but during Chris Carpenter’s coming out party, I decided to sell high on him (I’d at least gotten him right as a sleeper) and buy low on …..

…. Jason Schmidt.

I finished second that year.

Last year, in an OBP league, I sold high on Reynolds for David Wright. That’s no so bad, but it’s bad nonetheless.

In my keeper last year, I sold high on Choo in a roster crunch for Jake Arrieta. Not great. At least I spun Arrieta with something else (a comparable prospect) for A-Rod.

I am in the Air Force, joined when I was 18. First duty station was Omaha, NE. Home of the CWS and the Omaha Royals.

Two stories:
I had a supervisor who asked me to stand in line to get him CWS tickets, and we (me and a friend) ended up being first. This was in 2001, when the Huskers made it. It became a madhouse, made worse by the fact that we were #1 in line. It took us three days. We ended up getting yelled at by secret service (GW was throwing out the first pitch), interviewed by a million people, and constantly being harassed by people trying to cut infront of us (despite all the attention we were getting for being first in line). Long story short, we had a guy from SI interview us and like an idiot I mentioned why we were in line:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/baseball/college/news/2001/06/06/camp_rosenblatt_ap/

As you could imagine, when it got back to the command that a senior enlisted guy gave two of his subordinates leave to stand in line for him…it was not pretty.

—

Also, in 2002 I put in an application for the city to work for the O-Royals, and they hired me—as the visiting team batboy. I am 6-6, 230 pounds. It was a terrible effing idea:

1. Many players, especially coaches, were real asses. Especially the AAA Angels coaches. Scott Servais picked on me a lot for some reason.
2. Every Friday was a nightmare, since they stadium was packed as the people near the visiting side would ride my ass for being so old.
3. I have had a low grade hostility towards ground crews ever since working for them. The team they had were the biggest bunch of losers working the field that I have ever met. The head dude (actually, I think it was the #2 guy, the head guy was OK) was sure that I was stealing baseballs that were being fouled off into the dugout, and spent the entire season trying to prove it. It was really odd. My boss was cool and told me to just ignore them.
4. I am not sure, but I think there was some sort of weird racial tension in many of the clubhouses, generally between the Dominicans/P.R./Mexican/etc. Is that odd?
5. On the plus side, I still have a Ryan Ludwick and Travis Hafner signed bat, and I think John Lackey has nerves once before a Wednesday afternoon start. I thought that was funny, since he would end the year pitching in Game 7 of the WS.
6. I once though a coach asked me who was next in the order, and I told him. I was sitting between the bench and head coach. I was not paying attention. The coach politely told me to “Shut the fuck up”.
7. I learned that George Brett has.had a serious drinking problem. He spilled beer on me more than once.
8. I became a big Kit Pellow and Angel Berroa fan…both were very cool. Also, Nathan Hayes stood out as a super nice guy.

I thought being part of baseball would be fun. It’s better to be a fan. Sorta.

Before the 2006 season, I think, I traded a $7 Matt Holliday for a $7 Cory Sullivan. I think I was down on Holliday and thought Sullivan might get some SBs or something. Anyway, the rest of the story you know: Holliday blows up in 2007 and 2008, which happened to be the two years for which he was keepable at that price. Sullivan, well, hasn’t had the finest of careers since then. Oh, and this was NL only.

Then before the 2009 season, I traded a $14 Ludwick for a $20 Delmon Young (signed for four more years, no less). I figured Ludwick would crash and I thought Young would start producing. Trading away Ludwick wasn’t such a bad idea since he did crash, but trading for Young was almost as bad as my decision to trade for Sullivan. He was so bad that I just cut my losses and dropped him during the season.

Those are some of the more salient poor trades during my time as a fantasy owner. I’ve made quite a few bad trades. I’m not quite sure what I’ve learned from them. I probably should have learned by now to just stop trading, but I haven’t stopped, so I guess I haven’t learned anything.

My worst trade in my dynasty league was trading Tulo for Kazmir. What the hell was I thinking!?!??!

My best trade, and I still have absolutely no idea what the other manager was thinking, was in the same league. I traded Jarrod Saltalamacchia for HanRam, straight up!

traded A Lind before breakout for L Milledge in my Strat league-I can rationalize it as I had too many DH types etc but bad move.

This year fantasy draft took Cory Hart too early - 3 days later he’s losing his job

I dropped Tulowitzki after his poor start last year in a keeper league with large rosters where we keep 15 guys.

The bright side is that I ended up winning the league in the end, and I have a solid, solid team again this year, but damn. An infield with Votto, Utley, Tulowitzki, and Longoria for the foreseeable future would have been amazing.

Traded Wandy, Elvis Andrus, Fernando Martinez and some spare parts for Carlos Beltran. Beltran played a week for my team and then got hurt.

It’s unfortunate that fantasy trades don’t happen pending a physical

I have made some bonehead decision in my 12-team A.L, only auctions:

(1) In 2008 I stashed some money for players slipping through the cracks, felt good when I got Jason Giambi for $7 and felt even better when I nominated my last slider, until someone told me he was a free agent who hadn’t signed — Kenny Lofton.

(2) In that same auction, and it was my first in about 15 years, I came in with a great game plan and then booted it because I couldn’t resist what I thought was bargain power. Richie Sexson proved me wrong.

18-team 5×5 mixed dynasty league, usual $260 auction budget. I come out of the auction with Josh Johnson (intending to stow him on reserve until he recovers from his TJ surgery) at a cheap price, and then pick up Ricky Nolasco in the reserve draft.

I cut both of them before the end of April as part of my usual roster churn. I’d be paying them a combined $11 this season if I’d hung onto them.

Dynasty league. Took A. Gordon over Longoria a few years back, same draft also saw me take Frenchy early and Homer Bailey mid-round.

Also. my best trade ever was also my worst. Traded Andruw Jones and Quentin for J. Upton right before Quentin went down two years back. Sadly at the last minute added J. Johnson for Oswalt to that deal. Oswalt was great that year, but JJ could be very good for a while