Points Leagues: Malamoneyball, The Auction

Baseball is coming. So is winter. By the time you actually read this the start of the Major League season will be less than a day away. And for those of you lazy readers that catch up on Razzball on Monday mornings when you get to your desk, the season will already be three games deep. By the way, if you are one of those Monday morning people, I’d like to point out your first mistake. Fantasy baseball slows down for no one. If you’re not keeping up with baseball’s current events, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage because I can assure you that at least one person (likely most) in your league is (are). And if you just prefer to get your information from another site, I guess it’s better than nothing, but all biases aside, where else are you going to read a post that was written while sitting on the toilet. Just me, my laptop and my squatty potty. Wait a minute, let me rephrase that a bit. Where else are you going to be able to read a post where the author actually admits to penning it from the throne?

I’ve been in a head-to-head points league for the last fifteen years. I hate it. The only reason I remain in the league is because of the people in the league. My league mates are some of my best buddies that I no longer get to see. This league keeps us interacting with one another. So why do I hate it? The rules. Points leagues are fun, but they can easily, and quickly, become frustrating.

Exhibit A. There’s nothing worse than having a great week and scoring the second most points in the league that week. Unfortunately, you played the only team that scored more points than you. As a result, you get a loss, making you 0-1 for the week. How “unlucky” you were to have played that team that week. This element of luck needs to be reduced. And then how annoying is it when this happens and then there are two teams that play each other and both put up measly 150 or so points, while your 330 earned you a loss? It all ultimately boils down to the luck of the draw of the schedule. Pardon my english, but that sucks donkey baseballs.

Exhibit B. You go to set you lineup and with one two-start pitcher you are projected to have five pitching starts in the coming matchup. Then you check out your opponent’s lineup and see that not only does he have four two-start pitchers, he has a fifth since he has an SP with RP eligibility that happens to have two starts that week. Your opponent has ten starts and you have five. You are at a clear disadvantage and, in many cases, will lose that matchup simply because your opponent had more starts. Just doesn’t seem fair to me. Having to hope that your opponent does not have a lot of starts that week is a shitty strategy.

So how do we eliminate these egregious features. Two words. NEW RULES.

1st RULE: You do not talk about FIGHT CLUB.
2nd RULE: You DO NOT talk about FIGHT CLUB.
3rd RULE: If someone says “stop” or goes limp, taps out the fight is over.
4th RULE: Only two guys to a fight.
5th RULE: One fight at a time.
6th RULE: No shirts, no shoes.
7th RULE: Fights will go on as long as they have to.
8th RULE: If this is your first night at FIGHT CLUB, you HAVE to fight.

Ok, so those are not the rules I was looking for.

Rule #1: Modified standings

Here’s how the standings will be determined. Each week you will play one team in head-to-head format. If you beat that team you will get a win. If you lose, you get a loss. However, in order to minimize the luck of the schedule, each week you will also be playing against the entire league. Each week if your score for that week is in the top half of the teams, you will get a win. If you are in the lower half you get a loss. So each week you are playing two games, one against a specific opponent, and one against the entire league.

Given the example in exhibit A above where you scored the second most points but played the one team that scored more, here’s how the results would shake out. You’d get a loss for losing your H2H matchup, but you’d also get a win for finishing in the top half of points scored for the week. So for the week you’d be 1-1. The team that beat you would be 2-0 on the week. As would any team that won their game and was in the top half. This would also help balance the results of those two teams that played each other and scored the least amount of points of any of the teams that week. The team that won would get a win for winning its H2H match, but it would also get a loss for being in the bottom half. Now you are 1-1 and so is the low scoring team that got a lucky win. And with total points being the tiebreaker, you’d come out slightly ahead. Order has been restored to the universe.

Rule #2: Daily Lineup Changes with Start Limits

A maximum of X starts by starting pitchers is allowed each week. If teams can change their lineups daily then they should have no problem being able to get close enough to X pitching starts and keep pace with their opponent. X is determined based on the number of starting pitchers in the active roster. I am advocating six SP and a start limit of ten. On average a starting pitcher gets about 1.3 starts per week. With six SP you would have about 8 starts a week if you didn’t make a single change. This encourages people that don’t really want to play in daily leagues because they don’t have time and don’t want to be at a disadvantage because their opponent is able to make changes every day. With this scheme if you made one or two changes during the week, you should be able to max out at 10 starts with minimal effort.

Daily lineup changes also allow you to move an injured player out of your lineup. How much does it blow when your guy goes down on a Monday and you pretty much take a zero for the week at his position.

This isn’t a rule, but more of a pet peeve. I dislike snake drafts. They are boring and disappointing. Auctions are awesome. Auctions give every team a fair chance at every player. In an auction a team could very well walk away with two or even three players that would have gone in the first round of snake draft before they even had a chance to make a pick. Setting all of these perks aside, auctions are fun.

Enter malamoneyball

This is my new head-to-head points league which implements both of these rules, as well as a few others I came up with. If anyone is interested, I’d be happy to share the league’s Constitution with you. I am currently running two of these leagues. One with personal friends and one with some of you. Last week I posted notice about a new league I was starting and I quickly got nine of you to join me in a new H2H points league with an auction and keepers. Thank you to those that have joined me on this journey.

On Thursday night we had our auction. All teams had $300 to use in the auction to fill these thirty roster spots.
C, C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, CI, MI, OF, OF, OF, OF, OF, OF, UTIL, SP, SP, SP, SP, SP, SP, RP, RP, BN, BN, BN, BN, BN, BN, BN

Here’s my team:

Here are the top 25 most expensive players drafted:

The only downside to an auction is that they take a long time. This auction took us over four hours to complete. Even as a long time points player, it was difficult to translate projections into dollar amounts. There are formulas you can use, but they barely produce values that can adequately serve as guidelines. Especially when everyone in the auction has their own opinions on how much a player is worth. And that value is different than the amount they are actually willing to spend, or overspend, on a player. There is a lot of game time decision making that needs to occur during the auction. Who to nominate and when. Pass on some guys you kinda want early to save money for later so you can outbid your opponents who now have less auction dollars.

Here are some key takeaways I learned from doing to auctions this week with solid opponents.

The top players at positions are not worth the money. Why spend $44 on Paul Goldschmidt when you can get both Miguel Cabrera and Albert Pujols for $48? Or how about Jose Abreu and Joey Votto for $50. The return on your investment is much greater taking the two players for a few dollars more. Jose Altuve for $30 or Rougned Odor and Anthony Rendon for 33? Manny Machado for $40 or Kyle Seager and Kris Bryant for $32? I can make strong cases against Mike Trout, Bryce Harper and Clayton Kershaw. Kershaw went for $61 in this auction. That’s outrageous! I’d rather have Felix Hernandez, Jose Fernandez and Zach Greinke for $66.

Don’t allow emotional attachments to a player to result in overspending. Set a budget and stay close. It’s ok to reach a few dollars for a player, but don’t throw your whole game plan out of whack just to get one player. He is not worth it, and you will regret it later in the auction when you just don’t have enough dollars are being outbid on player after player.

Points per dollar is your friend. Grab a set of projections and plug in the league’s scoring system to translate those projections into points. Let’s say Francisco Lindor is projected to score 400 points and you can get him for $20. That’s a return of 20 points for each auction dollar you spent on him. If Xander Bogaerts is projected to get 425 points, but costs $28, that equates to 15.1 points per dollar. I’m taking Lindor and saving eight dollars.

The following list will vary from league to league based on your scoring system, but here are some players that are projected to provide excellent points per dollar ratios.

Jake Odorizzi, Aaron Nola, Colin McHugh, Josh Reddick, Kyle Hendricks, Hisashi Iwakuma, Matt Duffy, Curtis Granderson, Michael Wacha, Patrick Corbin, Tyson Ross, Michael Pineda, Nick Markakis, Denard Span, Kenta Maeda, Dustin Pedroia, James Shields, Kendrys Morales, Gio Gonzalez, Jeff Samardzija, Shin-Soo Choo, Drew Smyly, Julio Teheran and Scott Kazmir.

I hope everyone had a happy drafting season and I wish everyone a great season.