Fantasy Baseball Advice

With the RCL sign ups in full bloom, we decided to take a look at what last year’s RCLs showed us.  I.e., what it took to win these fantasy baseball leagues last year.  Across nine 12 team leagues, you would think you’d have some wide variations, but it’s amazingly close what you need in each category to do average vs. win.  Some quick points upfront.  There were 5 outfielders and one utility, so if you play in a Yahoo league with three outfielders and two utility, I’d expect a bit more offense across the board.  There were 198 games started vs. 180 games started this year.  So Wins and Ks were a bit high, but I’m going to factor those changes into the below numbers.  6.5 is average in a 12 team league, not 6 because the last place team has 1 point, not zero.  Finally, the RCLs are made up of guys that are probably more competitive than your casual buddy office fantasy baseball league, so if you can hit these benchmarks, you should be in good shape.  Anyway, here’s what it takes to win a 12 team fantasy baseball league:

Runs – 1,067

The average team last year scored 1,047 Runs, that would get them 6.5 points in the standings in Runs.  To win your league, it took 1,159 Runs with the average player contributing 89 Runs.  To move up a point from average, you needed an extra 20.39 Runs.  So 20 runs on top of 1,047 Runs took you from 6.5 points to 7.5 in the standings.  I like to aim for a 7.5 in Runs.  So I would aim for 1,067 Runs or 82 Runs/player.

Home Runs — 277

The average team hit 262 homers.  To win, you needed 304 homers or 23 homers/player.  To move up a point from average (6.5 points in the standings), you needed an extra 7.5 homers.  I like to aim for an 8.5 in homers.  So I would aim for 15 homers from 262 or 277 homers or 21 homers/player.

RBIs — 1,036

The average team needed 1,016 RBIs.  To win, you had to get 1,128 or 87 RBIs/player.  To move up a point from average (6.5 points), you needed an extra 20.37 RBIs.  I aim for a 7.5 points in RBIs.  So I would aim for 1,036 RBIs or 80 RBIs/player.

Steals — 168

The average team needed 153 steals.  To win, you had to get 208 or 16 steals/player.  To move up a point from average (6.5 points), you needed an extra 10.02 steals.  I aim for 8 points in steals.  So I would aim for 168 steals or 13 steals/player.

Average — .277

The average team’s, uh, average is .277.  To win, you had to get a .290.  To move up a point from average (6.5 points), you needed an increase of .0314.  I aim for average in, well, ya know.  So I would want a .277 average.  Let the rest figure itself out.

Strikeouts — 1,165

The average team’s Ks are 1,065.  To win, you needed to rack up 1,238 Ks.  To move up a point from average (6.5 points), you needed an extra 31.47 Ks.  I aim for a 10 in Ks.  Actually, I don’t aim for it, but that’s where I end up.  So I would want 1,165 Ks or 129 Ks/pitcher.

Wins — 77

The average team’s pitchers won 77 games.  To win, you needed to win 92.  To move up a point from average (6.5 points), you needed to win an extra 2.84 games.  (Jason Marquis is good for at least two .84 wins.)  I go for average here, which is 77 games or 9 wins/pitcher.  Otherwise known as letting the cards fall where they may.

Saves — 117

The average team’s relievers close out 87 games.  To win, you needed 133 saves.  To move up a point from average (6.5 points), you needed an extra 8.52 saves.  I aim for a 10 in saves.  My thought is if you have extra, you can always trade those suckers.  To get 10 points in saves, you needed an extra 30 saves from average or 117 saves or 39 saves from 3 closers or 29 from 4 closers.

ERA — 3.80

The average team’s pitchers had a 3.91 ERA.  To win, you needed a 3.31 ERA.  To move up a point from average (6.5 points), you needed an increase of .11.  I aim for a 7.5 in ERA.  So I would want a 3.80 ERA.  In reality, ERA’s so fickle that aiming for ERA is like throwing darts at a unicorn.

WHIP — 1.25

The average team’s pitchers had a 1.30 WHIP.  To win, you needed a 1.20 WHIP.  To move up a point from average (6.5 points), you needed an increase of .02.  I aim for a 9 in WHIP.  So I would want a 1.25 WHIP.

We’re a little over the halfway mark in baseball so why not check in on our leagues…

First up, the Fantasy Razzball League. Jay – a Razzball commenter – is ahead of a pack which includes 30 bloggers and 50 other participants. The rest of the top five are Mike Podhorzer from FantasyPros911 (who is overdue for a league update in our NL-only league), Jonathan Halket of The Hardball Times Fantasy Focus, our own Grey Albright and Razzball commenter Freak in 5th. I’m in 7th place and it’s going to take a ridiculous 2nd half to try and defend my Fantasy Razzball title from last year.

In our Razzball Commenter leagues, there’s a 3-way battle for first with Anthony, Mowses, and an unnamed entry whose team goes by ‘Tijuana Two Step’. All three are above 100 points in their 12 team leagues which is pretty damn impressive. The craziest part is that Anthony and Tijuana are in the same league with the next team nearly 30 points out. The team known as “I said You’ve Got No Game’ is in 4th followed closely with Rhymenocerous (no sign of Hiphoppotamus), PWNightmare, ThirdandKing, and Doc.

Here are a few blogger shoutouts for those that are still battling in the Fantasy Razzball league:

R.J. White from the Fantasy Baseball Cafe is just outside the Top 10. For those unfamiliar with the Cafe, it’s full of lively debate and the perfect place to take a date if your date is your right hand. I personally like the brick wall on the home page – makes me feel like I’m at some 80’s comedy joint like the Chuckle Shack or Giggles.

The Fantasy Baseball Junkie is lurking just outside the Top 20 – like a sugar junkie loiters in the back of a Dunkin’ Donuts when they chuck the old batch. The Junkie has some good advice and definitely showed some prescience predicting Nyjer Morgan and Scott Hairston would be traded only a couple days before they did.

The battle for best fantasy baseballer in Razzball Nation has begun! Actually, it began with opening day but I’ve finally got around to creating the master standings (also available by clicking the ‘RCL Master Standings’ link on the homepage).

There are 108 competitors across 9 leagues. We created a league index based on the strength of each league. It takes all 10 categories into account and considers the average of all 9 leagues to be at 100. So if a league averages 1% better across all categories than the 9-league average, the league index is 101 and we multiply the point total for everyone in that league by 1.01. This helps to neutralize the playing field across all the leagues.

So who’s #1 at the two week mark? ThirdandKing’s ‘L’Atelier de Joël Piñero’ is crushing the field right now with an 106.5 point score in the toughest league (A Latin 9). Here’s a glance at his Active Stats if you’re curious how he’s managed it.

A couple of notes on the standings:

1. We’ll start with fortnightly updates (that’s fancy talk for every 2 weeks!). We’ll consider weekly updates as we get deeper into the season.
2. We prefer to have your commenter handle in the Standings next to your team name. If you want to claim your team, please add a comment to this post and I’ll add it in going forward.
3. For those in the Fantasy Razzball League (aka the league where you purposely have your team suck), this will be up next Sunday night.

Good luck and may the trash-talking begin…

This was a fantasy baseball league put together by the FSWA, Fantasy Sports Writers Association.  (Grey is in the FSWA and Rudy is unlicensed.  Hopefully they don’t kick out Grey for hiring non-union labor.) We drafted this league together, which made for some disagreements in our two styles of drafting.  That was quickly mended when we realized it was only a 12 team league and we could get a stacked team no matter how many top chefs were cooking in this quickfire challenge.

C:  Mike Napoli
C:  Brandon Inge
1B: Ryan Howard
2B: Jose Lopez
3B: Chipper Jones
SS: Ryan Theriot
MI: Felipe Lopez
CI: Mark Reynolds
OF: Carlos Beltran
OF: Carlos Quentin
OF: Adam Dunn
OF: Cameron Maybin
OF: Ryan Spilborghs
UT: Fred Lewis
Bench: Colby Rasmus

P: Jonathan Papelbon
P: Felix Hernandez
P: Scott Kazmir
P: Jonathan Broxton
P: Erik Bedard
P: Troy Percival
P: Wandy Rodriguez
P: Randy Wolf
P: Fernando Rodney
Bench: Kenshin Kawakami, Joey Devine, Chad Cordero, David Aardsma
DL: Max Scherzer

OVERALL THOUGHTS:

First off, this league is 5×5 with SLG and OBP instead of HRs and Average.  We put up a bit of a fight to have that changed, but our protests fell on deaf ears.  With those two category changes, it makes our Ryan Howard and Adam Dunn selections even purdier.  Put them up to the light; they shine!  It doesn’t help the Inge selection that much, but a bit.

We selected eleventh overall and Miguel Cabrera almost made it to us in the first round after Manny Ramirez was taken 4th and Jimmy Rollins was taken 6th.  As confusing as Manny was in the 4 slot, it wasn’t as confusing as Rollins over Howard, Miggy, Braun, Utley and Sizemore.

Pitchers flew off the board in this league.  To give you an idea, Nolasco, Beckett, Billingsley and Lackey all went in the 6th round.  (This was after Lackey’s injury had surfaced.)  We decided to go with the upside of Kazmir and F-Her.  (Note:  We drafted Devine prior to the injury announcement.)

All told, we drafted 5 Mariners.  Sucky guys on sucky teams is the new black!  Luckily, Endy Chavez was not one of the drafted Mariners.  (When Don Wakamatsu named Brandon Morrow the closer, we dropped two of our Mariners.  Betcha you can guess which two.)

Our team is well-balanced with power and speed.  And we have Felipe Lopez, what’s not to love?  Our pitching is riskier than either of us would’ve preferred, but neither of us wanted to get caught up in a run with pitchers flying off the shelves that early.  In a 12 team league, we should be able to fix potential pitching holes with waiver wire pickups.