Doug Dennis (BaseballHQ, @dougdennis41): I do not believe in position scarcity. Year-to-year there may be a very tiny minor effect swallowed easily by acceptable variance. There is absolutely no reason to pay a premium at a given position unless you are in a very weird and unique league.
Rudy Gamble (Razzball, @RudyGamble): I feel like most fantasy baseball ‘conventional wisdom’ has moved closer to my line of thinking. While there was never unanimity on position scarcity, ‘don’t pay for saves’, and ‘don’t invest top picks in SPs’, I feel they are no longer even popular opinion. The two things in fantasy writing that make me cringe is overconfidence in one’s opinion and circular blathering. The only thing that could be more humbling than predicting fantasy baseball performance is hitting on women at a supermodel conference. Overconfidence tells me that one does not self-reflect much. Other times, I read whole articles or paragraphs that I feel could be condensed down to 100 characters if you remove all the hedges and caveats. Net-net, I’m all for humble terseness!
Todd Zola (Mastersball, @toddzola): Always acquire the best player in a trade! HOGWASH! Always look to improve your roster. If you roster is better by dealing the 1st and 4th best players for the 2nd and 3rd, DO IT! The key is looking at your roster before and after the deal, not simply grading on the players involved. That said, the shallower the league, the more I’ll lean to the best player mantra, but it isn’t absolute. The reason for this is in shallower leagues, there’s a better chance of upgrading players and you can’t upgrade the best.
Mike Gianella (Baseball Prospectus, @MikeGianella): Any advice that says “you should avoid this player at all costs.” There is always a price point/draft slot where 99 percent of players are worth taking and to simply write someone off because he’s being drafted higher than he “should” be drafted is such a huge mistake.
Larry Schechter (Winning Fantasy Baseball, @LarrySchechter): Most all conventional wisdom makes me cringe. It’s impossible to pick just one. This is one of my favorite sections of my book, where I debunk most conventional wisdom. A lot of it isn’t a question of whether or not you “believe” in it. A lot can be either proven to be true or debunked. Position scarcity is one such item. With a good value formula, you can prove whether or not there is scarcity at a position, and if so, quantify it in terms of dollar values. There is almost always scarcity for catchers…but rarely for other positions.
Ray Flowers (Fantasy Guru Elite, @BaseballGuys): You can easily find saves on the waiver-wire. This one needs some nuance as it depends the kind of league you’re in, and the level of competition, but I think the average fantasy player thinks that they can pass on saves at the draft an easily find them on waivers. Truth is – you can’t. EVERYONE is searching for saves in competitive leagues, so when that closer comes up, five, six, nine people are in on the bidding. You’re not guaranteed to get the closer whether you’re in a FAAB setup or waiver priority league, and even if you do in a FAAB setup you’re spending 25 percent of your budget to get that arm (often even more). So that idea, often espoused, that you can easily find closers once the season begins – nah brah.
Todd Zola: It’s a too early to really hammer away on this, but come August/September, ignore those suggesting you can’t gain/lose points in ratios. It’s actually easier as the categories are more bunched and you can gain points by having your opponents drop below you – you can’t lose counting stats, the only way to gain is earning them yourself.
Gene McCaffrey (Wise Guy Baseball, @WiseGuyGene): To this day, almost every day, I see someone saying or implying that groundball pitchers are good and flyball pitchers are bad. This is baloney. GBers have lower ERA’s and get a Win or two more, but FBers have lower WHIP’s and get more K’s. Many of the best pitchters are not only flyballers but extreme flyballers, such as Scherzer, Verlander and Cole.
Patrick Davitt (BaseballHQ, @patrickdavitt): Experts like Ron Shandler have been trying to debunk this myth for years, but a lot of my non-expert fantasy player friends still seem to believe too much in the accuracy of experts’ stat and valuation forecasts, both before drafts and in-season.
Todd Zola: OK, here’s another one. I shake my head every time I see “Who wins this trade?” It’s not about winning a trade, at least it shouldn’t be. The best trades are mutually beneficial. Sure, you make a deal because you feel it helps your team, but so did the other party.
Scott Pianowski (Yahoo! Fantasy Sports, @Scott_Pianowski): Long-winded pieces that are filled with every hedge imaginable make me cringe. One, it’s not helping anyone. Two, it’s dreadful to read. “A good pickup for NL-only leagues” is the cheapest currency when a new player emerges; how about for a mixed league? We shouldn’t invent or fake specific takes just to have them, but at least learn how to write concisely. I also think “universal and constant patience” is overrated as a fantasy concept, when “selective aggression” wins the compeititve leagues I observe. No, don’t do somehting rash when your first-rounder slumps. But always be looking for plausible upside you can add to the bottom of your roster, at the expense of once-interesting players who now could be disposable. An informed June choice is my preference to stubbornly clinging to “my February opinions.” I know, I know, everyone comes around or regresses – except when they don’t. And no, this was not concise, so I will now dodge your tomatoes.
Scott Pianowski: And since the esteemed TZ went with multiple entries, I’ll also pound the table and insist that “Regression!” should always be the start of the conversation, not the end of it. It’s too convenient to point out that some unlikely hot hitter “isn’t Mike Trout all of a sudden.” Simply identifying an outlier (and then framing it with a Grand Canyon-wide landing strip) is not enough; let’s make a rational guess as to where the puck is headed.
Scott Swanay (FantasyBaseballSherpa, @fantasy_sherpa): Position scarcity is a myth is a myth (call me Mr. Meta). Position scarcity is about the relative drop-off in fantasy values as you move down tiers at the different positions, and that drop-off is never the same for all positions. Sure, you’ll always be able to find options at any position that will allow you to field a legal lineup, but there’s a point at most positions below which you can’t go if you want your overall team to be competitive. At certain positions you’ll have to pay more for the same set of stats than you would at another position – Catcher seems to be the one position where the number of quality options is always small, while other positions move on/off the list from year to year based on relative talent levels. Some will say that “stats are stats”, and you shouldn’t pay more for them at one position than you would at another, but that argument ignores opportunity costs.
Todd Zola: Me again. Yes, you can chase wins. There’s more variance than the other stats, but wins are predictable. Vegas lines are a great place to start.
There’s some of ours. Is there any conventional wisdom you question?
