MLS Fantasy Boss A Fantasy MLS Community
By: The Fantasy Gastroenterologist
Welcome back! As we approach the end of the 2025 MLS season, the guys here at FSC thought it would be a good idea to bring in a fantasy gut health specialist to help patients navigate some of the lesser-acknowledged aspects of playing the MLS Fantasy game. Specifically, I treat common metaphorical disorders and symptoms most often detected in fantasy managers during late-stage gameplay. These include:
- Fantasy Indigestion: An inability to accept outcomes such as scores and ranks.
- Fantasy Acid Reflux: A post-lockout burn that occurs when you realize you picked the wrong player.
- Fantasy Heartburn: A temporary, intense pain resulting from a disappointing round.
- Fantasy Nausea: A breaking point, when you’re just sick of playing fantasy, usually temporary.
- Fantasy Diarrhea: An uncontrollable urge to deliver hot takes to the community.
- Fantasy Constipation: An inability to decide which players to pick.
- Fantasy Fatigue: The inevitable mental exhaustion from playing a game that lasts for 8 months.
- Fantasy Ennui: An acute lack of concern regarding outcomes such as scores and ranks.
- Fantasy Depression: A sustained inability to cope with fantasy outcomes.
- Fantasy Psychopathy: Repeated bad behavior due to one’s own failure in the fantasy game.
- Fantasy Imposter Syndrome: A crippling fear of one’s perceived fantasy fraudulence being exposed.
- Fantasy Sicko Syndrome: An irrational need to prioritize fantasy activity over life activity.
- Fantasy Jackass Syndrome: A sustained, sadistic need to point out other managers’ failures.
As you can see, there are several disorders one might develop toward the end of a fantasy season. Some are easy to diagnose, yet others can be quite elusive. The list might be meant as a thematic joke, but I can assure you that they’re all very real challenges that fantasy managers can, and often do, face over time. In fact, I’ve battled most of these throughout my fantasy career.
In the interest of brevity, I’ll only cover a couple of these today, but it’s worth considering each of them, how they might relate to your own experience, and how each is ultimately linked directly to your mental state. I’ll also provide some ways I’ve found to be effective in overcoming them.
WHY WE PLAY
Let’s start by discussing why you chose to dedicate eight months of your life to playing MLS Fantasy. It’s an important question to ask yourself, mainly because the answer determines how likely and how often you’ll experience some of the challenges I described. The answer might change over time, so you should be asking whenever you’re dealing with something on the list. It’s lazy to cop out and say that you play for fun, so ask yourself what makes it fun for you. It could be for one or many reasons, like:
- Community interaction
- The chance to win prizes
- Bragging rights
- Competitive rush
- Mental escape
- Gambling addiction
- Love of math/statistics/analysis
- Deeper learning of the sport
- Brain exercise
I don’t play to satisfy a gambling addiction or because I might win a prize. I play for all the other reasons, though. Given that information, can you see how I might be experiencing some of the issues I listed? How about you?
HEADCASE
Let’s face it. If you’re still reading this article, chances are pretty good that you’re probably a headcase, at least to some degree. It’s also very possible you just like my writing style and can’t stop reading. Either way, I totally get it. Relax, I’m not using “headcase” in a derogatory way. It’s just a blanket term I’m using for writing convenience (and because it’s funny). Look, the point is I freely admit that I’m a headcase, and I think you should, too. Acknowledging that we aren’t always pillars of mental health is a requirement to becoming one. Being honest with ourselves about what’s going on upstairs is also a requirement. Nobody can help you solve a problem that you’re unwilling to acknowledge, so do yourself a favor, set your ego and indignation aside, and let’s talk about a couple of hand-picked fantasy disorders, you headcase.
PREVENTING BURNOUT
FANTASY FATIGUE
It’s Round 26. It’s the end of August, and we’ve been playing MLS Fantasy since February. If you’ve been fully engaged since Round 1, then you’re probably feeling a measure of exhaustion from the slog. Speaking for myself, I’m so involved and engaged that I begin to feel Fantasy Fatigue by Round 3. To battle this, some longtime veterans remain totally disengaged until matchday rolls around, but I can’t operate that way. I need to float ideas, check reports, analyze data and create 37 drafts first thing Monday morning to get a good read on the matchups. The point is everyone handles this differently. We each have our own process that works for us, but the downside to having a process with many requirements is that you get mentally tired, faster. When mental fatigue sets in, you’re more prone to making mistakes that could affect outcomes in undesirable ways.
FANTASY SICKO SYNDROME
Fantasy Sicko Syndrome is the leading cause of Fantasy Fatigue. It’s a pseudoscientific fact. The obvious solution is to stop being such a Fantasy Sicko, but in my experience that just isn’t feasible. Instead, you can help prevent Fantasy Fatigue by better managing your workload. Look for ways to streamline your player assessment and selection process. Maybe that means creating a spreadsheet that tracks something you usually need to hunt for or calculate manually. Ask yourself if you can eliminate parts of your FMLS experience and still be successful.
- Do you need to be on Discord as much?
- Do you need to look up stats that don’t matter?
- Do you need to watch every match?
- Do you get easily distracted or spend too much time on something?
Find ways to cut back on your engagement if you’re experiencing fatigue. Replace that time with life obligations, exercise, fresh air, sunlight and face-to-face social interaction. You will find greater balance in your life, and your loved ones will probably be grateful for it, even if they don’t say it. It’s easy to spend all your “free time” playing a game, especially one that’s supported by a fun and active community that also offers encouragement. But don’t make it a top 5 priority in your life. You’ll burn out that way, and we’d rather keep you happy playing MLS Fantasy.
OTHER FANTASY PSYCHOSES & DISORDERS
At this point it may come as a shock, but unlike the caretakers of this article series, I’m not actually a licensed psychologist or physician. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. If you need a moment to collect yourself, I completely understand. I’m just a software engineer who plays too much MLS Fantasy and likes to help others succeed by sharing my experiences and mistakes. So, for the love of whichever deity you worship (if any), please read what I’m about to say with a healthy measure of skepticism.
DEALING WITH DEPRESSION
In my pseudo-professional view, most of the issues I listed at the top of this piece are linked to low-grade depression. I don’t know if preexisting depression is the underlying cause of the other issues, or if the other issues combine to cause or augment depression. It’s debatable, but I think both cases are probably real. Regardless, we should be mindful when it comes to how we react to the game, both outwardly and inwardly.
Negative emotions feed depression, and depression makes it more likely we’ll feel negative emotions. I would suggest that anyone suffering from low-grade depression should pay closer attention to how playing MLS Fantasy may be affecting your mental health. How you react to things like a high-frequency of unexpected outcomes might prove to be a key factor.
DEALING WITH NEGATIVE EMOTIONS
As fantasy managers, it’s impossible to avoid feelings of anger, frustration, disappointment or envy over the course of a season. It’s a competitive game, so we automatically envy managers who outscore us, and we feel disappointed, frustrated, and often angry whenever our picks fail. None of these emotions are out of place or unwarranted, but if we can’t cope with them properly, things can quickly snowball in the wrong direction. During a live round, one wrong decision can cause a cascade of other failures because we don’t think clearly when we’re steeped in negativity. Just like the athletes out on the pitch, we need to limit the degree to which these negative emotions affect our ability to succeed in the game. Essentially, we need to avoid handing ourselves a red card for dissent.
Anger is a valid, unavoidable emotion, but it’s also a dangerous one, and how we express our anger almost always matters more than the occurrence of it. Anger is our emotional reaction to a failed expectation. We manage anger by adjusting our expectations. Understanding where anger comes from can make a huge difference in how we deal with it, and in most cases, that understanding allows us to turn anger into an alert system that we can use to our advantage in the fantasy game, but also in our everyday lives.
Knowing the origin of anger was a game-changer for me. Now, whenever I get mad about an outcome, I just pause, take a deep breath, set the emotion aside and immediately examine why I formed the underlying expectation that caused it, while acknowledging that it was probably unrealistic to begin with. It’s like I’m channeling Mr. Spock in crisis mode, and it works for me every time.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I hope you found this piece helpful. Feel free to ping me on the MLS Fantasy Boss Discord server if you’d like to start a deeper discussion about this, or any other topic you think is relevant. My goal is to help fantasy managers succeed, and part of that means helping them keep their cheese firmly affixed to each of their crackers.
Note from the Fantasy Therapist:
First, I’d like to thank Christian for guest-writing this week’s article. It takes a lot of courage to address these issues head on, especially when relating personal experiences. We like to joke about being sickos, but it’s really easy for underlying mental health issues, especially depression, to pop up when dealing with the level of frustration a bad week or season can cause.
To that end, I would highly recommend that if you find yourself struggling with your reactions to FMLS, seriously consider taking a break from the game. I once took a break for 12 years from fantasy games of all sorts because I was dealing with just about all of the symptoms Christian describes above, and my frustration and anger were creeping into other parts of my life. The break did me a lot of good (I also started doing therapy during that time), and when I felt ready, I decided to slowly try playing fantasy again, rejoining FMLS when COVID had us all stuck at home. I still get frustrated sometimes, but stepping away for a while helped me find the perspective I needed to remember that I play FMLS because I enjoy it, not because I’m looking for reasons to get angry.
As Christian said, please feel free to reach out if you want to discuss this any further or if you’re feeling any of the above feelings and aren’t really sure how to deal with them. We’re always happy to listen.
The “Fantasy Gastroenterologist” is Christian Ward, @xward on Discord
The “Fantasy Physician” is Ron Birnbaum, @Half Century City on Discord
The “Fantasy Therapist” is Mike Leister, @Kenobi on Discord
The “Fantasy Meteorologist” is Asher Malaschak, @Storminator on Discord
