It All AVGs Out

I’m going to talk about seemingly the most derisive topic since we had to choose a side on ‘great taste’ or ‘less filling’ for Miller Lite.  I’m gonna speak about average, or ‘how many hits a player gets divided by their true at-bats which excludes their walks, sac flies, sac bunts, and HBP’ for all of you who need things spelled out.  So let’s get one thing clear: your entire team does not need to hit .300 unless you’re playing in a 1 team league.  Looking over at this Razzball link, we can see that your team needs to hit anywhere between .265 and .270 to be successful for the year.  For all you guys and 4 girl readers out there, that equates to about 26.5/27 hits per 100 ABs.  We’re not talking large numbers here, but if you want to, we could by adding a couple of zeros on the end.  It doesn’t really change the topic, but feel free to.  For a little experiment on how this works, I’m going to review my deep league thoughts columns (search Razzball for them by ‘Deep League Thoughts’ if you’d like to read them.  Yeah, I just whored myself a bit) and my perfect team in which I have to start 2 at every position.  When I’m non-specific about a target – such as in the 1B post – I’ll take the lowest average estimated player to further prove my point.  Don’t hate me if I’m right and all you see is the inside of my nose as I look down on you; it’s only because I’m quite tall.  Now since I have to pick one source for my numbers, I’ll be using Bill James’ 2012 projections.  Though my league also includes two UTIL slots, I didn’t include it in my series seeing as it can be filled with any position so I won’t include them in the stats.  If I had, I might’ve filled them with guys who hit for high average just to make you happy.  I’m just that giving!  See you in about 18 cell rows:

The best team in a standard 12 team ESPN league – which is about as close to the league I’m describing is going to come – is hitting one point higher than me.  Or at least I thought they were until I noticed the part where Grey says ‘These are all for one catcher leagues.  If you have two catcher leagues, the counting stats go up a little bit and down a little on average.’  And that’s me quoting Grey, mimicking his ‘that’s me quoting me’ quoting style with bold italics for emphasis!  To keep with the Q theme, it looks like our average met our quota.  In fact, when you consider this team essentially rosters 2 more hitters than a standard ESPN league, this team might be ahead of the curve at this point.  If you’re wondering about the counting stats and how they line up because you REALLY don’t like that this crazy idea just might work, I’ll save you the math trouble.  Based on projections, this team is going to be at or above league average in runs (1191 vs 1045), RBIs (1195 vs 1008) and HRs (360 vs 261).  The only category we’re lacking in is stolen bases as we estimate to get about 145 vs the need for 186.  Considering the leg up we have on the other categories, we get to trade from strength or be ready for when SAGNOF is coming to town.

Just to make sure you don’t think of me as some crazy, calculating genius who sits down and does this before I draft, realize I just did the math this morning as I typed this article.  I’m not saying that because I’m flippant about who and what I post about.  I did it since I knew the title of this article was ‘It All AVGs Out’ and guess what…it usually does and it did!  The moral of this story is don’t read a fantasy baseball blog if you’re looking for a story with morals…wait, that’s not it!  It should be ‘Don’t let your team become average just to avoid having a bad one.’