Fantasy Baseball Mind Games: Overreaction

Alex Gordon at the dish. Photo courtesy of Keith Allison.

Now that our musings on overconfidence are over, we are ready to move over to another ‘over’: overreaction.

One consequence of having emotion invested in your fantasy baseball team is overreaction toward new information.

And trust me that fantasy baseball players are prone to overreaction. Some fantasy owners see that their team had horrible pitching night to go along with a 4 for 32 night at the plate and they will simply find it hard to breathe. That night they are dropping half their team or putting them on the trading block. They claw at their face, like a big, stupid monkey thing.

It’s over, they scream in silent horror as their belief system crumbles.

“NOOOO!!!”

Hey! I said you scream silently. What’s the matter with you?

As I said, overreaction.

Winners and Losers

Being that this series of posts was inspired by the field of behavioral finance, I have an example for you from the world of finance. Namely, how financial advisers consistently warn against watching your 401K day-to-day. Watching the tiny swings will drive you crazy (unless you are a day trader, I suppose), so instead you are to invest it and leave it.  The same principle is true in roto fantasy baseball. Winners know how to not let the noise of the day-to-day be a distraction from the long view of the season. Losers overreact.

But it is true that people tend to heavily weigh their decisions toward more recent information, making any new opinion biased toward the latest news. This can be helpful, particularly when the latest is news is that your pitcher requires Tommy John surgery or lost to the season via Biogenesis like happened to me with Everth Cabrera. But this is counter-productive when the latest news is Alex Gordon is in an 0-for-8 skid.

Avoiding an Overreaction

Obviously, the most important lesson to be learned here is to retain a sense of perspective. While it’s easy to get caught up in the latest news, short-term approaches don’t usually yield the best results. If you do a thorough job of researching the player pool, you’ll better understand the true significance of recent news and will be able to roll with the punches. Remember: focus on the long-term picture.

Most fantasy baseball host providers give you a way to sort your team based upon the last 7, 15, or 30 days. Use this. Certainly look for larger trends that can spotted in the hard numbers, but do take care not freak out at one bad night at the dish. Likewise, don’t lose perspective on the “soft” data (like change of approach, off-the-field issues, etc.) either. An overreaction to that data can be just as costly.

Again, the lesson to be learned is maintaining a sense of perspective is what makes for consistent fantasy baseball success. Whatever you do…Don’t. Freak. Out.