The Tactical Power of Doing Nothing

The following story is going to sound irrelevant, but bear with me…

I recently joined a small band with some friends in my community. There are five of us: a lead guitarist, a rhythm guitarist, a bassist and a drummer. I play the keyboard. We are all in our 50s and 60s, none are professionals but a few have been in bands before. We play mostly 1960s and 1970s covers.

Everybody loves to play. When someone offers up a new song, we all start going at it. Everybody plays, all the time, in every measure of the song. But sometimes I hang back. They look at me, as if to say, “why aren’t you playing?”

My daughter, Justina, is a professional singer-songwriter who reminds me that, sometimes, less is more. I hang back because some songs don’t need a keyboard, or the song doesn’t need a keyboard in every single measure. For some songs, I can add drama by playing only during the chorus, or starting with the second verse. For me, it makes for a better sounding song. For my bandmates, it’s like, “don’t you enjoy playing?”

In some ways, fantasy baseball is similar. Since games are played all the time, we feel compelled to manage our rosters all the time. But sometimes that does not make for a better team. Of course, if you are hit with an injury, you fix it, but many times the best move is to do nothing. Sometimes, less is more.

The Baseball Forecaster contains research (page 54 in the 2017 edition) that shows that micro-managing a roster tends to yield poorer results overall. You should re-read it.

There are several times when it makes more sense to just hang back:

1. Major trades, and even routine player replacements need time to percolate, but we often don’t have the patience to see them through.  If an acquisition doesn’t start performing within a week or two, there is a temptation to tinker.

2. “Exercise excruciating patience” is an adage that mostly refers to early season roster management. It takes a good 6-8 weeks for the dust to settle on player stats, so I always recommend hanging back and waiting. No, Edwin Encarnacion was not done after his .200 batting average in April.

3. July is a risky month to make major player moves. First of all, the four-day All Star vacation sometimes has an impact on the momentum that some players have built. (Aaron Judge – I’m talking to you.) More important, the impending MLB trading deadline potentially affects the roles – and often the performance – of many players.

Since the deadline trades are typically scattered throughout the second half of the month, we don’t appreciate how many players are potentially affected. It’s a lot, and likely more than most of us realize.

Here are the players potentially affected by the trades made from this year’s All Star break through the end of July. Some are positive effects, some are negative effects and some are uncertain. The impact could be caused by shifting playing time, changing roles, ballpark effects, team construction and the like. As BABS has shown, even moving to a new team alone is a nick on the liabilities side of the ledger, so assume that every player on this list has elevated risk. In roughly chronological order:

Jose Quintana (in photo)
Michael Montgomery
Eddie Butler
James Shields
Mike Pelfrey
Sean Doolittle
Ryan Madson
Santiago Casilla
Liam Hendriks
Daniel Coulombe
Blake Treinen
J.D. Martinez
Gregor Blanco
Yasmany Tomas
David Peralta
Mikie Mahtook
Alex Presley
Christin Stewart
Todd Frazier
Chase Headley
Tyler Austin
Thomas Kahnle
Ji-Man Choi
Dellin Betances
David Robertson
Tyler Clippard
David Phelps
Edwin Diaz
Trevor Cahill
Brandon Maurer
Carter Capps
Dusty Coleman
Brad Hand
Phil Maton
Allen Cordoba
Matt Strahm
Jaime Garcia
Lucas Sims
Aaron Blair
Matt Wisler
Ryan Buchtler
Kelvin Herrera
Sergio Romo
Anthony Swarzek
Reynaldo Lopez
Ryan Cordell
Michael Blazek
Jacob Barnes
Eduardo Nunez
Josh Rutledge
Rafael Devers
Deven Marrero
Brock Holt
Chris B. Young
Conor Gillaspie
Pablo Sandoval
Lucas Duda
Peter Bourjos
Logan Morrison
Shane Peterson
Trevor Plouffe
Dan Jennings
Alexander Colome
Pat Neshek
Erasmo Ramirez
Steve Cishek
A.J. Ramos
Addison Reed
Matt Barnes
Heath Hembree
Brad Ziegler
Howie Kendrick
Chris Heisey
Wilmer Difo
Jeremy Hellickson
Hyun-soo Kim
Ubaldo Jimenez
Melky Cabrera
Brandon Moss
Alex Gordon
Jorge Soler
Billy Burns
Caleb Smith
Luis Cessa
Bryan Mitchell
Justin Wilson
Alex Avila
Victor Caratini
Joe Jimenez
John Hicks
Shane Greene
Bruce Rondon
Alex Wilson
Yu Darvish
Tyson Ross
Austin Bibens-Dirkx
Nick Martinez
A.J. Griffin
Jonathan Lucroy
Brett Nicholas
Robinson Chirinos
Tony Wolters
Tom Murphy
Ryan Hanigan
Jeremy Jeffress
Jason Grilli
Francisco Liriano
Nori Aoki
Teoscar Hernandez
Joe Biagini
Dalton Pompey
Mike Bolsinger
T.J. House
Chris Coghlan
J.P Howell
Dwigh Smith
Sonny Gray
Jordan Montgomery
Chris Bassett
Daniel Gossett
Paul Blackburn
Kendall Graveman
Tim Beckham
J.J. Hardy
Ruben Tejada
Brad Miller
Adeiny Hechavarria
Adam Rosales
Chad Pinder
Joe Smith
Bryan Shaw
Tony Cingrani
Tony Watson
Brock Stewart
Scott Kazmir
Brandon McCarthy
Brandon Kintzler
Scott Van Slyke
Jonathan Holder
David Hernandez
Joaquin Benoit
Hector Neris

There may have been a few more that I missed. Granted, the impact for some will be greater than for others, but the risk level has risen for every one of these players.

In addition to these, there are the usual injuries that you would have had to deal with had you been active this month. Yes, injuries are always an obstacle to overcome, but by hanging back in July, you would have avoided trading for an assumedly healthy player like Clayton Kershaw or Michael Pineda.

Some of you are probably thinking that most of the players dealt could have been foreseen, so you would have avoided them anyway. That’s a nice thought in retrospect. Maybe you would have avoided trading for David Robertson, but if someone had offered you a super sweet deal, you might have jumped anyway, hoping he would not get dealt. However, there were few who foresaw players like Trevor Cahill or Brandon Kintzler being moved. And nearly every deal had impact that filtered down to multiple players.

In total, trades alone from July 10 through July 31 potentially affected nearly 150 players, and there are likely more that I’ve missed. That ain’t nuthin’.

I like to manage my roster similar to how MLB manager handle theirs. Use the first 50 games to assess what you have, the next 50 games to make needed changes and the final 50 games to see it through. My slight modification has me hanging back through Memorial Day, aggressively making changes beginning in June through the All-Star Break, hanging back through the end of July and then doing some final tweaking in August.

It is for this reason that I did not feel badly going M.I.A. (Mediterranean Italian Adventure) over the past few weeks. Any advice I would have given you could have been undone with a single trade. I was all in on Trevor Cahill as a Padre, but selling all shares now that he’s a Royal. I was cautiously optimistic owning Sonny Gray in Oakland, but looking for a buyer now that he’s in Yankee Stadium. Micro-managing over the past few weeks could have been dangerous, so it was best to hang back on the second verse.

August starts the second chorus. Now is the time to start managing again.

The next BABS update is coming soon.