Fantasy Baseball Advice

I already explained what this series of entries is about in last week’s article. If there’s one thing we stalkers hate, it’s locked doors… but if there’s another thing we hate, it’s paper shredders. My point is, somewhere on that list of things we hate is having to explain ourselves, so click that link if you have no idea what’s going on here. And if you still have no idea what’s going on after that, stop by Grey’s Buy/Sell and ask him why he’s publishing this nonsense.

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02/26/2012 – People are paying Bunny Ranch prices for Stephen Strasburg in my mock drafts; I’m not. Sure, I wouldn’t mind the experience, but I think I can get something similar for the cost of a few drinks instead of a week’s paycheck.

04/17/2012 – St. Rasburg, the patron saint of ticket scalpers (which is just a step above being the patron saint of beggars), has kinda’ been living up to the hype. 3 ER, 19 K, and 2 W from 19 IP over 3 starts. Yeah, it was against the Cubs, Mets, and Astros, which is a pretty weak sample, but there’s no need to be a doubting Thomas.

04/29/2012 – I was just looking at Strasburg’s WHIP, but then I was about to sneeze and I think I inhaled the tiny thing. His ERA must’ve blown off my desk when I sneezed, too. Wait, is that it? No, that’s his FIP… they look very similar. I’m using his K/9 to hold my car up while I change the oil, so I don’t really have access to any of his stats right now, but I’m pretty sure he’s pitching alright.

05/03/2012 – Okay, I’m looking over the Razzball Player Rater right now and it’s telling me that St. Rasburg is better than… hmm… Halladay, Kershaw, F-Her… pretty much everyone I would have drafted ahead of him… except Verlander – There Can Be Only One. Random thought – I’d like to see a Razzball Player Hater, where commenters get one vote per week on which player they most wish they didn’t draft.

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02/25/2012 – I only have enough auction money for one new import, and I believe Cespedeseses’ hype more than Yu Darvish’s. Luckily I don’t care for the possessive form of either’s surname, which will help me rationalize stealing possessions from their respective trash bins. I’m probably biased because of something silly… like the failures of so many Japanese aces compared to the relative success of imported sluggers.

04/09/2012 – Darvish looked absolutely filthy today, but I’m sure it’s nothing a shower and hair cut can’t fix. His pitching, on the other hand, was awful (maybe he shouldn’t be pitching with his other hand). 5 2/3 IP, 5 ER, 12 base runners (4 BB) and only 5 Ks. “Yu ruined my ratios!” That’s you talking to Yu through yur computer. It’s not me… ‘cause I didn’t draft him, suckers!

04/24/2012 – Good thing I’m a brilliant writer, because it seems like I’ll be dining on my words for some time. I’m watching Darvish make the Yankees look stupid as I write this. Damn, did he just pull 97 MPH out for the first time today… in the 7th inning? That’s one hell of a sneak attack. Hmm… can’t think of any jokes that tie “Japanese” and “sneak attack” together right now.

04/31/2012 Oy vey, Yu. Doode just keeps lowering his ERA (from 7.94 to 2.18) and raising his K-rate (now an even 9.00). Hulky Crystal says, “YU LOOK MARVELOUS!”

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02/02/2012 – Grey likes Tim Lincecum this year… a lot. Ranked him as the #5 SP overall, which I find surprising. I mean, Grey even talks about all of Timmy’s downside (“falling K-rate,” “burgeoning walk rate,” “highest xFIP since his rookie year”) in the blurb, so he must be A.) hedging his bets B.) slightly blinded by the brand C.) “C” is usually a placeholder to catch people guessing D.) not all that impressed with the rest of the Top 20.

04/12/2012 – Lincecum with 11 ER in 7 2/3 IP. That’s not good, right? Does it help that this was over two starts, not in one? He had 10 Ks… that’s something. C’mon, a good buddy paid $37 at auction for Timmy; I’m scrambling for anything positive to scream up to the ledge.

04/17/2012 – Wow… another 5 earned in 6 innings for Lincecum. It’s good that the Ks are there (6 more). It’s good that he lowered his ERA… no, wait, it’s not good when an outing like this lowers your ERA. Maybe the Giants should start paying him with dollar bills placed in front of him on the mound. Just a thought.

04/24/2012 – Only 1 ER over 5 IP. Look at Tiny Tim threatening to bust out a quality start! Yeah, let’s just ignore those 5 free passes and focus on the 8 Ks. Serenity now!

04/29/2012 – Looks like Timmy will finish April with a… passable 5.74 ERA. It’s really only “passable” if you’re comparing it to the 12.91 he was rockin’ a few weeks back. The 2.52 differential between his FIP and ERA probably makes it a bit more palatable. The fact that he hasn’t given up a dinger since his first start is nice. Also, I hear there’s been some incredible advancements in the toupee industry of late. Things are looking up!

Not sure how many of you knuckleheads explore this site, but in the top header under ’08 Rankings, which has the 2008 Fantasy Baseball Rankings, our Fantasy Baseball 10 Team Player Rater and our Fantasy Baseball 12 Team Player Rater. So now instead of downloading a clumsy Excel spreadsheet, you now have it all at your fingertips right onsite. Under ’08 Rankings, you also have the Best Fantasy Values for 10 team leagues and Best Fantasy Values for 12 team leagues. So what gives? Did Christmas/Chanukah/You Name It come early? You better believe it. No, the pleasure is all mine. No, mine. Mine! If you need an explanation on what the player raters are or how to use them, look here:  Fantasy Baseball Player Rater — that will send you deeper into the player rater rabbit hole and you’ll come out a week later much wiser. The comments are off on this post. Scroll down to the next post to drop some praise on Rudy, this is all his doing. (Or scroll up if you’re finding this after today — the, um, day this was posted.)

Back in the pre-season, we launched a new player rater methodology called Point Shares to estimate fantasy baseball player value.   There aren’t a lot of Player Raters to be found other than ESPN (Y! and CBSSports.com don’t have ones) but we feel ours is better because it factors in variables like a player’s position (e.g., Hanley Ramirez’s 33 HR is worth more than David Wright’s) and the point totals actually represent something.

A ‘point share’ is the estimated impact on a team’s points by substituting a player for the average drafted player at his position on a team filled with average players.  So in a 10 team league, this team would otherwise earn 5.5 points per category (55 points).  Substituting Cliff Lee for Zack Greinke on an average roster would mean an average of 6.6 points (6.40 for Cliff Lee, -0.24 for Greinke).

Our 2008 Player Rater that is based on a 10 team MLB league with 5×5 scoring.  Only the top 50 are displayed below the post.

We will use this as the foundation for future articles but here are answers to some anticipated reactions:

1) How could pitchers be in the top 4 slots?

It might be surprising to see starting pitchers in the first 4 slots.  This isn’t a flaw in the ratings- it’s a flaw in your thinking (sorry).  The best pitchers in a season generally dominate 4 categories (W, K, ERA, WHIP).  While they don’t contribute in Saves, there is little opportunity cost to this since saves are concentrated in 30-40 players and there are 90 pitching roster spots.  For hitters, it’s rare for a player to be excellent across more than 3 categories and there’s a larger opportunity cost for the categories they are not great (i.e., OFs like Ichiro and Taveras hurt HR/RBI).  Only 6 hitters in 2008 ranked above average across all 5 categories – Pujols, Wright, Berkman, Holliday, A-Rod, and Braun.  Hanley Ramirez had a great year in Runs (125), HR (33), and SB (35) but was mildly valuable in AVG (.301 or .006 less than Ryan Theriot) and negative in RBI (67 or tied for 6th among SS).  Converting Roy Halladay’s stats to an OF (W=R, HR=SO, RBI=WHIP, SB=SV, AVG=ERA) would net 119/34/121/10/.335.  Sabathia, Lincecum, and Cliff Lee weren’t far off this.  The reason why it’s usually not advisable to draft a pitcher in the 1st round is the unpredictability of who’ll be the top pitchers (none of the top 4 were top 50 picks based on MockDraftCentral’s Average Draft Position) vs. their true value.  Here’s a more thorough explanation of a pitcher’s fantasy value.

2) Why are there are only 110 players that have positive value when there are 230 open roster spots?

In Point Shares, 0.0 represents an average player at their position.  So it is expected that about 1/2 the eligible players are above average, 1/2 are below.  A negative score doesn’t mean that a player isn’t worth having on your roster – it just means that he’s below average.  If the system was built with 0.0 representing a roster-worthy player, the points would then represent the value of a player on a team in last place.  This overestimates the value of a player when measuring the impact of a player swap (e.g., Lee for Greinke) for every instance except when a team actually did finish last.  The best approximation of player value is starting from the middle.

3) What is the highest/lowest score possible?

Theoretically, the best possible score should be 4.5 pts in each category (moving someone from 5.5 to 10) or 22.5 for a 10 team league.  Any other league size, just divide the team total by 2 and subtract 0.5 (12 team = 5.5).  A simpler way of looking at it would be to consider how one would calculate the average value per team of a player with 50 SBs.  For the team that’s 1st in SBs, his value is 0.  For the 2nd team, it could be worth +1.  Take this to its logical conclusion and you get (0+1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9)/10.  That’s 45/10 = 4.5.

While no hitting scores fall above 4.5 or below 4.5 (closest is Willy Taveras’s 4.3 in SB), the Point Shares system is just a model so it is conceivable that an extraordinary performance would net more than 4.5.  The only cases in 2008 were extraordinary bad ERAs and WHIPs.   (You’d think K-Rod’s 62 SV but that only netted +3.9).

Back in the preseason, we launched a new method for rating players called Point Shares. The objective was to create a methodology that converts player’s projected or real stats into a metric that would allow for easy comparisons across players. The metric we settled on is deceptively powerful – Roto points.

Assuming you have a completely average team (55 points in a 5×5 10 team league), each player’s point shares reflect how many points they would add/subtract from your team’s totals if they replaced the average stat projections at that position. For example, if you swapped out an average team’s 1B (Mark Teixeira, David Ortiz) with Lance Berkman, they would increase from 55 points to an estimated 67.5 points. Point Shares also allow for basic trade comparisons (add the points of each side) and assessing your team vs. others (just add up the points and add to 55).

Seeing that we’re 2 months into the season, we thought it was a good time to update our Point Shares rankings – in this case, it is based solely on actual stats through June 8, 2008. So this is more comparable to the ESPN Player Rater vs. ESPN’s player rankings or Yahoo’s Big Board. Except better. (Not saying there aren’t flaws in ours but, c’mon, Ichiro is #17 among all players with a .290/43/3/17/26? At OF?)

June 8th – Point Shares for 5×5 10 team league and for Fantasy Razzball (play for worst team)

(Click on images to enlarge)

Pre-Season – Projected Point Shares for 5×5 10 team and 12 team leagues

Pre-Season – Projected Fantasy Razzball Point Shares