What fantasy baseball boils down to....

[Tanner Bell]

Going back to your original post, absolutely, just the same as being a GM in baseball, which is the point of fantasy baseball in the first place. Any sort of projection of player performance and any decision about how much money to pay a player over how many years is based on guesswork. Ideally, the team with the best analysts and scouts are going to make better guesses across a full team of players over the longer haul, subject as always to freak injuries and performance abnormalities. "Whoever guesses best on the most players" is drastically different than "whoever gets luckiest", because the most astute are most likely to guess well.

I agree that luck definitely plays a significant role. But the poker and "real" baseball GM comments are point on. Some years the BABIP Gods smile in your favor. Some low MLB draft picks become All-stars. Sometimes you make the right call in poker, but still get burned. Just claim "small sample size" and get them next year. If you play enough times while making the best choices with the best information available, you'll win your share.

And we are mostly only referring to championships in this discussion, but there's something to be said for consistently placing toward the top of the standings. And improving yourself over time. Yes, flags fly forever and only the champs walk away with the title, but there is some satisfaction to be had in playing the hand you're dealt the best way it can be played. The Rays haven't won the World Series, but they should get a sense of achievement from what they have achieved.

It's easy to sit back and say you were unlucky when you lose, but we should all be doing some inspection of ourselves to determine if we're really doing all we can to win. Until recently I just played fantasy and didn't really do anything to improve my skills. But now I'm trying to make a more concerted effort to learn new things, dive into Sabermetrics, and think more strategically. If you're not doing that, it's disingenuous to complain about luck. Maybe you really are just being outworked.

[Grinch]

In keeper leagues being able to honestly evaluate your teams and sell or buy early.
NOT having paralyzing man-crushes on your players!!!!

[Lucky]

In the league I was referring to, in which two owners have won ten titles in 17 years, we did away with keepers in 2005, meaning there were no more dump trades. Since then, the two owners in question have won six of eight. This would seem to indicate that some owners can win consistently without benefit of keepers/dump-trading.