The Simmering September Stretch Run: Sample Size, Luck, or Incomparable Skill?
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By Dan Rauer (http://dansotherworld.
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Now that there’s really only 3-4 weeks of fantasy baseball playing in the season, it’s interesting to flip the season on its head and reminisce about how it began. In the context of the baseball season, three weeks is both a long time and a short time. It’s enough time for huge jumps or slumps in performance to redefine a player’s season. It’s also enough time to give a fair evaluation of whether a pitcher is a useful part or merely driftwood passing by in the season’s stream. At the onset of the season, three weeks says nothing about the standing of your team in relation to the others. Do you know how many times you can be in last after three weeks and still win the league? Probabilistically, it could be every time.
And this is why it will be so difficult to judge your team’s performance over these last three-four consequential weeks. You’ve been riding your great performers, over performers, and overall genius to be in the pole position or within striking distance of first. Who do you trust on your team to continue their season as is? Who can you predict to be unnervingly streaky in the wrong direction? The answer is you can’t really predict, and you have to trust who you’ve trusted unless there’s a sufficient reason not to trust them (i.e. injury, less playing time due to playoff race changes). In other words, Jose Costanza is not the type of player whom you would like to rely on to carry you to your championship (though you will if you must).
I’ve heard cited that some players just are better in September, and therefore, this should be a determination of whom to put stock in. Of course, these are usually players you’ve already been banking on since these are proven commodities (Ryan Howard, Mark Teixeira, etc.). Every year, there are players who are fringe roster players or recent call-ups such as Jose Bautista in 2009, Josh Phelps in 2002, and David Wright in 2004 that emerge as a fulfillment of talent in a small sample size or are one month flukes.
This is the dilemma; all season long, we are preached not to trust the small sample size of a player, but instead the true talent. Over the marathon of a baseball season, the patience and forbearance will most likely win out over the impetuousness of dropping a player after a two-three week slump. Is there anyone you’ve regretted cutting this year? I can name quite a few (Mike Morse for one). Now, we are forced to trust the small sample size for everything because that is all that remains.
This is why succeeding in September to make up ground is considered luck more so than at other points of the season. Over the stretch of a player’s career, even one season is a small sample size; imagine basing the success or failure of the construction of your fantasy team on three weeks (or less in head-to-head leagues) worth of data. All you can do is put yourself in the best position to succeed.
In short, there is but one course to take. Use the players you have to continue at their current pace, replace other players to increase production in categories you need, and always keep in mind one aspect of all this. It is not the fantasy team with the best-constructed team that takes the season; it is the fantasy team with the most points per category that wins.
