Mystery league probabilities - dump 20%?

Since each mystery player has 5 cards and since most players have one weak card, after first drafting your mystery league team it’s likely you will have about 5 players on their worst card and therefore overpriced. (25 players times 20%). It seems to make sense that no later than game 40 you should drop about 5 players and pick up 5 new ones. Out of the 5 new ones, chances are only 1 or 2 will be on their weakest card.

In other words, if you are not dropping a few cards you are under-managing your team.

Of course, making mistakes in figuring out the bad cards vs bad luck counteracts that somewhat.

Thoughts?

If, after 40 games, you have five players not "getting it done" and you don't think there are better alternatives when there really are, then, yes, you are likely undermanaging your team.

Unfortunately, as you said, there are so many other variables, such as
1. Are those five players critical to my success? If not, would I better off to wait longer to find out which cards seem to be #5 (worst) cards?
2. Are they solid defensive players, even if they are #5 cards?
3. Do they excel at certain match ups, even if they are #5 cards?
4. What is the downside risk in trying to get rid of a player hitting .250, just so I can get a player that can hit .270?
5. I have a healthy division lead. If I do nothing until game 80 with these five players, can I still win the division?


I saw one manager win a league with zero roster moves. I'm not sure how many players were "#5" cards, but, it would be interesting to go back and find out.

https://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1441300

Here's somebody's Mystery League team who won championship with no roster moves. Are there five players on his roster who had "worst" cards? I don't know, but, nobody can say he undermanaged.


Okay, I analyzed his roster and looked up the year and you could easily say no more than one player out of 23 had his "worst" card.


I guess the point is that one should never blindly get rid of five players by Game 40 simply because the "law of averages" dictate that five cards are possible "#5" (worst) cards. Getting rid of five cards on his roster by game 40 would have been akin to a school teacher grading on a curve and deciding that five students get a poor grade even if their paper was ok.


But, your point is valid. You may be undermanaging your team if you haven't made five moves by Game 40. And, ideally, there would be less downside risk if you made these moves by Game 40 despite any uncertainty about the five players.

The challenge is trying to figure out if a certain player is on his #5 card or simply having bad luck on a #2 or #3 card. Without an injury reveal it could be hard to know for sure. I have dropped a player who was only hitting .250 only to have his replacement player hit .220 or worse numerous times. At the end of the year I will look back to see what the card reveal is for some of my cut players and sometimes I'm kicking myself because it was one of his better cards that I cut too soon.

Like Kenny Rogers will tell ya "You gotta know when to hold them and you gotta know when to fold 'em". The better you get at that the better mystery manager you will be.