“Ahead of them lies the arctic shore. And beyond that, the sea. Still the little animals surge forward. Their frenzy takes them tumbling down the terra’s cliffs, creating tiny avalanches of sliding soil and rocks. They reach the final precipice. This is the last chance to turn back. Yet over they go, casting themselves bodily out into space.”

Lemmings.

There’s nothing lovable and cuddly about them. They are idiotic rodents who provide us with a perfect representation of the mindless drones so many fantasy baseball owners have become over the years. Just as the lemmings senselessly hurtle themselves over a cliff, far too many fantasy owners are hopping player bandwagons without realizing that they, like their furry counterparts, are headed for doom and disaster.

The herd mentality in fantasy sports is so abundant that once some pundit makes a positive declaration about a specific player, the foolish masses cling to the idea of drafting him as if his name, along with his Steamer projections, was just spoken by a burning bush. Their need to own him becomes borderline obsessive and, with each day that passes, every time his name is mentioned, their fear of not owning him creates a paranoia so intense that the word “reach” becomes the biggest understatement in the industry vocabulary.

Think back to the spring of 2013. The Rockies announced that Josh Rutledge would be their starting second baseman and a number of fantasy experts gave him a reasonable bump in their rankings. Nothing too crazy, but just enough to make people notice. But then someone starting talking about how thin the position was, how wonderful it is to play half your games at Coors Field, how the power potential of Rutledge could not be ignored and suddenly everyone and their grandmother HAD to have him. He became more and more popular with each day that passed and in mock drafts, he went from being an 18th round sleeper to a 12th round pick. And on Draft Day, it got so crazy that he ended up as a top-100 guy in most mixed leagues.

How did that work out for our little lemmings? Not so good, huh?

But even if Rutledge didn’t shit the bed and went on to hit 15 home runs with a .280 average, the fact that so many people went so crazy over him that spring, his value potential went to pot. As an 18th-rounder, he would have been a bowl of your favorite ice cream drizzled with awesomesauce. As a 12th-rounder, he becomes just another player who did what he was supposed to do.

Last season there were players such as Gerrit Cole, Danny Salazar, Michael Wacha and Leonys Martin who fell into that category. Each one was on the fantasy radar to start the spring, but once the lemmings started crawling all over them in February, their March ADP was so stupidly high that sensible fantasy owners just resigned themselves to not owning any of them and opted for other, more-proven talent.

With the number of mock drafts I have done over the last month, it’s easy to see that few have learned their lesson and that the lemmings are out in full force once again. Players like Steve Souza, Drew Smyly and Carlos Carrasco have already gone from late-round hopefuls to 10th-round must-haves. Their ADP has been on an upward trajectory ever since most sites switched from football to baseball coverage and it doesn’t look like their demand is ever coming back down to Earth.

Sensible choices create fantasy champions. Letting your paranoia dictate reaches in your draft does not. Sure, if one of them slides in your draft to a more reasonable position, you take them and hope for the best. But if you’re so intent on owning them -- if you absolutely have to have them -- then you’re going to end up as just another lump of fur standing on the edge waiting for death.

 


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