This is the time of year where the truth about your fantasy baseball team, ugly as it may be in some cases, is starting to set in. But don't get down and resign yourself to the fact that you're a fantasy dolt. You may have the very same skills as the first-place team. How could this be when you're 35 points down in the standings? Well, your place in the standings, of course, provides you with some idea of what kind of job you did. But they are far from an accurate representation of your skills.

This is because fantasy baseball has a lot to do with luck. Granted, fantasy football is exponentially more luck-based. But this game is greatly influenced by chance as well. When our fantasy baseball teams are successful, we like to trick ourselves into thinking we are much better at this game than we are. When we're in first place, we begrudgingly accept that the fantasy gods are somewhat benevolent. But man, look at all the sleepers we picked. That takes skill!

On the flipside, when our teams our doing poorly, while we are forced to acknowledge some small errors, it is mostly bad luck and not a reflection of our knowledge, skills and abilities. Yeah, right.

And if you are reading this and smugly saying to yourself that you finish in the top two in your league every year, so you are a fantasy genius, you need to wake up and smell the coffee. One of two things is true: either you are a sports savant (in which case you should quit your job tomorrow, move to Vegas, and start making millions off your predictive powers), or you're playing in a league where no one pays as much attention as you do.

I have never found those leagues to be exciting. But then again, I also don't like taking candy from babies. So to each his own.

Still not convinced? Allow me to use myself as an example. I'm in four leagues this season, one an "expert" league and three with friends. In my four leagues, I currently reside in 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 9th. That's a pretty wide range of rankings, right? I applied the same knowledge to each league. So why the variance?

One might argue that I'm in 9th place in the hardest league. But that's a friendly league. In the expert league (or as it is more properly named now, the "analyst" league, I'm in 3rd). One might argue that it's because the player pool is thinner. And while my 1st place team is a mixed league, so is my 9th place team. And I'm in 3rd and 5th in AL-only and NL-only. So that doesn't hold water either.

Yeah, I may have managed my draft better in one league to the next. Or done a better job on the waiver wire. But luck plays a major role. The disaster of a season that Brett Myers has had in Philly is one major reason for my 9th place team. And similarly the fact that Joe Borowski has held onto the closer role in Cleveland is a major factor in my 3rd place team's performance to date.

My 1st place team looked invincible for awhile, but in the last week, I lost Chase Utley and will now be waiting on pins and needles for news on Aaron Harang. That has nothing whatsoever to do with my skill. I have good replacements, but no one can replace their levels of performance.

And it's not just injuries. You go back and find me the "expert" who predicted that Andruw Jones would be hitting .215 at the end of July. Or the guy who boldly stated that Fausto Carmona would be leading all of baseball in wins.

Is luck the only factor? Obviously not. But due to the heavy role that luck plays in this game, it makes draft preparation and in-season management even more important. Just don't get too low, or too high, on yourself based on one season ...

... I'm really digging Jon Rauch as a waiver wire pick-up right now in most leagues. Not only is he a valuable vulturing middle reliever in his current situation, but there's a good chance that Chad Cordero will get traded to a contender, placing Rauch in the closer role. There's also a possibility, albeit a thinner one, that Rauch will get traded and have a shot at that role on a different team. At many times in his career, Rauch has shown he has the skills to succeed in the major leagues, but between the lack of a clear role and his injuries, he has never quite found a spot to excel in. Even in relatively shallow leagues (i.e. 12-team mixed), he's the type of high-skills pitcher to add to your roster to plug in for injuries or a tough match-up for one of your less stable starters ...

 

... A couple of cheap bad-luck starters to consider for second-half success are Paul Maholm and Andy Sonnanstine. Both pitchers have quietly shown some signs of life, and while you cannot count on them for wins given the teams behind them, they have the potential to be solid in every other category. Plus, it would be tough for their win luck to get any worse.