Photo courtesy of MudflapDC.
The bad news: The season is just at its halfway point and as you look at the standings, you know that you have no shot at winning your fantasy baseball league. Maybe your team has just not performed up to expectations. Maybe two are three teams have really separated themselves from the heard. Maybe it’s a combination of a few things. But either way, you will not be on the receiving end of the trophy this year, and it’s still just July.
The worse news: There’s a guy in your league that you really don’t like. This guy is like the Yankees or Lakers. He always wins and lets you know about it. He knows how to manipulate every trade he makes, always getting the clear better end of the deal, usually picking on some of the lesser-experienced owners in the league. You’re just tired of this guy winning and low and behold, it looks like he might do that once again this year.
The good news: It’s not time to look at fantasy football season. It’s not time to start looking at the 2014 draft. You may not win this league, but you can have a lot of say in who does win it. More importantly, you can have a lot of say in who does not win it. Best of all, it’s perfectly okay, as long as you follow a few guidelines on your quest.
What’s not okay?
To be quite frank, tanking is not okay. For the sake of this argument, we’re going your rival Team A, and your rival’s closest competitor, a guy you wouldn’t mind seeing take home the title, Team B.
You take a look at the standings and notice something. You’re in a points battle in home runs and RBI with Team B. You also happen to have Miguel Cabrera on your roster. If you were to leave Miggy on your bench, it would pretty much guarantee that Team B would pass you in both of those categories, picking up two vital points in his battle with Team A.
Tempting as it may be, it’s not okay to do that.
You may be familiar with one kind of tanking in real sports. A team falls out of contention early in the season, and maybe it’s a season where there are a few top prospects who will be available in the next draft. So, rather than go all out to be mediocre, they blow things up that year. Their stars sit out a long time for small injuries, players who are normally end of the bench guys get quality playing time, starters are pulled at the end of winnable games.
I’m not crazy about that. Those teams don’t reduce ticket, parking, or concessions costs for their fans, they owe them a good effort. But in that case, they are at least doing it for a draft pick, and a lot of fans actually start to pull against their favorite team. It’s not my favorite part of sports, but I guess I’ve made my peace with it.
But even in those cases, teams aren’t tanking to try to keep one team out. Imagine this happening in real baseball. Let’s say the Yankees are in a playoff race with the Orioles, and the Red Sox are out of contention. Obviously the Red Sox loathe New York, but if they tanked their games against Baltimore and gave a full on effort against New York in their games, how do you think the rest of the league would take that? How do you think that even those most ardent Yankee haters out there would take that? I can’t imagine it would go down too well, and it may well result in league action if any of it could be proven.
So, even if you don’t like one-half of a championship race, you can’t tank in certain categories to give the other half of it a better chance to win.
You also can’t make blatantly unfair trades to benefit the “better” half of championship races. Obviously, you don’t do that in a keeper league but even if the league doesn’t carry over, it’s not okay to trade Mike Trout to Team B for J.P. Arencibia just to give him a better chance to win. Again, it’s probably tempting, but not an okay move.
If you’re going to spoil, do so by bringing your best effort, not by tanking. Actually, that leads me perfectly into this area.
What is okay?
Now, let’s say that you’re in a point battle with Team A in homers and RBI and, and a battle with Team B in batting average. Let’s also say that you see someone like Chris Carter or Adam Dunn on the waiver wire. You know those people will supply the thump, but not much else.
You can go after these guys, even if it costs you your average battle with Team B. The reason’s pretty simple: You’re picking up two points and punting one. So, you net positive, and you get to dig at your rival a little bit. What’s wrong with that? Nothing, I say!
The difference is obvious.
Whether you really care about who wins or not (assuming you’re out of contention), you do owe it to your league to play the season out as best you can. Maybe that’s just taking a few minutes every Monday to set your lineup for the week, but you have to try to do your best.
The same principle applies here. It is okay to try everything you can to keep a specific player from winning, you just can’t spite your own team to do it.
Basically, a rule of thumb is that if it helps your team, even if only slightly, pretty much everything is okay. If it hurts your team and you know it will, it’s not okay.
Something I think all out of contention players should do is to set a goal for the end of the year. Maybe that’s avoiding the cellar, maybe it’s finishing in the top half of the standings, or finishing in any specific spot.
Knocking out a contender is a fine goal, as long as it makes your team better.