Okay, we’re going to put behind us the absurd notion that absolutely everything has changed in a little over a month of a six month season. I’m not going to point out regression to the mean, skill sets or anything else in regards to players doing what they should do over the marathon-like baseball season. We’re going to assume ESPN knows better than us. That their rankings a month ago made sense and today their new rankings also make sense. We’re not going to say, “How could Brandon Webb be ranked tenth overall on Berry’s ranking yet Harang is ranked 70th?” We’re not going to say, they kinda have the same numbers, except for wins. We’re going to assume Webb will go 30-0 and Harang will go 3-27. We’re going to do all of that because we’re all brainwashed. We won’t second guess Karabell ranking Webb first overall. That’s right. We’re going to take our medicine, because that’s what we do — day in and day out. What choice do we have? You get all of this tremendous information at ESPN Hindsighter™; they know better than us because they broadcast games. And they’re owned by Disney. And Disney stockholders must know better than me. And… Fuck that! Is Hater Bell the only one that’s irate? You’re not frustrated with the status quo?

You need to start listening to some ’80s PE, and stop watching Flavor of Love. You need to get angry, quickfast. Put down the wine cooler and pick up a four-oh of OE. Stop holding your girlfriend’s pocketbook while she’s in the bathroom. Take her cash out of her wallet, drop the purse in the garbage and take the eighteen-year-old Wetzel’s Pretzels girl home and do her like Karabell’s been doing to his readers for the last seven years. You’re all to blame. Karabell et al is the meter maid who gave you a ticket while you ran into the store to get change. Karabell’s your eighth grade crush who asked your best friend to the Sadie Hawkins dance. Karabell’s your insecurity and that shizz is eating you alive. /rant

During the offseason, I wrote several posts criticizing the ESPN Player Rater and went as far as create my own to critique it.

Below are the links to these posts. Interesting reading if you’re a fantasy baseball or stat junkie. Much less interesting than smack if you are just a junkie.

Part 1: How Valid Is The ESPN Player Rater?

Part 2: Are Fantasy Baseball Pitchers Correctly Valued By Player Raters?

Part 3: How Do You Value Fantasy Baseball Hitters?

The whole journey to prove/disprove the ESPN Player Rater eventually led me to the Point Shares concept that is the foundation of my 2008 drafting and player valuation.

Anyway, I checked in on the ESPN Player Rater in 2008 and it looks like they listened to good ol’ Rudy. Some of the improvement I’m seeing:

• Negative values (particularly in AVG, ERA, WHIP) - Where 2007’s version would have a floor at 0, the current rater penalizes very bad performance. CC Sabathia currently sports -3.31 points in ERA and -2.64 in WHIP.
• No arbitrary cap at 5 points per category - I’m seeing some category leaders at 3 and Michael Bourn at a 7.64 for SB.

It’s too early to do a full assessment of the methodology. I figure I’ll do a Point Shares update at the All-Star Break and compare it then. But given the shit I gave ESPN during the offseason, it’s only fair that I give them credit for coming to their senses (and listening to me).

Has anyone in Razzball Nation been using ESPN for their fantasy league? If so, post your feedback! Grey and I went cold turkey on ESPN FLB after last year’s debacle (first two weeks of stats were fried - I had to calculate the data offline and make year-end adjustments). But I thought their new platform was pretty good. Interesting to hear what the rest of y’all think.

Oh, and just in case the worldwide leader is listening, add smart people to Baseball Tonight. Replace Eric ‘The Emmitt Smith of ESPN Baseball” Young and John Kruk with guys from ESPN.com like Keith Law and Rob Neyer. If you must pander to the masses, go with some tail like Erin Andrews.

Part 3 of How Valid is the ESPN Player Rater?

In two previous articles (part 1 and part 2), we’ve laid out alternative views for judging the most valuable player in 2007 5×5 MLB fantasy baseball (we say Peavy) and for pitchers – using and abusing the ESPN Player Rater in the process.

In this article, we’re going to focus on valuing hitters. The questions we will tackle are:

1) What is the value of each hitting stat?
2) How does position depth/scarcity affect a player’s overall value?
3) How does our approach to hitter value compare against the ESPN Player Rater?

To download our player rankings for 2007, please click here. To view the ESPN Player Rater.

What is the value of each hitting stat?

Our approach towards valuing player stats is to look at two factors: 1) the difference between a player’s statistics and those provided by the best available option (BAO) on the free agent wire (which would take position depth/scarcity into account) and 2) the impact that stat difference might have on a league’s standings (ambivalent to position).

We’ll set position scarcity aside for a second to look at the composite stats for the BAO hitter in 2007: 67 Runs / 14 HR / 65 RBI / 6 SBs / .277. The closest player equivalent to these stats is Luis Gonzalez.

We used the final standings of our fantasy league to understand the impact of each statistic by looking at the standard deviations between teams’ totals. While it would be better if we had more league standings on which to base these standard deviations, we still feel this is superior to building ratios off team averages because it takes into account that some statistics have larger percentage gaps between teams vs. others. This is most evident when looking at HR vs. SB – while the average team in our league average 1.69 HRs to 1 SB and the BAO has a HR:SB ratio of 2.33:1, the observed impact on a team was actually 1:0.77 or that a HR has more value (not even counting the R/HR/RBI/AVG implications) to a team’s rank in the standings than an SB.

The ratio for these stats based on our analysis was: 3.3 Runs / 1 HR / 2.8 RBI / 1.3 SBs / .003 AVG. Points are credited based on these ratios (a point actually equals the above ratio * 4.6) after subtracting the BAO’s stats.

Okay, let’s do two comparisons to show this works in action.

Eric Byrnes (103 / 21 / 83 / 50 / .286) vs. Miguel Cabrera ( 91 / 34 / 119 / 2 / .320)

This is an interesting one as it asks that inevitable question – how much are SBs really worth? Is it worth the addition 48 SBs to sacrifice those HRs, RBIs, and AVG that Miguel Cabrera provides? Let’s look at the points comparison of R/HR/RBI/AVG:

Runs: Byrnes 2.4 to 1.5
HRs: Cabrera 3.95 to 1.55
RBIs: Cabrera 3.95 to 1.43
AVG: Cabrera 3.48 to 1.01

(Note: While it might not look right that Cabrera’s 34 HRs could be worth 2.5x that of Eric Byrnes 21 HRs, remember that the BAO provides 14 HRs. So this is really a comparison of 20 HRs (34-14) vs. 7 HRs.)

Counting just these stats, Cabrera is about twice as valuable as Eric Byrnes (12.89 to 6.39).

But Eric Byrnes’ 50 SBs is huge given the average team only had 162 SBs in our league. A total like this could let you dominate SBs or focus on non-speed guys when filling out other positions (say, taking Khalil Greene’s 27 HRs instead of J. Lugo’s 33 SBs).

Eric Byrnes’ 50 SBs equates to 7.25 points in our scale while Cabrera’s 2 SBs equate to negative 0.45 points because it’s less than the BAO would’ve provided (which is 6). So factoring in SBs, Eric Byrnes is the more valuable fantasy hitter (13.6 to 12.4). But if your team was set for SBs, trading Eric Byrnes for Miguel Cabrera would be a no-brainer.

Placido Polanco (105 / 9 / 67 / 7 / .341) vs. Dan Uggla (113 / 31 / 88 / 2 / .245)

This comparison focuses on Polanco’s AVG contribution vs. Uggla’s power contribution.

Runs: Uggla 2.65 to 2.12
HRs: Uggla 4.0 to -0.78
RBIs: Uggla 1.94 to 0.30
SBs: Polanco -0.05 to -0.86

(Note: These comparisons do factor in position scarcity – hence, Uggla’s 2 SBs receive more negative credit that M. Cabrera’s above since the 2B BAO steals more than the average player.)

Counting these stats, Uggla is well ahead at 7.73 to 1.59 points, with the biggest driver being his 31 HRs which are worth 4.78 points more than Polanco’s 9 HRs.

But those HRs come at a price. Uggla’s .245 average is well below the BAO average of .277 (actually 2B’s have higher AVG than other positions so it’s even worse – examples of high batting average marginal 2Bs include Orlando Hudson’s .294, Luis Castillo’s .301, and Ronnie Belliard’s .290). Combining that bad average with his above average AB total (632), Uggla’s average would drop the average team’s AVG by .004 vs. the BAO 2B. This earns him a negative 3.28.

On the other hand, Polanco’s .341 in 587 ABs is worth a positive 4.77 points – more, in fact, than Uggla’s 31 HRs. He’s worth about an extra .004 on your team average meaning that swapping these two creates a .008 swing, a more dramatic swing than the 22 HR difference.

So while Placido Polanco is a negative on a team’s HR and SBs (and just about BAO level on RBIs), his high AVG catapults him into being a more valuable fantasy baseball contributor (6.4 to 4.4). If Uggla could just get to something like a .275 average or steal 20-30 SBs, his HR/RBIs could help catapult him up the 2B rankings (even with the anchor-like AVG, he ended up 7th most valuable 2B, well ahead of the .317 hitting ROY Dustin Pedroia).

How does position depth/scarcity affect a player’s overall value?

Position depth/scarcity plays a role from draft day through the end of the season.

During draft day, position depth/scarcity can increase/decrease a player’s value. A common practice is to ‘tier’ players at each position and try to group together similarly valued players. If there is only one player left in, say, the 2B tier and 5 similar valued players at SS, you may increase that 2B’s draft value because you can wait a round and likely get one of those shortstops.

After the draft, position depth/scarcity is used to compare the marginal benefit/loss of trading or adding/dropping one player over the next – e.g., I could trade Placido Polanco and replace him with little to no dropoff in any stat except AVG.

To factor this into our analysis, we extended our Best Available Option (BAO) concept to each position. We started with 10 rostered players for catchers and infield positions and 50 outfielders. We split the 1B/3B and 2B/SS positions equally and then divided up the utility position based on instinct and position depth (30% 1B, 2.5% 2B, 2.5% SS, 5% 3B, 0% C, 40% OF, 20% DH). We created composite stats for BAOs at each position – so for catcher, we took the 11th best AVG, 11th best HRs, etc. We then credited point totals based on the BAO at the position (“Position Points”) and averaged them with our average hitter BAO (“Player Points”). (Note: Since team rankings are position-agnostic – you don’t get more credit if it’s a middle infielder who hits a HR – there is a need to balance position depth/scarcity with overall stats. To keep it simple, we weighted it 50/50).

Below are the BAO stats per position (R / HR / RBI / SB / AVG) and some close statistical fits:

C – 47 / 13 / 57 / 2 / 0.273 (Paul Lo Duca, Johnny Estrada, AJ Pierzynski)
1B – 63 / 18 / 68 / 1 / 0.279 (Matt Stairs, Conor Jackson, Aubrey Huff)
2B – 79 / 11 / 61 / 9 / 0.288 (Orlando Hudson, Brendan Harris, Mark DeRosa)
SS – 72 / 11/ 60 / 11 / 0.279 (Brendan Harris, Jack Wilson)
3B – 70 / 18 / 72 / 4 / 0.279 (Kevin Kouzmanoff, Mark Reynolds, Aubrey Huff)
OF – 67 / 14 / 65 / 6 / 0.273 (Luis Gonzalez, Austin Kearns, JD Drew)

The most interesting about these BAO totals is how relatively close they are. The corner positions have a slight advantage in power and the middle infield spots have a slight advantage for runs, SBs and average. Catchers are weakest – particularly in Runs as catchers play less games and are disproportionately hitting 6th to 9th (less run opportunities).

Perhaps most surprisingly, the OF position looks no better than the middle infield positions. Wouldn’t you expect OF was a deeper position than middle infield? Isn’t BJ Upton more valuable as a 2B than an OF? Short answer: not really.

Here’s why: You’ve got roughly 15 2B, 15 SS, and somewhere between 52-57 outfielders on league rosters (OF are often used for UTIL positions). Looking at MLB rosters, you have roughly 30 starting 2B, 30 starting SS, and 90 starting OFs. FLB rosters, thus, are cutting deeper into the percentage of starting OFs vs. 2B/SS.

In addition, 2B/SS have added some pop over the years. 29 middle infielders hit at least 12 HRs. Granted, some had bad averages (Bill Hall, Juan Uribe, Stephen Drew), but the perception of those positions being power-challenged is outdated. (What IS true, though, is that it’s rare to find a middle infielder with 30+ HR power).

Outfielders, on the other hand, aren’t that deep. Only about 55 hit 15 or more home runs and that includes some players that might be at other positions (Berkman, Upton, Stairs) and the weakest ones look an awful lot like Luis Gonzalez and Austin Kearns (the BAO matches).

So while we did factor position depth/scarcity into our analysis, it really didn’t play a major role for hitters. The greatest impact was at catcher where the troika of great catchers in 2007 (Jorge Posada, V-Mart, Russell Martin) got about a 2 point boost because the Catcher position was the weakest in terms of BAO.

So Hanley Ramirez and Jimmy Rollins had extremely valuable fantasy years but the fact they played SS really didn’t add any significant value (maybe +2-3%).

How does our approach to hitter value compare against the ESPN Player Rater?

ESPN has a much simpler approach for estimating hitter value than the approach we have described above. It creates a cap at 5 points and a floor at 0 points. 5 points are awarded to the MLB leader in the stat and then each other player’s total is divided into the leader’s total and then multiplied by 5 to get their total – e.g., A-Rod led with 54 homers. David Wright had 30. He received 30/54 (.556) * 5 = 2.78 points in HR. Average is done in a slightly more complex way but the lowest possible total is zero (even if the player’s average has negative value).

From a macro-perspective, this simplistic approach works fine. The top hitters are going to appear near the top, the okay hitters in the middle, the bad hitters on the bottom. At a micro-perspective, we think ESPN’s simplistic approach has greater flaws vs. our approach. These flaws are less for hitters than pitchers, though, as the greater issues arise around ratio/average based stats and pitchers have two (ERA, WHIP) vs. one for hitters (AVG).

In a previous article, we identified four issues with ESPN Player Rater for valuing pitchers

1) Capping High Points at 5
2) Positive Ratio/Average Contributions Are Undercredited
3) Negative Contributions Aren’t Penalized
4) Overcrediting of Slightly Above Average Performance

These four issues all play a role for valuing hitters but #2 and #3 are not as major an issue because ERA/WHIP are more polarizing than AVG. For example, even low value hitters may hit .290 but only a great starting pitcher can manage an ERA near 3.00 ERA.

An additional issue we’ve found is:

5) The league leader used as the points base distorts the distribution of points – While the leader in Runs and RBIs is relatively close to the other leaders (no one had, say, 200 Runs or RBIs), A-Rod’s 54 HRs and Reye’s otherworldly 78 SBs set a very high bar for 5 points. This creates odd situations where Eric Byrnes 50 SBs (tied for 4th in majors) is worth less in ESPN Player Points than his 103 Runs (outside the top 20) and Jimmy Rollins’ 30 HRs (tied for 20th) are worth less than his 94 RBIs (tied for 42nd).

Here is the assessment on a stat by stat basis:

Runs – Overcredits for all players. For above average performance, Issue #4 plays a role (the Best Available Option’s 67 Runs warrants 2.3 points). For below average performance, Issue #3 starts taking effect (less than 67 runs should warrant negative points). An additional issue throughout is that runs are so plentiful across players that the value of a run is less than other stats (A-Rod’s 143 runs warrant 4.95 points in our estimation vs. 8.29 for his 54 HRs)

Home Runs – Undercredits great performance like A-Rod and Fielder (Issue #1). Issue #5 plays a role in underestimating the value of everyone at 25+ Homers. Players between about 15-24 HRs are slightly inflated based on Issue #4. Anyone below the BAO average of 14 are overestimated based on Issue #3.

RBIs – Undercredits the great performances like A-Rod and Matt Holliday (Issue #1). Overcredits above average performance (Issue #4). Undercredits below average performance (Issue #3). Issue #4 affects more hitters than Issue #3 (which is limited to speedsters and some 2B/SS – examples are Reyes’s 57 RBIs and Pierre’s 41RBIs)

SBs – This is the category where Issues #1 and #5 play a huge role in underestimating SB value. We have Jose Reyes’ 78 SBs at a whopping 11.5 points – the most points awarded for any offensive category. Teammate David Wright’s 34 SBs earned him a respectable 4.8 points (equivalent to Holliday’s 36 HRs and Vlad’s 125 RBIs). This underestimation affects hitter values all the way down to about 10 SBs. Issue #3 plays a very minor role – greatest for 2B/SS as speed is most common in that category (Freddy Sanchez’s 0 SBs earned him a negative 1.19).

AVG – Issue #1 only affects the top 3 hitters as Magglio, Ichiro, and Matt Holliday’s averages warranted 6+ points in our ratings. Issue #2 plays a role for the rest of those with averages above .330. Issue #4 plays a role in overestimating the value of hitters lower than .330 but greater than BAO (e.g., Luis Gonzalez’s pedestrian .278 warrants 1.99 ESPN points where it should be worth zero). For low average hitters, Issue #3 plays a role in greatly overestimating their value as they should have negative value. Uggla’s aforementioned average of .245 gets .86 ESPN points compared to our -3.28 points.

Amazingly, though, the cumulative effect of these issues seems to have little bearing on the ranking of hitters. We agree with the top 10 OFs from ESPN Player Rater with slightly different ordering. The top 10 2B match down to the order. The differences play more of a role in total player rankings – below are some examples of players differently valued (Our Ranking, ESPN Ranking).

Eric Byrnes (25, 43)
Jorge Posada (58, 92)
Juan Pierre (78, 117)
Derek Jeter (86, 106)

It’s worth noting that almost every hitter is higher valued in our rankings vs. ESPN because ESPN overvalues pitchers out of the top 20 and this pushes down all the hitters.

So while we find faults in ESPN’s methodology, we can’t fault using ESPN Player Rater to understand hitter position rankings. It works surprisingly well for hitters given its simplistic approach - it’s possible that its flaws are a bigger issue as you move down the player rankings. That said, we would caution against using the combined hitter and pitcher rankings given the flaws we’ve seen with their valuing and ranking of pitchers.

(Part 2 of How Valid Is the ESPN Player Rater?)

If you’ve ever seen the ESPN Player Rater (or, for that matter, other quantitative player rankings for fantasy baseball), you’ve likely asked yourself:

How could there be so many starting pitchers at the top? (13 in top 20, 19 in top 30) Is that valid or just faulty weighting?

This looks even more peculiar when reviewing qualitative rankings (i.e., someone subjectively lists players) or reviewing pre-draft rankings.

Before creating our own Player Rater, our assumption was that the preponderance of starters in the top ranks of ESPN’s Player Rater was due to faulty methodology versus the true value of starters vs. hitters.

So it came as a mild surprise to find that 12 of our top 20 were starters (and we also agreed with ESPN that JJ Putz deserved top 20 inclusion). We were somewhat relieved when there were only 2 starters in the 21-30 ranks so our 14 out of the top 30 was less than ESPN.

But those were gut reactions. Now that we’ve gone through the exercise, is their truth to ESPN’s (and our) pitcher-heavy top of the rankings? Are they eerily prescient or is this a broken clock scenario?

[It's important to differentiate this exercise - the proper valuing of player statistics - versus the projection of future statistics that are done by folks like Baseball Prospectus and Ron Shandler and are used for drafting purposes. Their analysis has shown that projecting hitter stats is more accurate than pitchers stats which makes hitters less risky for drafting. While it's extremely rare to see top 10 draft results with more than 2 pitchers, this does NOT mean pitchers are less valuable. That is based on a risk/value assessment - our analysis just focuses on the 'value' part of the equation.]

We’re going to look at this as two separate subquestions: 2A) Should there be a lot of starters in the final season top 20? & 2B) Is ESPN’s ranking of starting pitchers correct?

For question 2A, let’s first look at the players in our top 20 as well as that of ESPN. We shared 19 of the same 20 players, albeit in different order. Ours includes David Ortiz at #19 while they have Cole Hamels included at #20. (Still, agreeing so much with ESPN feels unclean.)

Our Ranking. Name - Pos (ESPN Ranking)

1. Jake Peavy - SP (2)

2. Alex Rodriguez - 3B (1)

3. C.C. Sabathia - SP (3)

4. Johan Santana - SP (4)

5. Matt Holliday - OF (8)

6. Hanley Ramirez - SS (7)

7. Brandon Webb - SP (6)

8. Josh Beckett - SP (5)

9. Magglio Ordonez - OF (11)

10. John Lackey - SP (9)

11. Jimmy Rollins - SS (14)

12. David Wright - 3B (15)

13. Erik Bedard - SP (13)

14. J.J. Putz - RP (10)

15. Aaron Harang - SP (12)

16. Dan Haren - SP (16)

17. Fausto Carmona - SP (19)

18. John Smoltz - SP (18)

19. David Ortiz - 1B (22)

20. Javier Vazquez - SP (17)

22. Cole Hamels - SP (20)

To understand the impact of each category on these players’ total points, we looked at the mean and median points per category for the 13 starters and 6 hitters (excluding Putz).

Category: Mean; Median

R: 4.4; 3.1

HR: 5.1; 3.1

RBI: 4.9; 2.0

SB: 3.5; 0.4

AVG: 5.3; 2.4

W: 4.4; 4.9

SV: -0.3; -0.3

ERA: 4.8; 5.4

WHIP: 4.4; 4.8

SO: 4.4; 4.8

While the means per category looks very consistent across the hitting vs. pitcher stats (aside from Saves), the medians per category are smaller for hitter stats. This is because even the greatest hitters are rarely great in any more than 2-3 categories. While the numbers may average out high, it’s because some players dominate the category (HR=ARod) and others are merely very good or good. A-Rod led the majors in R, HR and RBI but was outside the top 20 in Average and SB. Hanley Ramirez was top 10 in R, SB and AVG but outside the top 20 in HR and top 50 in RBI. David Wright’s isn’t in the top 10 for any category - his true value is being very good across the board. David Ortiz wouldn’t steal a base if you stuffed it with pork and deep-fried it.

Looking at the top 20 in batting average, only 5 of these players were in the top 20 for HRs (Holliday, Ortiz, Pujols, Wright, and M. Cabrera). (Note: Braun didn’t have enough ABs to qualify for average but was in top 20 for HRs)

The best pitchers, on the other hand, tend to be great or at least very good in all four categories. Looking at the top 20 in the MLB for Wins, Strikeouts, and ERA, there are 19 pitchers who are in at least two of the categories – 5 of those pitchers (Peavy, Webb, Lackey, Sabathia, and Beckett) are in the top 20 across all three.

This leads to a rather straightforward theory - starters are more likely to populate the top 20 in a player rater because the top pitchers tend to get high points in all the categories where hitters only have a couple categories where they are great.

We tested this larger theory of “pitching stats are more connected” by doing a correlation analysis on all the hitters and starters to see how closely the performance in one stat is correlated with another.

A perfect 100% would mean that the stats are absolutely correlated – say, purchases at a store and a store’s sales tax receipts (every $1 in purchases would be x% in taxes). A -100% would mean that the stats are completely inverse – say, the amount of total salary a baseball team can afford and their likelihood of picking up Jose Lima.

Below are the results of the correlation analysis.

Analysis:

90-100%

80-89% HR/RBI, ERA/WHIP

70-79%

60-69% R/RBI, W/K

50-59% R/HR, W/ERA, K/ERA, K/WHIP

40-49% R/SB, R/AVG, W/WHIP

30-39% RBI/AVG

20-29%

10-19% HR/AVG, SB/AVG

0-9%

Negative HR/SB, RBI/SB, all stats with saves for starters

Let’s start with the highest correlating stats for hitters and pitchers: HR/RBI and ERA/WHIP. The fact that these stats correlate highest should be rather self-evident.

Those that do well in HR and RBI correlate positively with Runs but poorly with SB and AVG. There is barely any correlation on HR/AVG and a mild one for RBI/AVG (which makes sense since it does require hits generally to drive in runs). SBs are negatively correlated to HR and RBI - not a surprise to anyone who has ever drafted Juan Pierre, Scott Podsednik, or Willy Taveras.

Runs prove to be an interesting category as, besides HR/RBI, they also correlate well with SBs and AVG. This is likely due to high SB and AVG players being on base a lot, at the top of the lineup, and getting driven in by the HR/RBI guys.

So what we tend to have are two types of valuable hitters: Power/middle of the lineup guys who provide strong R/HR/RBI or Speed/top of the lineup guys who provide strong R/SB/AVG. Players like Magglio Ordonez hitting .360 while providing solid power numbers or Hanley Ramirez providing 29 home runs while providing great R/SB/AVG numbers are the EXCEPTIONS and not the rule.

With ERA/WHIP, these stats positively correlate at 40-60% with Wins and K’s. While there are those that do well in just one of these categories (say Wang in Wins or Kazmir in K’s, alliteration unintentional), a great starter doing well in most, if not all the categories, is more common than with hitters. Since there are more successful 3-4 category pitchers vs hitters (where you generally have to tradeoff strengths with weaknesses like Ichiro’s R/SB/AVG vs. HR/RBI), it makes sense that starters are disproportionately valuable.

The final point here – which was covered in the Peavy vs. A-Rod comparison - is the fact that starting pitchers have more influence over a team’s total stats than a hitter. This is particularly true in ERA and WHIP where a top starter may represent around 20% of your innings. Compare this to a hitter who is lucky to represent 8-9% of your ABs.

An illustrative comparison is looking at the stats of the 20th player in our rater – Javier Vazquez. His stat line of 15W/3.74/1.14/213K looks pretty good but what would the equivalent be in value for a hitter? If we link up Runs to Wins, HR to ERA, RBI to K’s, SBs to SV, and AVG to WHIP, our model would require a 120/21/137/0/.345 hitter. (fyi, if you want to see how SBs would play a role, switching the SB and AVG values would net .278 and 36 SBs)

So the answer to Question 2A is yes. We do feel that starters for any particular season should represent a majority of the top 20 value slots – unless, of course, a breed of power/speed guys start cropping up that rack up RBIs and don’t suck at AVG (see Mike Cameron, Chris B. Young).

On to Question #2B, is ESPN’s ranking of starting pitchers correct?

Let’s take a look at the pitchers just outside the top 20 in ESPN’s Player Rater and compare them to our totals.

ESPN Rank - Player Name – Our Rank

20 - C. Hamels - 22

21 - J. Verlander - 26

23 - K. Escobar - 36

24 - T. Lilly - 34

27 - J. Shields - 43

28 - T. Hudson - 42

29 - S. Kazmir – 55

Scott Kazmir’s stat line of 13W/3.48/1.38/239Ks netted him 3.25/3.58/2.55/4.98 in ESPN Player Rater points for a total of 14.36. Turning that into percentages, we’re looking at 22% for Wins, 25% for ERA, 18% for WHIP, and 35% for K’s.

In our rater, Scott Kazmir had 10.5 points that netted him 2.2/3.2/-1.4/6.8 or 21% for Wins, 31% for ERA, -14% for WHIP, and 64.5% for K’s.

Why the negative in WHIP? Because the Best Available Option (BAO) pitcher had a WHIP of 1.32 which bests Kazmir’s 1.38. His WHIP hurts your team, but you’ll take it because he does well in the other stats – especially K’s where he’s truly excellent.

The Kazmir comparison highlights several flaws in ESPN’s ranking of pitchers:

1) Capping High Points at 5 – Kazmir’s contribution in strikeouts has a greater impact on a team than, say, A-Rod’s run total. Treating them both at around 5 distorts Kazmir’s one special thing. It’s as if he’s Dirk Diggler and his “one special thing” has been shortened a couple of inches. (We’ll explore this concept further in another post – the capping, not fictional schlongs.)

2) Positive ERA/WHIP Contributions Are Undercredited – Kazmir’s 206.2 IP at a 3.48 ERA warrants slightly more credit than ESPN doles out since it is well below the BAO ERA of 3.96. If you estimate Kazmir represents between 1/6 and 1/7 of a team’s innings (figure 4 more starters = 800 IP, 4 relievers = 300 IP, total of 1300 IP which is about 1/6.5 of Kazmir’s total), that 0.48 difference in ERA nets out to about a 0.07-0.08 drop in team ERA. This is equivalent to the impact of a player hitting about .337 or driving in 116 RBIs. (This concept is also covered in the A-Rod vs. Peavy post.)

3) Negative Contributions Aren’t Penalized – Kazmir’s WHIP of 1.38 is below the 1.32 WHIP of the Best Available Option pitcher (the top FA starter if the best 50 starters and 40 relievers were taken). How could this net positive points? He’s hurting your team. The WHIP is a tradeoff for his other stats. It’s like going out with a girl because she’s hot AND crazy instead of because she’s hot and IN SPITE of the fact she’s crazy. This ‘tradeoff’ cost is also present in counting stats for second-tier pitchers like C. Wang (gets less than average strikeouts) or Chris “Tall San Diego Pitcher” Young (his 9 wins are less than average).

A 4th issue related to #3 – the overcrediting of slightly above average performance - is more apparent with Ted Lilly’s ERA (3.83 vs BAO 3.96) and WHIP (1.14 vs. BAO 1.32). While Lilly’s ERA should get some positive credit, it is not worth nearly as much as his WHIP. ESPN’s system doesn’t value the two that differently - Lilly with 3.12 points in ERA and 4.30 in WHIP. On the other hand, we credit Lilly with 1.3 ERA points and 4.8 WHIP points.

The summary of all these ESPN Player Rater flaws is the following:

Wins – Slightly undercredits great performance (issue #1), Doesn’t penalize below average performance (issue #3)

ERA – Undercredits great ERAs, overcredits slightly above average to bad ERAs

WHIP - Undercredits great WHIPs, overcredits slightly above average to bad WHIPs

Strikeouts – Similar to Wins but more pronounced.

For the pitchers in the top 20, these effects are minor – Harang and Vazquez are slightly inflated given their so-so ERAs, Carmona is deflated given his great ERA (3.06), Beckett and Webb switch places because Webb’s ERA superiority trumps Beckett’s 2 extra wins. Outside the top 20, the results become more pronounced since issues #3 and #4 play a greater role in the distorted value.

Thus the verdict for Question #2B - is ESPN’s ranking of starting pitchers correct? The answer is no. Their rater does a fair job at the top, but it gets continually distorted as you move outside the top 20 players because it doesn’t properly penalize mediocre to below average performance.

(Note: Unfortunately, the ESPN Player Rater’s improper penalizing of below average performance has a lot in common with the internal review of Baseball Tonight anchors - please tell me John Kruk, Orestes Destrade and Eric Young aren’t coming back…)

Come March, when you’re preparing for your draft and trying to decide between pitchers, you can avoid the above mistakes by just comparing the two pitchers’ projected stats and credit a point for each of the following increments: 1.5 Wins = 0.19 ERA = 0.04 WHIP = 18 Ks. Might take a little more calculating but it could be the difference between taking Jeremy Bonderman over John Lackey (that decision still haunts me from last year…)

Anyone who played ESPN 2007 Fantasy Baseball last year probably had two lingering questions throughout the season:

1) Did the ESPN employees responsible for the database crash that screwed up the first two weeks’ worth of 2007 stats befall a fate worse than Harold “Harass is one word?” Reynolds (rarely insightful on Baseball Tonight but he’s like Peter F*in’ Gammons compared to replacement ex-2B Eric Young)?

2) Is the ESPN Player Rater completely incorrect or just mostly incorrect?

While we wait to see if Outside the Lines’ Bob Ley or the ESPN Ombudslady answer our repeated requests for answers on question #1, we took on the challenge of question #2.

Now you may ask, “Is this a valuable exercise beyond the joy in potentially proving ESPN wrong?” Fair question. The answer is a resounding yes. One of the greatest challenges with Fantasy Baseball is determining how to compare the value of players and their statistical contributions – any idiot could tell you that A-Rod and Peavy were the best hitter and pitcher respectively but was Matt Holliday more valuable than Jimmy Rollins? Understanding the value of each of the statistics – ESPECIALLY in non-counting stats like batting average, ERA, and WHIP – helps from the draft throughout the season as rosters are juggled, free agent options are considered, and trade offers are mulled. (That being said, proving ESPN wrong was a motivating factor.)

In no particular order, here are some of the questions we have on the 2007 season that we don’t believe ESPN Player Rater correctly answers (based on 5×5 MLB Universe):

1) Who is more valuable: A-Rod (best hitter) vs. Peavy (best player)?

2) How could there be so many starting pitchers at the top? (13 in top 20, 19 in top 30) Is that valid or just faulty weighting?

3) ESPN creates a floor and ceiling of 0 (floor) and 5 (ceiling) for points per category. Does this misrepresent the contribution (or lack thereof) of players and what is the impact on player rankings? For example, how is Jose Reyes’ amazin’ 78 SBs worth the same amount of points as Josh Beckett’s merely impressive 20 wins? How is Richie Sexson’s horrific .205 batting average worth the same amount as Todd Helton’s sloth-like 0 SBs?

4) How is it possible that relievers J.J. Putz and Rafael Betancourt are worth more for ERA and WHIP than top starters like C.C. Sabathia, Johan Santana, and Brandon Webb when these relievers pitch about 1/3 of the innings as the starters?

5) Shouldn’t players at shallower positions receive bonus points – e.g, are Hanley Ramirez’s stats at SS more valuable than A-Rod’s stats for 3B?

To tackle these questions, we created our own Player Rater. See attached for the rankings and notes on the methodology we used. The methodology is nerdy and quasi-scientific - with heavy conceptual influence from Baseball Prospectus, Bill James, and other leaders in the field – but you could skip all the mathy stuff and just look at the rankings if you like.

We will answer these questions – and potentially others - over several posts. Let’s start off with the first one…

1) Who is more valuable: A-Rod (best hitter) vs. Peavy (best pitcher)?

ESPN has A-Rod #1 and Jake Peavy #2 by the slimmest of margins – 19.8 to 19.75. This order is in line with popular opinion. I’m sure if you were to do a ‘hindsight draft’ - whereby you draft based on 2007 stats – that Scott Boras’s wet dream would be picked #1 almost every time. There’s a much greater chance Peavy would go #3 or later than #1.

But is this some type of hitter/East Coast bias vs. pitcher/West Coast bias? Well, let’s look at how ESPN calculated the point totals:

A-Rod: Runs = 5, HR = 5, RBI = 5, SB=1.54, AVG=3.26
Peavy: K = 5, W = 4.75, SV = 0, ERA = 5, WHIP = 5

A-Rod led the majors in R/HR/RBI to earn the three category max of 15 points. His above average 24 SBs and .314 AVG netted him another 4.8 points. Peavy had a possible max of 20 points since Bud Black inexplicably turned to Trevor Hoffman to close games and was a win short of getting all 20 (should’ve showed up in that one-game playoff, Jake). So, maybe that’s it. Even the best starting pitchers can only contribute in 4 categories so a great 5-category hitter is more valuable.

What do our rankings say? It says Mr. Peavy is #1 by a healthy margin – 29.4 to 26.2 points. I’ll admit it – we were surprised too. Let’s look at our point allocations by category to explain it:

A-Rod: Runs = 4.9, HR = 8.3, RBI = 6.8, SB=3.2, AVG=3.0
Peavy: K = 6.8, W = 6.2, SV = -0.3, ERA = 9.3, WHIP = 7.4

This comparison is as good an opportunity as any to go over our methodological basis for crediting points (skip over if you’re mathphobic):

Rather than using a 0-5 point scale per category, we mirrored the VORP concept from Baseball Prospectus and created composite stats for what would be the best available option (BAO) at each position – e.g., what are the stats of the 11th best catcher who’d be the next best option post-draft. We then created a team full of these BAOs (kind of like a fantasy expansion team – hell, a team with Carlos Pena, BJ Upton, Troy Tulowitzki, Ryan Braun is much better than the MLB variety) and averaged their stats to create the BAO hitter and BAO pitcher.

We then took the team totals of our ESPN league to come up with relevant increments to award points. Our method would credit players with positive points if they performed above the BAO in a stat and negative points if they performed below (example: Magglio Ordonez was worth 7.7 AVG points while Richie Sexson was worth -4.6 points)

The increments were based on the standard deviation between our 10 teams’ totals which came out to roughly 1-2% of the average team’s total for R, HR, RBI, K, and W. SB and SV turned out around 4% of the average because team totals in these stats tend to be more widely distributed than the other counting stats (related to few players contributing the lion’s share of points – another way of explaining this is to consider the impact of 5 Wins vs. SBs and SVs on your league’s rankings. Wins would prove more valuable.). Lastly, the ratio stats – AVG, ERA, and WHIP – are around 0.5% of the average team’s total as there is much smaller % change between players (e.g., a great hitter hits .350, a bad hitter .250. That’s only a 40% difference. A-Rod hit 150% more HRs than fellow MVP candidate Mike Lowell)

These standard deviations were arbitrarily divided by 6 to create more point differential between players. For ratios, the team totals were multiplied up to reflect an individual player’s impact on the total – so a hitter would have to hit .0144 better than the BAO (assuming all 13 hitters had the same # of ABs) to raise the team’s average by the required .0011.

Lastly, we compared each player to two different types of BAOs: one specific to their position and one general (hitter or pitcher). These results were averaged together and helped to account for the fact that a BAO 1st baseman offers better stats than a BAO catcher so, all stats equal, the catcher is a more valuable hitter. (This topic will be further explored in another post. We’ve only got so much material to stretch over the offseason.)

So now let’s look at Runs vs. K’s to see this methodology in action. These make a good comparison in that the average team totals for these stats (based on our ESPN league) are nearly equal: 1150 runs and 1148 Ks.

A-Rod and Peavy led the majors in these categories (143 Rs and 240 Ks respectively) so ESPN credits each with 5 points. But the BAO hitter (who looks almost exactly like Luis Gonzalez’s stat line of .278/70/15/68/6) had 67 runs where the BAO pitcher (who looks closest to Carlos Villanueva’s season of 8 Ws/1 SV/3.94/1.35/99 K over 114 IP) had 101 K’s.

(Note: That may seem low for K’s but here’s a few other starting pitchers b/w 90 and 110 K’s that certainly saw some fantasy roster space during the season: C. Wang, G. Maddux, B. Sheets, C. Schilling, M. Mussina, J. Marquis)

So A-Rod had 76 more Runs than the BAO hitter and Peavy had 139 K’s more than the BAO in a category where teams had virtually the same average total. Another way of looking at it is that Peavy’s total would represent 20.9% of the average team’s total where A-Rod’s runs would be 12.4%.

The larger differential and impact of Peavy’s K’s vs. A-Rod’s runs are slightly curbed by the fact that Runs have a lower standard deviation which leads to crediting a point for 15.1 runs and 18.1 K’s. This nets out to 4.9 points for A-Rod’s Runs vs. 6.8 for Peavy’s K’s.

Peavy’s impact on Wins is similar to his impact in K’s and A-Rod’s HR and RBI totals net him 8.3 and 6.8 points respectively. His 24 SBs net him 3.2 points. (If anything, the ESPN total screws him – how could 24 SBs be worth only 1.5 points of 5 points, with 0 SBs equaling 0 points, given the average team only had 162 SBs?)

So it all comes down to the ratio stats (AVG, ERA, WHIP) to determine the winner.

Let’s look at A-Rod’s AVG first. To determine the impact, we start with a lineup made exclusively of BAO hitters. This group hits .2772. If we replace one BAO with A-Rod, the average goes up to .2806 – a difference of 0.0034. In addition, A-Rod had 583 ABs compared to our BAO’s 482 ABs. So A-Rod’s average has a greater impact than just 1/13th (it becomes worth about 1/11th). To account for this, we multiply his points by his # of ABs / BAO ABs (1.2). After accounting for the fact that the 3B BAO hits for a slightly higher average (.279), A-Rod’s batting average nets him 2.8 points.

Now let’s look at Peavy’s MLB-leading 2.54 ERA and 1.06 WHIP. Adding him to a BAO team (5 starters + 4 relievers with removing a BAO composite of the two) changes the team ERA/WHIP from 3.960/1.315 to 3.719/1.272. This is a net decrease of 0.241 in ERA and 0.043 in WHIP.

How huge is this? Well, looking at our league, this would be the number of points gained in ERA by deducting .241 (1 team – 5 pts, 2 teams – 4 pts, 2 teams – 3 pts, 3 teams - 2 pts, 1 team – 1 pt, 1 team – 0 pts). If you factor in that the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place teams had a maximum of 0, 1 , and 2 points to gain respectively, you can see that at a MINIMUM, Jake Peavy’s ERA would’ve gained a team 2 points and more likely 3+. The WHIP difference is similar in impact.

Now we compared Peavy against our BAO pitcher who is a composite of the best pitcher available. This could be a starter or reliever. What if we compared him against strictly the BAO starter (the 51st best starter)? This would reduce the impact of Peavy’s Wins and K’s but would actually INCREASE the impact of his ERA and WHIP. Why? Because starters pitch more innings than relievers and tend to give up more runs and baserunners. The BAO starter has an ERA of 4.15 and WHIP of 1.34 (closest comparison – Carlos Silva) where the BAO reliever is at an ERA of 3.31 and WHIP of 1.24. Compared to the BAO Starter, his ERA is worth 9.9 ‘position points’ but 8.6 ‘player points’ for an average of 9.3 points.

In summary, we would say Jake Peavy was the MVP of 2007 Fantasy Baseball (5×5, MLB Universe) over A-Rod. While A-Rod had two high contributing categories (HR and RBI), one strong (Runs), and two above average (SB and AVG), Peavy has four high contributing categories with his ERA and WHIP point total of 16.7 dwarfing his closest competitors (Santana = 11.3, Sabathia = 11.2).

While we wouldn’t have the nut sack to draft Peavy #1 in a 2008 draft (pitching is less predictable than hitting), he’d be our choice for #1 in a ‘hindsight’ draft. And if you can’t even manage 20/20 hindsight, how can you expect to see clearly into the future…