The key to fantasy success is activity. Managers who spend more time on their teams win more games. Time devoted breeds success in fantasy more so than in real life. Unless you're in a high stakes money league where everyone is super-active, you'll typically find some managers working harder than others. A good way to gauge a manager's activity is by checking next to their team's win-loss record for how many moves they've made during the season. Generally the managers with the most moves will be closest to the top. Dedication breeds success, and if a team is inactive in a competitive league, regardless of how good their draft was, they'll be cellar dwellers.
In a given fantasy season, no matter the sport, I will always have a favorite team. I'll be in at least a few leagues but always end up giving one team much more attention than the others. I'm sure just like there are many out there with only one true passion, there are those out there with only one true team.
My passion right now lies in my 16 team Yahoo! basketball league. It's a smart league with a lot of fantasy baseball players, and while everyone is busy prepping for the new baseball season, I quietly go about my business, checking the waiver wire 3 - 4 times a week, hoping to find a hidden gem. To have success in a league as deep as mine, virtually every team has to at least periodically search the wire.
But what are we searching for?
I look for two types of players: long term and short term, the latter more frequently this time of year.
However, in the beginning of the season, long term players have equal if not better value. These guys you plan to keep for more than a week or two, like the man I settled on two months ago: Mo Evans. In Mo, I found someone with role security who gave me consistently solid stats. How I found Mo was I ran a free agent search for average stats over the last month and saw him near the top of the players listed. Investigating further I found out he was putting up solid stats, including nearly 1 steal/game over the last handful of games. It turns out, Mo was just traded to the Magic where he secured a starting job and 20 - 25 min/game. Combining my newfound knowledge of his recent stats with what I'd seen in the frequent Lakers games on TNT, I'd formed a pretty good idea of what kind of fantasy production I could get out Old Mo in his new situation.
But recently two months had passed and Mo's numbers had grown stale. Like many before him he was about to fall victim to the Austin Brown chopping block purely because there were better short term options out there.
Enter Daequan
Cook.
If you're smart, this time of year you're hunting for the Daequan Cooks out there because it's going on playoff time, in fantasy and reality, and it's prudent to get 'em while they're hot. Finding hot players is as simple as running a free agent search for average stats over the last week.
I kind of fell ass backwards into Daequan, to tell you the truth, all from making a small sacrifice whose name was Mo. Like many other young studs without job security, Daequan was on my watch list. Taking a break from my long and arduous news writing class, I checked this list and noticed out of the blue Daequan had thrown up a 20 point game. Searching deeper I found that over the last few games Daequan had been getting regularly huge minutes. Then memory clicked in and I thought, "Oh yeah, Dwyane Wade's out. No wonder he's getting burn. He'll be back on the bench in a few games. Might want to pass on this one."
...But then more thoughts entered: "What the hey, Evans' numbers I can find in plenty of guys out on the wire this time of year. Strike while the iron's hot." And strike I did, only to find when I got home that Wade's injury had knocked him out for the season. In fantasy, injuries to stars are huge. And while I don't condone it, some will even celebrate them. When a star goes down you can guarantee at least one or two guys no one had ever thought of using will put up great stats out of left field. In this case, now I've got Daequan, who looks to be Wade's replacement in the starting line up and will probably post 30 - 35 minutes/night. This all because I was tired of old Mo and willing to take a semi-risk, from which I've concluded late season pickups can be huge.
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