While some of you are still competing for this season’s fantasy baseball title and others are looking ahead and prepping your teams in your keeper/dynasty leagues, it is always important to look back at your season and learn from your mistakes. Don’t say you didn’t make any because even those sitting in first place right now probably made a move or two they would like to take back. It’s all part of the process in becoming a fantasy baseball champion. Remember what Einstein said – “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” If you don’t learn from your mistakes, you’re destined to repeat them, thus hindering your efforts at continued championships.

One of the biggest mistakes fantasy baseball owners made this year was not just trusting in Jonathan Villar, but also investing a high draft pick in him. Here is a player who showed promising speed in the minors, 10-12 home run power, but a middling batting average due to a high strikeout rate. He showed very minor improvements as he ascended through the Astros system, but struggled to crack the lineup through his first three years in the majors and was relegated to part-time duty as a utility man.

He landed with the Brewers in 2016 and pulled out a season for the ages. He batted .285 with 19 home runs, 63 RBI, 92 runs scored and swiped a league-leading 62 bases and appeared in a career-high 156 games. His walk rate showed some nice improvement, but his strikeout rate remained high and that, coupled with a career-best .373 BABIP, should have remained a red flag. But rather than look at Villar’s 2016 as the outlier, many fantasy owners treated it as the norm and a precursor of things to come. Oops!

Maybe it was the fear of stolen bases being on the decline that blinded so many from his previous struggles as a big-league player. Several position players saw their ADP rise due to their speed, but none as high as Villar. It didn’t seem to matter that whiffs were an issue; that along with a high BABIP, his contact rates dropped significantly. His HR/FB rate spiked to nearly 20-percent. Save for having the ability to steal 62 bases, nothing else Villar was doing in 2016 looked sustainable.

During his 2017 campaign, Villar’s numbers have regressed to the levels we saw in the years before 2016 and no one should be surprised. You can say hindsight is 20/20, but I know a number of fantasy pundits who warned you throughout the preseason, myself included. Expecting him to even come close to repeating this season was a huge mistake and the lesson to be learned is to actually study the reasons behind a breakout campaign. If you can’t find any legitimate reason to believe, it’s probably best to avoid the following season.

There are a number of examples similar to Villar. Take a look at Colorado shortstop Trevor Story. He had red flags smattered throughout his 2016 peripherals. Or how about Alex Bregman? Aledmys Diaz?  How about Eduardo Nunez? We could put David Dahl in here, but that would be reserved to drafting an injured player and then stashing him forever on your bench while you impatiently wait for him to heal. Either way, it’s more than just looking at last year’s numbers and expecting similar results without deeper analysis.

Another major mistake fantasy owners fall into is believing all the preseason hype. Team beat writers and many fantasy writers attach themselves to some players and their continuous writing and on-air recommendations provide an ADP helium that can be tough to get away from. Just look at Jose Peraza and yes, guilty as charged here.

Peraza was not only touted for his speed, but he was also getting a bump in value due to his multi-position eligibility. He qualified both at shortstop and the outfield and the expectations were that Brandon Phillips would be traded and Peraza would take over as the full-time second baseman. The problem was that we let the promise of what could be blind us from the fact that his impatience at the plate kept his walk rate super low and if he struggled with big-league pitching as he did at times in Triple-A, he would never get on-base to show off that brilliant speed. It was like we forgot everything we said about Billy Hamilton prior to the 2014 season.

Other players whose hype-train derailed many of us include Rockies backstop Tom Murphy, Braves shortstop Dansby Swanson, Twins outfielder Byron Buxton (again, guilty as charged) and the infamous Kyle Schwarber. Again, there was statistical data ignored in favor of hope and upside. There were probably just as many dissenting opinions as there were favorable ones, but for many, the loudest weren’t always the best.

Falling for pre-season hype and failure to recognize the difference between a breakout campaign and a one-hit wonder are just two of the many mistakes fantasy baseball owners continue to make year after year. We can also talk about how over-hyped the drop in stolen bases was this season or even how position scarcity is more myth than fact. The trick is, as an owner striving to not just win every year, but to also become a better overall player, you have to accept and take ownership of your mistakes. Only then, can you learn to avoid repeating them.