Dynasty, in Theory: A Heuristic That's Hard To Follow

There's a lot of really strong dynasty analysis out there, especially when compared to five or ten years ago. But most of it is so dang practical-- Player X is undervalued, Player Y's workload is troubling, the market at this position is irrational, and take this specific action to win your league. Dynasty, in Theory is meant as a corrective, offering insights and takeaways into the strategic and structural nature of the game that might not lead to an immediate benefit but which should help us become better players over time.

Buggy Software and Limited Resources

At its very best, fantasy football is a game of resource management. You want to draft everyone but have a limited number of picks. You want to add everyone but have a limited number of roster spots. You want to use everyone but have a limited number of starting spots. At the same time, all of your competition is laboring under the same constraints. The man or woman who manages to best utilize their limited resources will walk away the champion.

Dynasty leagues are like this, only more so. You want to dominate now, but you want to dominate in the future, too. With limited roster spots and limited rookie picks, owners must be flexible and willing to give up one type of resource to acquire another. The owners who are best able to manage their tradeoffs win.

The problem, of course, is that managing tradeoffs is hard, and we're fundamentally bad at it. From the very first Dynasty, in Theory column, I've been writing about our faulty mental software. Our instincts are unreliable, and that unreliability needs to be accounted for.

A lot of the ways we can account for our flawed mental software are difficult. Some, however, are easy. This week, we're talking about one of the latter.

Well, it's not really easy-- by definition, it's kind of the opposite. But it's simple, at least. When you're faced with a decision between two courses of action and all of your analysis says they're pretty comparable in value… do whichever one is harder.

Hard Is... Good?

This seems like a pretty dumb rule. Why should something be better just because it's hard?

It's not. Lots of hard things are bad. It would be hard for me to trade away Patrick Mahomes II, but I'm not using that fact as an excuse to start shopping him.

But we're not talking about the section of n-dimensional representative ideaspace consisting of all hard things you could potentially do. We're talking about the very limited subset of that space that you have evaluated to the best of your ability and consider pretty even... but still find hard despite that.

If one choice seems hard or unappealing despite my analysis that says it's equally good, this is a giant red flag telling me I am biased against that course of action. And if, while biased against it, I rate it as equal to the other choices, that must mean it is in fact the superior course of action.

I will let you in on a little secret about fantasy writers and analysts. Many managers seek us out for advice, which we are happy to dispense. These managers then think that, because giving advice is easy, running our own teams must be equally easy.

In truth, what makes giving advice easy is largely emotional removal. When we're not as invested in the outcomes, we can see both sides through lenses untainted by bias. When we look at our own teams, we are as insecure and unsure as any other manager. I know this because plenty of fantasy experts have asked me for advice, and I have also asked other fantasy experts for advice.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about fantasy experts who seek advice is that they usually know what they're going to get in advance. People who read my work or follow me tend to have a pretty good idea of what my thoughts are going to be before they ever ask me.

They're mostly not asking me because they want to know. They're asking me because they want reassurance of what they already know. The problem is that the right answer is the hard answer. They want reassurance. They want to make it less hard.

That's the benefit that emotional distance can provide. When we are too heavily invested, all of our entanglements make two courses of action seem equivalent. When we have perspective, one rises up as clearly superior. And the one that rises up is virtually always the harder of the two.

Putting It Into Practice

What does my "do the hard thing" rule look like in the real world? It looks like trading flexes for future firsts. It looks like passing on win-now trades that will make your lineup look prettier on paper today but will cost too much long-term value for what you're getting. These things can be hard. It can be passing on the buzzy rookie for the guy who was a higher draft pick but isn't generating quite as much camp excitement. It can be benching your star player for an up-and-comer who looks good but isn't nearly as proven.

(Worth noting: If it's hard for you to trade current production for future value, then it must be easy for your leaguemates to trade future value for current production. And the fact that it's easy means they're more willing to overpay. When both sides reach a point that seems fair to both parties, whichever party is swallowing the bitterer pill most likely just made a handsome profit.)

One other nice benefit of "do the harder thing" (or really any sort of final decision-making heuristic that you rely on consistently) is that it lets you off the hook. If you lose (and you will probably lose), you might look back on your choices, looking to blame yourself for any mistakes along the way. (This is certainly what I do.)

I find it easier to make peace with failure if I know it came from consistently applying a heuristic that is well-reasoned and has proven successful in the past. Sometimes, when I make the hard choice, it's going to cost me significantly. Sometimes, when I make the easy choice, it's going to cost me significantly. But if I make the easy choice and it winds up being the wrong one, I'm going to dwell for years on the fact that I had my rule and broke it, and this was the consequence.

If I make the hard choice and it comes back to bite me, that still sucks, but I can make peace with it much more easily. I did the best thing I could, given the available information. That particular move didn't work out, but the next one probably will.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost

I'm willing to wager you have all read this before. This is one of the most famous poems by one of the most famous American poets. It's also one of the most misunderstood and misquoted.

Many take Frost's final stanza at face value, believing that he truly took the road less traveled by. The second and third stanzas reveal that claim to be a lie; by his own admission, both paths were equally worn. It is only afterward, when the road is long behind him and he is speaking of it with wistful nostalgia, that he lies and attaches a greater significance to his choice.

In truth, Frost describes a crossroads of two equally appealing choices and a random decision between them. In such situations-- when our journey leads us to a crossroads and all of our powers of analysis cannot differentiate between them-- we need something to nudge us forward into action. In this space, I try to equip you with useful, fantasy-tested knowledge. I advocate researched and proven solutions. Perhaps it is a jarring departure to see me suggesting that, at the end of all that, you just go with whatever makes you most uncomfortable. While "gut feeling" and "discomfort" hardly qualify as compelling analysis, they are enough to get our feet moving forward again.

Convincing explanations and justifications? Those we leave to our future selves.