Ode to Chris Liss

Many years ago, a lifetime perhaps, I got into a pissing match with Chris Liss about the serial comma (or, as Vampire Weekend calls it, the Oxford comma). But who really cares about that?

Back then, Chris Liss also wrote a story for the Fantasy Football Guide about how our brains are way more adaptable than formulas and other pedantic bs we create for fantasy sports. We think better than we compute, was Chris’s point, and we would be smart to rely more on our brains than any formulas. I said then and I say now, I think he’s right.

Tonight I read something else from Chris: http://www.rotowire.com/baseball/features/2010_LissStrategy.htm

The story linked here, about how Chris won Tout Wars Mixed and the Yahoo Friends and Family League that Rotowire (Chris’s domain) runs, is excellent.

Chris also wrote a story for the Fantasy Baseball Guide 2010 (on newstands now!), the magazine I edit, about the same stuff.

My point is that Chris is pretty much right. Our brains are quicker and more fluid than any formula we could create. You still need to know your league, and know the players (all the players) and how rostering them will change your team—which is what my earning and cost values and other objective measures provide—but once you’ve internalized that data, you can do better on your own than poring over some cheat sheet.

Good stuff.