Fantasy Baseball Mind Games: Overconfidence

Yes, Prince, did you have your hand raised? Image from Getty.

There is an important reason for writing this Mind Games series of posts. I am burdened with glorious purpose.

Most fantasy baseball players think they are pretty good at the game, average at very least. But the truth is that most guys just aren’t that good at it. I say that only because I felt like we were in the circle of trust and could be honest with one another.

But I come emboldened with examples that illustrate just how our minds can play games with us that leave us prone to overconfidence. In a 2006 study entitled “Behaving Badly“, researcher James Montier found that 74% of the 300 professional fund managers surveyed believed they had delivered above-average job performance. Of the remaining 26% surveyed, the majority viewed themselves as average. Incredibly, almost 100% of those surveyed believed that their job performance was average or better. Clearly, there is an irrationally high level of overconfidence among these fund managers.

As you can imagine, overconfidence (i.e., overestimating or exaggerating one’s ability to successfully perform a particular task) is not a trait that applies only to fund managers. Most of us play fantasy baseball because we feel that we have what it takes to win, glossing over the fact that every other owner strongly believes that same thing, yet there can only be one winner.

Keep in mind that there is a fine line between confidence and overconfidence. Confidence implies realistically trusting in one’s abilities, while overconfidence implies an overly optimistic assessment of one’s knowledge or control over a situation.

Overconfidence in Action

Let’s deconstruct the above definition, starting with an overly optimistic assessment of one’s control over a situation. In terms of roster construction, overconfidence can be detrimental to your player evaluation ability in the long run. To many fantasy baseball players take preseason projections as gospel, rather than as guidelines. Ron Shandler, the Godfather of fantasy baseball, found in his research that the first round (top 15) has a whopping 66% turnover rate year-over-year. Why is that? Because projections are an attempt to predict the future!

Needless to say, that isn’t easy and we’d do well to remember that the player’s performance on the field is out of our control. Hold projections loosely and stay nimble as you reevaluate as the season progresses.

To return to our fund manager metaphor, in a 1998 study entitled “Volume, Volatility, Price, and Profit When all Traders are Above Average”, researchers found that overconfident investors generally conduct more trades than their less-confident counterparts. In their hubris they felt that their knowledge was greater than everyone else’s. Overconfident fantasy baseball owners tend to believe they are better than others at choosing the best players and the best times to add/drop a player. The reality is that every other fantasy baseball player has access to the exact same data and equal access to the internet’s 92 gazillion fantasy baseball websites.

With five minutes of research another owner knows just as much about the players as you do. Differentiating yourself from the pack comes down to application of that knowledge, and not letting your mind play it’s games with you. Yet, most owners still insist their knowledge is better than everyone else’s and make moves accordingly. Unfortunately, they often receive significantly lower value than an owner who humbly holds his biases loosely (More Mind Games: Hindsight Bias) and adapts (More Mind Games: Herd Behavior) more easily.

Daily fantasy baseball preys on overconfidence as well. Many who are overly confident that they can accurately predict how individual players will perform day by day (More Mind Games: Gambler’s Fallacy) will place large bets because they are so fortified with confidence. Needless to say, the house always wins, as evidenced by the rapid rise of daily fantasy baseball. Overconfidence can be hard on your wallet.

Overcoming Overconfidence

Keep in mind that every fantasy baseball player has access to the same player evaluation reports and best statistical sorting tools in baseball, yet can still struggle at achieving a consistent winning pattern. The best fantasy baseball players know that each season (nay, each day) presents a new set of challenges and that play strategies constantly need refining. Stay loose out there. Just about every fantasy owner is only one trade or injury away from a very humbling wake-up call.

Be confident. You’ve done your research. You know the player pool. You know your league settings backward and forward. You can do this.

But also remain open to the fact that you don’t know it all. There is still more to learn. Let baseball continue to surprise you.