Roundtable: What’s the worst mistake you made in fantasy baseball?

Baseball season is almost here, which means that fantasy baseball is almost here too.

So, first things first, march over to the Yahoo Sports Fantasy site and sign up for a league if you haven’t. If you have, get another. Once you’ve done that, you’ll probably enjoy this installment of the BLS Roundtable, because it’s all about making you feel better about your fantasy self.

[Play Fantasy Baseball on Yahoo this year for a chance to win $40K]

The Stew crew, along with Dalton Del Don from Yahoo Sports’ Roto Arcade, is here to share our worst moments as fantasy baseball owners. These are our deepest secrets, our most depressing moments, the memories that keep us awake in fear the night before our draft.

OK, so maybe they’re not that bad. Still, it’s good to learn from your mistakes right? If you want to share, leave your fantasy baseball mistakes in the comments or tweet them to us using #FantasyBaseballMistakes. You’ll feel better once you get it off your chest. Promise.

FOOL’S GOLD(SCHMIDT)
(AP) In 2012, I made the mistake of waiting too long to pick up a first baseman. Instead of panicking, I deciding to take a shot on a relatively unknown who had succeeded in a limited role the year before, but was never considered a serious prospect. That was Paul Goldschmidt. Normally, that would be a tremendous thing. Getting a value that low in the draft should have propelled me to the championship. Well, that wasn’t the case.

[Elsewhere: Freddie Freeman revealed his baby’s gender in a fun way]

Goldschmidt struggled out of the gate, hitting just .193/.288/.281 in April. He wasn’t even playing every day, as manager Kirk Gibson was using him in a pseudo-platoon. Due to his low draft spot, and lack of prospect pedigree, I cut him in early May. Huge mistake! Goldschmidt exploded at that point. After an awful first month, he hit .298/.369/.519, with 19 home runs. By now, everyone knows that was low end of what Goldschmidt was capable of in fantasy. I didn’t win that league, and kicked myself every single day for picking Gaby Sanchez over Goldschmidt. Ouch! (Chris Cwik)

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THAT TIME I FELL ASLEEP
Fantasy baseball is a great way to keep in touch with old buddies. What’s better than the endless banter about failed draft picks, lopsided trades, crushing defeats and triumphant victories? However, when you’re living on the East Coast and doing an online draft well past midnight with high-school friends all still living at home on the West Coast, that’s less than ideal.

[Elsewhere: Expert tips for having a successful fantasy baseball auction draft]

This was a few years ago, at the height of my sleep deprivation, and you guessed it: I dozed off for a portion of the proceedings. It was an auction draft so my absence wasn’t as noticeable as it would have been during a typical snake draft, but I was out long enough to miss out on a few players that I would have liked to add to my squad. That left me scrambling at the end of the auction, which isn’t the best plan. Needless to say, I didn’t finish in the money that year. I learned an important lesson that night, though: make sure you have enough caffeine around to get you through the most important day on your fantasy baseball calendar. (Israel Fehr)

• • •

A FOURTH TRUE OUTCOME
(AP) This one is tough to write about. It was a hometown league with friends I’ve been playing fantasy sports with since grade school, which means there always a little extra pressure involved. And in this instance, I choked, plain and simple. The year was 2011. It was the fourth round. And the decision came down to Adam Dunn or Clayton Kershaw.

I picked Adam Dunn.

It’s sad to say now, but I felt pretty confident about that pick. Dunn was going into his first season with the White Sox and I figured he would destroy U.S. Cellular Field. Instead, he completely flopped, hitting an abysmal .159/.292/.277 with just 12 home runs over 122 games. Kershaw, meanwhile, went on to have his first Cy Young season. He went two picks later to the eventual league champion.

[Elsewhere: See which players are being undervalued in early fantasy baseball drafts]

I’ve never lived that pick down, and probably never will. It was the worst fantasy decision I ever made… until this past football season when I drafted Melvin Gordon over Allen Robinson. And now I’ll never live that one down either. (Mark Townsend)

• • •

MONEY ON THE TABLE
I’ve made plenty of mistakes throughout my fantasy baseball career, and in fact I’m sure much worse than this one, but I’m going with leaving money on the table in an auction because this just happened three days ago, so it’s fresh in my mind. The League Of Alternative Baseball Reality (LABR) has been around for 23 years and is one of the biggest in the industry, as it originally had participants such as Keith Olbermann, Peter Gammons and Bill James. The auction is in person in Phoenix, so it’s not exactly a league I take lightly.

[Elsewhere: Players poised for a homer breakout in 2016]

But somehow, with just one roster spot left and essentially just one-dollar players remaining, I found myself with $9 still on my budget. It’s something I’ve never done in any auction in any sport, and I chose to do it under these circumstances? Not ideal, especially in an NL-Only league. Instead of leaving money on the table officially, I opened my final bid with Hunter Strickland at $9. I actually like Strickland this year, but he would’ve gone for $3 max, and to give reference, Santiago Casilla, who is actually the Giants’ closer, went for less ($8).

All I’m left with now is thinking about how I could’ve upgraded the rest of my roster with the extra $6-8 spent on earlier players, an amount not insignificant. It’s a mistake I don’t plan on ever making again. (Dalton Del Don of Roto Arcade)

• • •

CRUZ CRUSHED ME … AND MY WIFE
The worst blunder I’ve made in a long history of fantasy baseball didn’t actually affect any of the teams I’ve owned. It was much, much, much worse than that. The mistake was advice I gave my wife about her team.

(Getty Images) She has played for years in a keeper league with some friends and old colleagues and about this time last spring she was having a hard time deciding which six players off her 2014 roster she wanted to keep. She asked my help and probably never will again.

[Elsewhere: Players on new teams with bargain potential]

First, I’ll share some good advice I previously provided. The league she is in allows the claiming of a limited number of minor-league players if an owner wishes to go that route. Since she wasn’t doing as well in 2014 as she had done in previous years, I suggested grabbing a couple young players in the Cubs organization and trying to get her hands on a few other rising stars in a build-for-the future approach. The strategy has given her a group of keepers this year that is the envy of her league and has led to numerous trade proposals.

When it came time to decide who to keep last year going into the draft, there were some tough decisions between solid veterans who were getting up there in age and those young prospects. On my advice, she ended up hanging on to Jorge Soler and parting ways with Nelson Cruz. I didn’t expect Soler to out-perform Cruz last season, but I believed having his rights for the long run was the smart move (and it still might turn out that way). But it was a move that proved tough for my wife to handle when Cruz hit .302/.369.566 with 44 home runs and 93 RBI. Ouch. Thanks a lot, Nelson. (Kyle Ringo)

• • •

I GOT ZITO’D
(AP) My worst trait in fantasy baseball is holding onto keepers longer than I should. Maybe it’s because I want to believe in the bounce back. I want to believe that a star who served me so well could find his redemption. The best (well, worst) example of this is my relationship with a man named Barry Zito.

I loved Zito early on. As a kid in the Bay Area, how could you not? He was the perfect mix of funky and effective, with a big personality that could mask the harsh downside of his game. Anyway, we were headed into the 2006 season and Zito had been pretty good the year before. He won 14 games with a 3.86 ERA. It wasn’t his Cy Young best, but it was enough to provide some hometown happiness for me.

[Elsewhere: Is Carlos Correa worth a top-five fantasy pick?]

As I was picking my keepers that year, it came down to Zito and Chase Utley for the final spot. Utley was coming off his breakout season — 28 homers and 105 RBIs. Looking at all this now, you’d take Utley 100 times out of 100. But I was dumb, led astray by the aura of Zito. I picked Barry.

Pretty obvious how that one turned out — Zito was an up-and-downer pitcher for the rest of his career and Utley had four straight seasons where he was an MVP candidate. I wish I could tell you that I learned my lesson, but a few season later, I kept Tim Lincecum a year or two too long. I’m a sucker, I guess. (Mike Oz)

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