Fantasy Sports - High Risk High Reward

A concept that I have been thinking about lately is high risk, high reward bets in fantasy sports.................I am a big fan of modelling and then taking value in each round of a draft.............unfortunately, there is a point in the draft where this becomes the incorrect strategy, when all of the assets become basically the same but with differing levels of variance........think about an example like this...............say, before last years draft, you had the opportunity to take Nate McLouth or Gary Matthews Jr.............before the season, models like PECOTA would have these two as both roughly very low end OF's for any fantasy draft that give you similar type numbers................only 1 difference, Gary Matthews Jr (assume, as you should that for probabilities, there are thousands and thousands of seasons running at the very same time to create these models) projection contains very little variance, his numbers (because of sample sizes already observed of his ability and his playing situation which is stable and likely unchanging) are relatively flat across all of the possibly seasons..............on the other hand, Nate McLouth's projections contain lots of situations in which he losses the CF job to Nyjer Morgan and is either a part time player or a full season minor leaguer and it also contains some situations in which he wins the job and has a nice shot at being a 20/20 candidate.

In an example like this, you want Nate McLouth every single time, because in the situations in which he succeeds, you have much larger value than most people in this round, in the situations in which he fails, you can easily pick up a replacement player whose value is not much less than the average player drafted in this round.

The obvious follow up question is,................when should I start the process of taking these types of gambles in a fantasy league....................in my estimation, the questions you should ask yourself are as follows...............

1) How good is the league I am in? Is this a very tough or very easy league? If the competition in your league is weak (generally), ie, guys show up to the draft with a magazine and pick from it, then you may not need to do this until the final couple of rounds.........if the league is much tougher, you will have to likely do this earlier as one big hit could help you win the league.

2) When does the talent flatten out? At the point in which the relative value of remaining players gets flat, is the time in which you should think about picking these types of players, as it makes for lower risk in choosing High Risk, High Reward type players

3) Do you have positional requirements/stat requirements remaining? If you have a major need in either a position in which you are sorely lacking or a statistic, you may try this earlier..........in other words, if you have a huge need for HR's, you might reach on a guy like Jack Cust, who could hit 40 HR or could end up in the minors by year end.