New Year's Resolutions

It's that time of year again and as I brace for the latest snowy tempest to bury my humble New England home I thought I would take some time to mentally prepare myself for the upcoming baseball season. There's a time for mock drafting and position tiering but at this point in the off-season I like to reflect on the philosophy and strategy of what I want to do rather than the specific tactics I'll be using. I value this exercise not as a chance to go out on a limb looking for every last shred of value available, that's what Jan., Feb., and Mar. are for, but to remind myself of some of the most basic tenets of good fantasy play, tenets that are easy to forget in the heat of the season. And so, in no particular order, my Roto Resolutions:

I resolve to make predictions based on the best information that I can find.
This seems pretty logical but it helps to remind myself that wild rumors and ERA are not as reliable as K/9 and FIP at telling me whether a certain player is likely to perform well in the future.

I resolve to avoid making decisions based on small sample sizes whenever possible.
If I make a speculative pick on a guy who stumbles out of the gate I won't turn my back on whatever potential I saw that made me pick him without giving him a chance to overcome small sample variance.

I resolve to not wait too long to fix problems on my roster.
This may seem to contradict my previous resolution but there's a difference between addressing team issues and individual player problems. If you find yourself way behind in a category after a quarter or a third of the season then you can't afford to wait to make changes. A good deal at the trade deadline is usually worth about one or two places in a category unless teams are really bunched up. So if you're sitting in 9th place in HR a trade at the deadline for Adam Dunn probably won't get you higher than about 7th by the end of the season, but trading for him at the one quarter or one third mark in the season could make a much bigger difference.

I resolve to respond with patience to unreasonable trade offers.
I admit that this is one of my own personal millstones. Whenver I get offered Pat Burrel for Nelson Cruz, or J.A. Happ and Nick Johnson for Tim Lincecum I tend to fly off the handle a bit. I'll try to remember that other managers are often just trying to get trade talks started and expect a counter-offer. Or they are just totally crazy.

I resolve not to force others to adopt a sabermetric approach to (fantasy) baseball.
I have yet to meet a fantasy manager who says that he is in it for the money. The bottom line is that we all play this game for fun and if one manager thinks it's fun to make decisions based on ERA and BA then he has every right to do so and the more that I insist that he should understand wOBA and xFIP the less likely he is to do so.

I resolve to be a sabermetric ambassador to those who are interested.
I have two brothers. The older one thinks I'm an idiot because I used wOBA and OPS+, two terms he hadn't heard of at the time, to claim that Bobby Abreu should get some realistic consideration for the HOF. The younger one decided not to draft J.A. Happ, one of his favorite players in '09, in '10 after I explained BABIP, FIP, and LOB% to him, again, three terms he hadn't heard of. Some people are interested and some aren't.

I resolve to scout my competition before draft day.
In my main league (14 team rotisserie non-keeper) I know the other managers and their tendencies pretty well, there's the guy who loves aging sluggers, the guy who pays top dollar for potential breakout players, the guys who overvalue closers and so on. And while I've usually been pretty good about remembering those tendencies in the past this year I want to take it to another level and really make a book on each manager before we go into our draft. I want to know what his overall strengths and weaknesses are as well as making a list of players on his past teams who have really over/under performed (a guy who drafted David Wright last year, for instance, probably will not do so in '10) and whom those managers have traded for and whom they've let go in the past couple of seasons. Also useful would be any players that they've drafted more than once or drafted well above their ADP's.

So that's about it. Again, there's nothing on this list that should be completely foreign to any fantasy manager but I think it's nice to take a step back sometimes and look at my overall fantasy strategy to see if there's anything I can tighten up. In the past I definitely think I've been too slow to fix problems on my teams and I haven't been as rigorous as possible when evaluating the other managers in my league so those might be the ones I'll really have to remind myself of.

What about you? What are your bad fantasy habits that you'd like to break this year?