League championships are not won in February, but they can certainly be lost.
Regardless of the volume of data you process and the research you read to prepare for your drafts, the human brain will infallibly skew your perceptions of player value based on a multitude of internal factors.
In fact, two owners could have wildly differing opinions on a player shaped by their experience of his production within the same season. Just as the owner who suffered through the first half of Bronson Arroyo's 2009 season (112 IP, 5.38 ERA, 59:41 K:BB and 21 HR) has avoided him like the plague ever since, the owner who grabbed him off the waiver wire and finished higher in the final standings thanks to his second half (108.1 IP, 2.24 ERA, 68:24 K:BB and 10 HR) is much more likely to have been burned by him last season.
The tricky thing with inherent bias is that it is often extremely difficult to overcome, even in cases where you are completely aware of it. Fortunately, you are not the only one experiencing this internal challenge. Moreover, learning the collective inherent bias of the industry and subsequently, the other players in your league will prove to be exceedingly beneficial and profitable during the upcoming season. These valuations and ideas are better described as groupthink, which ultimately pressures fantasy owners to pay certain pre-determined prices for players because "it is the right thing to do."
We have many of the industry's best fantasy players and writers on our satellite radio show, but the single best piece of information I have heard from any of those analysts in nearly two years on the air came from Baseball HQ's Matt Beagle last week:
"We tend to overvalue youth and undervalue reliability."
It is much easier to look at Brett Lawrie and see a potential first-round pick in 2013 than it is to do the same with Aramis Ramirez given how impressive the former was in a limited MLB sample last season. That makes sense until you realize that Ramirez has compiled a slash line of .284/.342/.500 over nearly 7,000 big league plate appearances. If Average Draft Position data and the early results are any indication, the draft board this year has plenty of other instances of youth being served. You should hardly be surprised if Eric Hosmer is chosen ahead of Paul Konerko, or if Desmond Jennings is taken a couple of rounds before Shin-Soo Choo. It is hardly justified.
In addition to inflating the value of young players that the industry believes are on a certain path to stardom, there is typically a collective deflation of those who exceeded expectations the previous season.
Last year, there were plenty of industry experts on draft day who were afraid of being the idiot overpaying for Jose Bautista's career year in 2010. This time around, you can find an abundant supply of analysts taking the under on Asdrubal Cabrera's 25-homer breakout from last season, and plenty willing to take a wait-and-see approach with Alex Gordon the year after he showed everyone why he was the second overall pick in the 2005 amateur draft.
If nothing else, Bautista's continued success should serve as a reminder that players are capable of changing and improving their skill set over time.
An overarching theme of the biases we develop stem from things that happened last year. This is despite the fact that when evaluating players - particularly young ones - it seems to take approximately 1,000 big league at-bats to pass judgment on what a player can do. If it takes at least two full seasons worth of data to draw a meaningful conclusion about who a player is, how can we be so quick to discount Ichiro Suzuki, Adam Dunn or Chone Figgins after down years of varying degrees? There is a reason why "last year's bums" often return a profit the following season.
Think about it, would you be much worse off drafting with 2011 cheat sheets instead of 2012 ones?
If you believed that Jason Heyward was worth a top-40 pick last season given his age, production as a rookie in 2010 and rapid growth potential, what really prevents you from targeting him again this year? By all accounts, he was playing hurt for most of last season. The same unquantifiable upside should remain despite 396 at-bats of arguably "bad" data.
Rest assured that following the masses step-for-step down the beaten path will lead you to a finish in the middle 50 percent of your league.
The best thing about our game is the wide range of strategies that can be used to play it. There is a tremendous advantage that can be obtained by exploiting the inefficiencies of a market created by groupthink.