In a recent Mynci comments thread we discussed the save. It’s an unfortunate stat. First, it derives from managerial decisions as much as performance. Second, in fantasy terms, there are an extremely limited number of players that create saves. Some of them get injured; others become ineffective. That makes cornering the stat as much a lottery as a strategy.

As of this date and time in major league baseball there are only 24 players with 20 or more saves. In contrast, there are 39 with 20 or more saves+holds. There are 31 players with 10 or more saves. There are 74 with 10 or more saves+holds.

The top 10 in saves+holds is reassuringly competent:

37 Heath Bell (37 saves)
35 Rafael Soriano (35 saves)
35 Joakim Soria (35 saves)
35 Brian Wilson (35 saves)
34 Francisco Cordero (33 saves, 1 hold)
33 Neftali Feliz (30 saves, 3 holds)
32 Luke Gregerson (1 save, 31 holds)
31 Matt Capps (32 saves)
30 Jonathan Papelbon (30 saves)
30 Billy Wagner (30 saves)

Time to consider a change.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Strategy

Last week I examined ESPN’s mid-May fantasy baseball rankings in the context of hitting. Now I want to write a few things about pitching. As with hitting, the rules of the game make all the difference. Here, again, are three examples.

First, head-to-head is not rotisserie. ERA and WHIP are incredibly volatile on a week-to-week basis. Far more predictable are strikeouts, saves, and wins (see my Wins by Category analysis). Saves are a special category of their own (see below). But any fantasy manager can prioritize strikeouts. And any manager can examine the depth chart of run-scoring teams to find decent, if not great, pitchers that get some strikeouts and compete for wins. By this standard, Tim Hudson is wildly over-rated for head-to-head play. His prospective run support is good, but not great, and despite his sterling ERA and WHIP, he has only 27 Ks in 64.1 innings pitched. I’d rather gamble on Ian Kennedy.

Second, most leagues, rotisserie and head-to-head, use some kind of start or inning limits. In leagues with deeper rosters this often leaves room for quality non-closing relievers such as Daniel Bard or Luke Gregerson, neither of whom makes ESPN’s top 300. Both of these pitchers have more strikeouts than Tim Hudson in half the innings pitched. They help push down ERA and WHIP. Most importantly, these guys are generally available to fill out a 23- or 24-man roster. They cost little to nothing and in leagues that use a start limit, they add strikeouts, quality innings, and vulture wins and saves while subtracting no starts.

Finally, let’s consider closers. I believe that most analysts undervalue closers. In head-to-head, this problem is magnified.

The disdain for closers arises from the all-or-nothing nature of the save stat. If a high-priced closer gets injured or replaced you lose almost all of your investment. Even coupling a closer with his backup doesn’t necessarily protect you. The backup is simply not likely to have the talent or the job security of the original closer. (I know this well. I owned Eric Gagne and Yhency Brazoban in 2005.)

However, the flip side of this risk is high reward. The limited number of closers makes saves the single most predictable stat category in head-to-head. While a team of middling hitters can often take a few hitting categories from a superior hitting team, and a team of middling starting pitchers can easily make a run at the ERA and WHIP points,  the team with three or four closers will almost always take the saves point. If you go into a single elimination playoff game against an opponent with more closers, you are likely down a point before the match even starts.

High-risk goes with high-reward. The former fact should not obscure the latter.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis, Resources, Strategy

ESPN has published its mid-May fantasy baseball rankings. It is an average of the individual rankings of their various experts and so represents a kind of generic zeitgeist on who’s good and who’s not. What is missing is the context of the game being played.

After the top 50 players or so — the ones desired in any format in any matchup — the game being played makes all the difference. Here are three examples that focus on hitting. I’ll write about pitching in another post.

First, player strengths in head-to-head formats are different than in rotisserie formats. When stats zero out every week against a new opponent, batting average or OBP are far less important than runs, home runs, RBIs and steals (see my Wins by Category analysis). Hitters must have power or speed or both to make a significant difference in head-to-head.

Second, roster depth matters. If a league offers deep enough rosters for a manager to platoon, David Ortiz, for one, is much more attractive. Even as his terrible April has turned into a very good May, he is most potent and most likely to get at bats against right handed pitchers. A platoon of Ortiz and any comparable hitter will give you just as much value as a single slugger ranked twice as high — one, it is important to remember, that you would not be platooning.

Finally, the rankings are based on projected player performance for the rest of the season. This is the nature of the exercise. The results tell you who to own, not who to play. But most leagues allow a substantial number of transactions, making who to play right now a decisive question. If you can play a great player for a month, then get an adequate substitute off the waiver wire, you need to do it.

This is the case among catchers. There are a handful of great hitting catchers and all the rest are interchangeable. So it is bizarre to see Mike Napoli ranked so low. Since starting catcher Jeff Mathis went on the DL, Napoli has not only hit extremely well, with a 1.106 OPS in May, but has played almost every day. Angels Manager Mike Sciosa went from hating the guy to running him into the ground, and Napoli has done nothing but hit. The rub against Napoli is that he will get bumped into a backup roll again with Mathis’ return. This may be true. But it shouldn’t obfuscate the fact that at this given moment Napoli is one of the top fantasy catchers in the game. He’s up there with Joe Mauer. In head-to-head leagues where batting average or OBP is less important (see above) he is, quite simply, the best.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis, Resources, Strategy

There are only two home/away splits I pay attention to: Coors Field and Petco Park. For all other reputed bandboxes and pitcher’s parks, the splits are swamped by noise. Just check ESPN’s MLB Park Factors from year to year. Sure enough, for 2009, there’s Coors Field at the top and Petco Park at the bottom. But reputed bandbox Great American Ball Park is only 4/1000 above average this season in run production, despite being as high as 153/1000 above average in the past:

2009: 1.004
2008: 1.069
2007: 1.095
2006: 1.153
2005: 1.125

Pick a run-of-the-mill park like Progressive Field in Cleveland and you will see even more variation:

2009: 0.843
2008: 0.995
2007: 1.120
2006: 0.946
2005: 0.874

Now consider that when you play a home split, you’re playing just one game out of a whole season. Not only will the quality of the opposing pitching staff overwhelm the park factor, but so will sheer randomness.

Yet I am willing to recognize that Coors Field (like Petco Park) is an extreme case. Only once since 2001 has Coors Field been lower than third in run production — when spiking run production for several other parks dropped it to 5th in 2003.

The question is, for whom do you play the split? I have Seth Smith as my fourth outfielder but have avoided playing him much because he sits two games out of six. Apparently the Rockies think more highly of Carlos Gonzalez, despite Smith’s equivalent or superior minor league numbers (compare).

Now, the Denver Post reports that Gonzalez will take his starts from the slumping Dexter Fowler:

Carlos Gonzalez and Dexter Fowler are the Rockies’ two best athletes. Using a platoon, manager Jim Tracy is hoping to create a single terrific center fielder…. Gonzalez, who lost the left field job three weeks ago to Seth Smith, is now starting in center field against right-handers.

If this holds up — and you are in a league with very deep rosters — you can play the double-split: Gonzalez, at home, against right handers. Ignore for now the fact that Gonzalez has a better road than home split — give him time.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

Eric Karabell on Josh Hamilton:

Ultimately, I think Hamilton’s problem this season has been health. Then again, health is a skill, and for all we know, it’s a skill Hamilton can’t conquer.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

Occasionally I, or some other manager, will compare the Mynci head-to-head standings with what they would be if we were playing rotisserie rules. Because the strategies are different in the two systems, the comparison has to be treated with some skepticism. In head-to-head, for example, a manager may blow out WHIP and ERA on a situational basis, if the Wins or K point is more attainable in a given week.

Head-to-head also involves a lot more luck than rotisserie, which the Maryland Maniacs standing below makes unfortunately clear. Given that the Buckets would play the Maniacs in the first playoff round if the standings remain the same, my hope is that the Maniacs get luckier.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball

Unlike me, a fantasy baseball columnist has to write stuff every week. Like day traders, they have to believe in the hot stock. Otherwise, they run out of things to write about.

One way to milk out a column is to sort out some hot players and make believe they’re for real. In Matthew Berry’s recent effort, he’ll convince you that Asdrubel Cabrera is just as good as Dustin Pedroia. Or something like that.

Berry may be right. When he talks up a few dozen players in a single column, he’s bound to mention at least one whose numbers will hold true for more than a fortnight. But just remember that he wrote his column before Manny Parra‘s most recent outing.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

Christopher Harris indulges in an exercise of the obvious. Writing about the Toronto Blue Jays pitching staff he writes:

Now, I’m not here to tell you that any of those guys will be major fantasy forces for the rest of 2009. But if you jumped early, for instance, onto the [Scott] Richmond bandwagon, how happy are you right now?

Well, duh. With this kind of modeling, Harris could be a global warming expert.

But rather than mock the evolving rankings of ESPN’s experts — they write to meet demand, after all — I thought I’d zoom out a level above rank and talk about strategy.

There are two kinds of starting pitchers — those you can count on and all the rest.

Those you can count on are Johan Santana, Tim Lincecum, Roy Halladay, and a few others. I’d mention Brandon Webb except that he’s injured, which means you couldn’t. These are the pitchers who almost always post a quality start. A pitcher can’t hit an ERA under 3.5 without great consistency.

Then there are the rest. Even if you avoid the truly horrible (think the Texas Rangers) or the horribly erratic (think Oliver Perez), the returns are still unpredictable. Most good but not great pitchers will have numerous bad starts. And you don’t know when those bad starts will happen.

For example, Javier Vasquez has pitched well this season, posting a 3.89 ERA in seven starts through May 9. But he also gave up 5 runs and 6 runs in successive starts on April 29 and May 4.

Given that reality, I look for pitchers that couple a respectable ERA with some additional tangible fantasy advantage. Strikeouts is the most obvious. Vasquez, for example, racked up 16 Ks in 14.2 IP in the two games mentioned above. The three other factors I look for are innings, team run production, and the backing of a good bullpen. All of these are indicators of whether or not your average pitcher can stay in games and get wins.

Finally, there’s one great intangible — youth. You never know when a young pitcher will take a step up in capability. That’s what you have to hope for with Richmond, even if he is already 29.

Comments (2)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis, Strategy

In the game of making predictions, fantasy gurus are increasingly calling upon peripheral statistics to support their claims.

Peripheral statistics generally come from analysis of how a ball is put in play (or not) in relation to the outcome of the play. Perhaps the best known is batting average on balls in play, or BABIP, which measures “the number of batted balls that safely fall in for a hit (not including home runs).” BABIP averages are compiled for ground balls, line drives, and any number of other splits.

BABIP is most often invoked to estimate luck. A batter hitting lots of line drives and not getting hits is supposedly due for a positive correction. Likewise a pitcher getting ground balls and not getting outs.

Thus, Tristan Crowcoft recently used two BABIP averages to tell owners not to give up on Kevin Slowey:

Kevin Slowey’s BABIP numbers very much support his case as a big-time buy-low candidate. Both his .357 BABIP on ground balls and .833 BABIP on line drives were noticeably higher than the league averages…

Going many times better, A. J. Mass processes so many peripheral stats in his recent Hit Parade column that he can’t even reveal what they are:

Next, we take the velocity [read the column] and tweak it according to a complex formula based on each hitter’s skill set, determined by a combination of stats that measure patience at the plate, ability to put the ball in play, power potential and speed.

If he told you the formula he’d have to kill you.

How much do I care about BABIP? Not much.

First, these analyses often reveal the obvious. I’m keeping Kevin Slowey because he pitched well last year and because he has sterling minor league numbers, not because he has good peripherals.

Second, these analyses rely upon the premise that the player will continue to produce (or give up) the same types of hits. Your slumping star’s line-drive BABIP may return to the league average over time, but that means nothing if your slumping star hits fewer line drives. The correction you expect won’t have any effect. The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis, Resources, Strategy

Bat Masterson, renowned lawman and gunfighter of the old West, eventually became a renowned lawman and newspaper columnist in New York City. Among his quotes is this:

“Every dog, we are told, has his day, unless there are more dogs than days.”

In Justin Masterson’s 2009 season there have been more dogs than days this year.

Masterson is the classic case of a young pitcher who has great stuff (especially a mid-90s fastball) who can’t seem to master a whole game. He was advanced so quickly through the minor leagues that it is hard to guess what he can do as a starter. His overall minor league ERA is 3.79 and his 2.89 ERA in 9.1 innings at AAA Pawtucket in 2008 is hardly any reassurance that his subsequent 3.16 ERA in Boston that season was for real.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Baseball, Boston Red Sox, Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

The official scorer for Saturday’s Indians-Tigers game changed Asdrubal Cabrera’s double to a two-base error:

In the fifth inning Saturday, Cabrera sent a drive to left field with the bases loaded, two out and Zach Miner pitching. Left fielder Ryan Raburn broke in on the play, slipped to one knee, righted himself and gave chase.

He put a glove on the ball at the warning track, but dropped it. Official scorer Ron Kleinfelter originally called it a double and credited Cabrera with three RBI. Official scorers have 24 hours to change a call and just before gametime Sunday it was announced that Kleinfelter had changed the call to an error.

This happens, but it’s rare for a scorer to take that long to make up his mind.

In the Mynci, a 24-24 tie between the Maniacs and Corn on Sunday night became a 24-21 point for the Corn Monday morning.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Baseball, Fantasy Baseball, Other teams

I was ready to stick with Anibal Sanchez this week. Sure he gave up six runs in the first inning against the Mets, but then he shut them down for the next five. That seemed to bode as well as anything for his Saturday start.

Tuesday, we learned the Phil Hughes was being called up to start for the Yankees and that was it for Anibal Sanchez.

Hughes, like fellow prospect Ian Kennedy, is a strikeout talent who has stumbled badly at the major league level. The question is when he’ll get his act together. For comparison, Jonathan Sanchez came out of the minors with 11.9 Ks per nine IP and posted a 5.01 ERA in his first full major league season.

The difference, in my mind, is control. In 330 minor league innings, Hughes has had a WHIP of 0.92 and 2.2 walks per nine IP. Jonathan Sanchez had 3.5. Even this season, with his 2.60 ERA, Sanchez has already walked 12 in 17 IP. I’d rather gamble on Hughes.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

Over the last few seasons of head-to-head fantasy baseball, I’ve increasingly looked for the long play. The long play is the player not yet producing who could make the difference late in the season when it counts. The long play is the rookie callup, the once and future closer, the rehabbing warhorse.

I’ve tabbed a few long plays already this season. I drafted John Smoltz and slotted him to the DL. Actually, that hardly qualifies. The DL-stash of a 22nd round pick is no hardship. I drafted Pablo Sandoval on the hopes that he gains catcher eligibility at some point. That has cost a little more, as Sandoval has started slow and will be no better than an average corner infielder even when he gets better.

Now here’s two more to think about.

First, Ben Sheets. Milwaukee’s former ace could be back in August, but he’s not currently signed by any major league team, which means he’s not DL-eligible. If you sign him, you use up a roster spot for nothing. Once Sheets gets a contract, the run will be on. You need to sign him just before that happens. For now, I’m laying off.

Second, Matt Wieters. The number one prospect in all of baseball is ranked by ESPN as the 10th best catcher and the 179th pick overall. But his eventual callup to the majors still looks a month or two away, especially with the minor but worrisome hamstring strain he suffered this week. In the Mynci, Wieters just landed on the waiver wire. For me, this is a long play worth the intervening zeros. Wieters is in. Sandoval is out.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis, Strategy

Chris Carpenter goes on the DL.

This is why Carpenter didn’t get drafted until the 190th pick in the Mynci draft and was averaging around 180th in ESPN drafts until this past week, when he jumped to about 140th.

Tough break. But he’ll be back.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Draft, Fantasy Baseball

The twelve Mynci teams drafted 23 players each. Our opening day rosters, including 11 players on the DL, totaled 287 players. I’ll call these “value” players.

The table below shows the number of value players per major league team, the first player(s) taken and in which round.

The results are hardly surprising. The Red Sox, Angels, and Devil Rays should be quite good. The Blue Jays and Padres should be mediocre. However, there are some interesting stories within the data.

• The Angels are tied for second in total number of value players, but lack superstars, with the aging Vladimer Guerrero and John Lackey not taken until the 5th round. The Angels are the only team whose entire starting rotation was drafted or signed by opening day.
• In contrast, the Mets had only ten value players, but three first round draft picks.
• The World Champion Phillies had nine value players, and two first round draft picks. Notably, all but one of the nine players were taken by the end of the 10th round.

I will note that because we use keepers, the first player taken data is somewhat skewed by scarcity. Matt Holiday in Oakland would likely not be a first round pick in an actual draft; but was a keeper for a team with few better options. Except for Carlos Lee, Alfonso Soriano, and Justin Morneau, all the other 1st, 2nd, and 3rd picks listed below were keepers.

Comments (4)  |  Filed under: Baseball, Draft, Fantasy Baseball

What I like best about the Mynci is the collective depth of experience. The core group of managers has been playing together for more than six years. I won it all the year my daughter was born. She just turned five.

There’s nothing like the humbling notice that a manager as obsessive as yourself just picked up a free agent you have never heard of. RFP does this regularly. He just signed Trevor Cahill. I checked Cahill against Baseball Crank’s ESWL and all I found was this (my emphasis):

The A’s perennially get more Win Shares from players I don’t include in the preseason EWSL charts than almost anybody… Of course, their young rotation could have substantial up- or down-side, especially a volatile power arm like Gonzalez or the highly touted Cahill and Anderson (although Gallagher may be the best bet for a step forward of the group).

Comments (2)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

Baseball Crank has begun posting his established win share levels reports for 2009.

In brief, the win share levels use statistical algorithms to analyze each MLB player’s share of his team’s wins:

Win Shares seek to measure a player’s total contribution to a team’s bottom line win/loss record, in the case of non-pitchers through combining batting and fielding contributions. The system makes the assumptions that a team’s total wins can be rationally connected to its runs scored and allowed. Thus, each player is assigned a share of the team’s total wins based on his contribution to scoring and preventing runs.

Baseball Crank produces two numbers. The raw EWSL number for each player identifies a specific rating for data from the the last three years. Raw EWSL reflects past results. The adjusted EWSL number attempts to project the future. This means quantifying an appropriate number for rookies with a starting job, and adjusting for age.

The age adjustments provides one of the most basic parameters for predicting player performance. Before the age of 28 or 29, players tend to improve each year. After 30, they tend to decline. Sometimes dramatically. Individual projections, here as with any expert evaluation, are not that meaningful. But you still have to deal with the odds.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Baseball, Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis, Resources

In their effort to limit pitcher churning in head-to-head leagues, ESPN allows commissioners to set a weekly start limit.

The start limit has always had a loophole. The day you use your last start, all starts count. If you go into Sunday with six of seven starts accounted for, nothing prevents you from pitching multiple Sunday starters. With four SP roster slots a manager can easily hit 10 starts in any given week. This is most problematic in head-to-head playoffs when managers must win or go home.

The result is to devalue pitching even more than it already is. By churning, a manager can win two of the five common pitching stats — wins and strikeouts — with no investment in quality starters.

The obvious solution is to assign a depth chart rating to each pitching slot. On the day the start limit is reached, the depth chart determines the cut-off between starters who count and starters who don’t.

Instead of implementing the obvious solution, ESPN makes things worse. This season the default, maximum, and minimum start limits are based on the number of pitchers on your roster. Not the number of starters. The number of pitchers. If you have nine pitching slots, the starts limit is nine (most weeks).

I am solving this problem by lowering the number of pitching slots to seven –  three starting pitchers, four relief pitchers. The two slots removed are added to the bench. This gives managers much more flexibility and changes the ESPN minimum to six for most weeks. I will use seven. Lowering the number of starter slots also limits the last-day-loophole to the lower number of starters.

The disadvantage of this change is that it forces managers to become more active in handling their starters. If they miss a few days they may easily miss some starts. The very reason I have set more starting pitching slots in the past was to make it easier for managers to set their starters by the week.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Strategy

Here they are.

For fantasy, how many do you need to care about? Maybe half a dozen. Take away the catchers, and maybe just a couple. First, Keith Law is listing prospects. Some of these players played A and AA ball last season. They are not going to making a major league roster out of spring training.

Others will have great seasons (like last year’s top prospect Evan Longoria), but we don’t know who they are yet.

Many rookie prospects will be drafted in your fantasy league, and many will be dropped. Rookies are notoriously erratic and they quickly lose playing time when they start poorly. You just have to be alert to picking them up when they get hot again.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Baseball, Draft, Fantasy Baseball

I’ve compiled the wins by category numbers for the second half of the Mynci season. As before, the x-axis represents talent (the rank of each team in the category by total). The y-axis represents head-to-head outcome (the likelihood of winning a point in a weekly matchup).

In general, the previous indicators held true. Saves and Steals offered, by far, the most predictable correlation between talent and points, followed by the other cumulative categories: Strikeouts, Wins, Runs, Home Runs, and RBIs (in that order). Then came the three percentage-based stats: ERA, OBP, and WHIP.

Pitching wins is problematic. Weeks 12-22 saw a much stronger correlation of talent to points than weeks 1-11. However, the trendline is skewed by the excellent performance of the top two teams. I recall that the top team in total pitching wins (12 of 12) used a streaming strategy to routinely reach eight or nine starts. My suspicion is that correcting for starts would increase the unpredictability of the category and bring the trendline down.

For the season, the correlation of talent to points maps as follows (trendline slope in parenthesis):

Saves (y = 0.0661x)
Steals (y = 0.058x)
Runs (y = 0.047x)
Strikeouts (y = 0.0434x)
Home Runs (y = 0.0428x)
RBIs (y = 0.035x)
Wins (y = 0.0318x)
ERA (y = 0.0223x)
OBP (y = 0.0191x)
WHIP (y = 0.0099x)

Here are the charts for weeks 12-22:

Here are the charts for the full season — the average of the charts above with the charts from weeks 1-11:

Comments (2)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Strategy

Aubrey Huff’s day-to-day status must be a first:

Huff (hamstring, birth of son) is expected back on Monday, the Washington Post reports.

As far as I know, Huff wasn’t tagged with a hamstring injury before the birth of his son, but what with sleep deprivation and diapers, anything can happen. I can just imagine my status line of June 10th, three days after Giacomo’s birth:

Woodbury (daytime drowsiness, birth of son) is expected back from picking up the other children just as soon as he can remember the way home.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Baseball, Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

It is easy to forget, when a young player with potential puts up decent numbers, that the end result may be not much better than an obscure veteran having an up year.

Consider these two lines:

Player one: 138/485 (H/AB) 67 runs, 8 home runs, 55 RBIs, 2 steals, .361 OBP
Player two: 115/436 (H/AB) 65 runs, 6 home runs, 50 RBIs, 7 steals, .345 OBP

Player one is Yunel Escobar, starting shortstop for the Atlanta Braves.
Player two is Marco Scutaro, starting shortstop for the Toronto Blue Jays.

Both have utility value in most leagues at 2B and 3B as well as SS.

Escobar is marginally better than Scutaro, but not by much. And the more important number is this. Scutaro, owned in only 6% of ESPN leagues, is probably available. Escobar, owned in 87%, is probably not.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

It’s head-to-head playoff time in the Mynci. We run a 22-week season, which means each team in the 12-team league plays each other twice. Eight teams make the playoffs, which run for three weeks. We finish the fantasy league a week ahead of the majors. This is done intentionally so that our championship matchup occurs before MLB playoff teams start resting their starters.

So we’re in the first week of the playoffs and I’m down 7-2-1.

That’s why, with most of my hitters sitting for today’s travel day, I signed Nick Punto, Chase Headley, Adam Laroche, and David DeJesus, giving up on Max Scherzer and the back of my bullpen in exchange. Survive and advance.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Strategy

I decided to pick up Manny Corpas for the few save chances he might get this week. The question was which of my end-of-bench relievers to drop — Jose Veras or Jose Arredondo?

I see Veras and Arredondo as about equal, both in abilty and in their slim-to-none chance of picking up any actual saves (thus the justification for dropping one of them for the less talented Corpas). Veras pitches behind the ageless Mariano Rivera while Arredondo waits for his moment behind 50-save-man Francisco Rodriguez.

So it’s really a toss-up. What sold me was one thing. Veras and Arredondo will get rocked eventually. If it’s going to happen to Veras, I expect the Red Sox to do it. This week.

Update: Wow.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Baseball, Boston Red Sox, Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

Another flyer on my team is minor league pitcher Max Scherzer, who has been dominate for AAA Tucson. He pitched for Arizona earlier in the season, so he was available as a free agent, but I can’t expect him to make any major league starts until September.

Despite the Mynci’s deep benches, we do have a limit of seven starting pitchers, so holding Scherzer has impacted my flexibility. I only managed six starts this week, and made the rare (for me) tactical decision to aim for ERA and WHIP rather than the more predictables Ks. Thanks to Eddie Guardado this strategy didn’t pan out, but so it goes.

I will end the Mynci regular season in either first or second place and I want Scherzer on hand for the playoffs.

Comments (1)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

This is today’s Scouts Inc. note for John Maine:

Despite growing concerns with Billy Wagner’s elbow, Maine is not being considered for the closer’s role, manager Jerry Manuel told Newsday.

Thanks Jerry. Anything else Maine isn’t being considered for?

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Baseball, Fantasy Baseball, Other teams, Player Analysis

It’s really hard to pull the trigger on big lineup changes after July. By this time of year you’ve already gone to the free agent market enough times to have examined every pretender to fantasy significance. Furthermore, the players on your roster each have more than half season of stats to back up their selection. All have either proved themselves by now or ran out of chances. Paul Konerko, who I grabbed with my number 1 waiver position on April 29, is gone as of August 2nd.

And yet, some players performing perfectly well through August will tank the rest of the year. And some players who tanked early — perhaps even Paul Konerko — will recover their stuff in September. The question is which ones.

This week I took a flyer on Fred Lewis, letting go Adam Lind who had replaced Kelly Johnson. In this process I gave up a good backup second baseman, then a great hitting prospect who seems primed to produce, and settled on a base stealer. In mind was my Wins by Category analysis of the first half. In the upcoming playoffs, currently with the top seed, I need five points a round. No more than that. Steals are worth a flyer.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis, Strategy

For the last few weeks I’ve been crunching numbers from the first half of the Mynci season. My goal has been to find out which categories are most predictable in determining head-to-head points.

In our 12-team league I used the data from the first 11 matchups, a single round-robin. At the end of the regular season I will use the data from matchups 12 – 22 to double the data set.

From this data I calculated how many points each team generated in each category, with ties worth 1/2 point. I then  calculated the win ratio for each team in each category using the formula (wins + 1/2 ties) / matchups. The formed one matrix.

In another matrix I used each team’s 11-week averages to rank from one to 12 within each category.

Then I cross-indexed category rank with win percentage.

In the charts below, the x-axis is the category rank for the 12 teams in the league. The y-axis is the win ratio corresponding to each rank.

There’s a lot of information to consider here. I’ll start with two points.

First, investment in saves and steals generates the best return in head-to-head wins (and ties). This is not just a case of haves and have-nots. There are fewer outliers even among the top half of each category.

Compare this to wins. If you dropped the bottom three teams from the wins category, the trendline would be almost flat. Teams that accumulate more wins over many weeks do not have much advantage in any given matchup.

These are the category fantasy owners hate the most. The unforgiving and the arbitrary.

Comments (2)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Strategy

One of the more interesting non-fantasy facts about the Teixeira for Kotchman (and the other guy) trade is that both Mark Teixeira and Casey Kotchman are good fielders.

Actually, Teixeira is a great fielder. Teixeira has won two gold gloves and could be in line for another, if Albert Pujols doesn’t beat him out. And while Kotchman looks just good this year, in 2007, he had the best zone rating in the major leagues.

This is one reason Teixeira was never a good fit for the Red Sox. The Red Sox already have a good fielder at first. Plus they have a full time DH.

Kevin Youkilis could probably play shortstop better than Derek Jeter, but we’ll never know.

Update: I significantly rewrote the second paragraph when I looked at the 2008 numbers instead of the 2007.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Baseball, Boston Red Sox, Fantasy Baseball, New York Yankees, Player Analysis

Here’s another angle on “just showing up” as applied to player analysis.

Baseball Crank gives us a rundown of the best RBI producers, by percentage:

I decided to divide the number of RBI with men in scoring position by the number of plate appearances each player had with men in scoring position. It’s not a perfect measurement, since (1) this excludes driving in runners from first and (2) players on good offensive teams are more likely to bat with multiple men in scoring position and/or with a man also on first.

Number one is Jesus Flores with 36 RBIs in 61 chances.

Who? Jesus Flores, the Washington Nationals second-year catcher.

For fantasy baseball, the RBI conversion rate is compelling, but the most important number in the table is “plate appearances … with men in scoring position.”

Below are the first six names in the list. When you hit Josh Hamilton you see my point. He has a ton of RBIs because he has a ton of opportunity. He starts. He plays for Texas. He bats third. And he’s been lucky. With just 80 more at bats than Mike Lowell, who mostly bats fifth for the high-scoring Red Sox, he has had 51 more RBI opportunities.

Jesus Flores, on the other hand, starts, but gets rest days. He plays for Washington. He mostly bats 6th. The opportunities are simply not the same.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis, Strategy

A.J. Mass wonders whether rotisserie stats correlate to actual MLB win-loss records:

Do the categories we use to determine the best teams in a fantasy league translate at all to what makes up a winning real-life baseball team? Should we be using a different measuring stick to make a better overview of real-life and fantasy baseball player values, or have we already perfected the art?

Mass drops wins as a statistical category since it maps directly to real-world wins, resulting in the following 4 x 4 configuration: average, RBIs, home runs, steals x  saves, strikeouts, ERA, WHIP.

Mass then has some fun with wacky stat configurations, but I have a simpler question. What happens when you swap OBP for average. A comparison is shown below.

American League:

National League:

There are a few cases where OBP seems more accurate. In particular, Cincinnati and Oakland use walks to their advantage while San Francisco, Houston, and Kansas City pay the price for impatience. Florida and Minnesota however, don’t fit the model. Whatever those two teams are doing to rack up the wins, OBP is not it.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Strategy

“Ninety percent of success is just showing up” ~Woody Allen.

In a standard 5 x 5 league, seven of ten categories are cumulative. For hitting: runs, home runs, RBIs, and steals. For pitching: wins, saves, and strikeouts. In hitting, any marginal player has a better chance of adding to one or more of the cumulative categories than hurting you in AVG or OBP. In pitching, the cumulative uptick of saves, strikeouts, and wins justifes absorbing the poor outings of otherwise borderline closers or speedball starters.

Therefore, much success in fantasy baseball derives from the grunt work of roster assignment. This is especially true in rotisserie formats. It is especially true in leagues that allow daily roster changes.

In July and August, roster assignment creates separation. These are the months when people pay less attention to work. They go on vacation. Sometimes the beach house doesn’t have broadband. Meanwhile, owners whose teams are slipping out of contention are less likely to log in every day.

By just showing up, you can swap in a second catcher on the day game after the night game. You can swap in backups on Monday and Thursday travel days. In pitching you can track starts against whatever limits you are using (i.e. weekly start, season inning-pitched) and adjust accordingly.

Maximize your opportunities. If anything, that is my fantasy manifesto.

Comments (1)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Strategy

Jason Grey has a short list of fantasy “value” all stars — players undrafted, or drafted late, who have far exceeded expectations.

Grey determines his roster by comparing each player’s “final average draft position (ADP) for all ESPN leagues” with a mathematical rating of “earned fantasy value.” While this approach leaves out “turnaround” players like Kevin Slowey who have recovered from early season doldrums to post good May and June numbers, it still results in a benchmark list of fantasy player steals.

To highlight the smarts of the Mynci, I thought I’d compare Grey’s list to Mynci action and see how I and my fellow owners compare.

C – Ryan Doumit, Pirates (ESPN ADP: Undrafted; YTD Earned Value Rank: 59)
Mynci - Added April 8 by HO.

1B – Aubrey Huff, Orioles (ADP: Undrafted; EVR: 85)
Mynci - Added March 31 by PLIM. Dropped May 9 by PLIM. Added May 12 by PLIM. Dropped May 18 by PLIM. Added May 27 by CUDA. Dropped June 5 by CUDA. Added June 17 by P. No one was convinced by Huff at first, and for good reason. From April 10 through June 8 Huff’s OPS fell from 1.067 to .740 and it wasn’t until June 19 that it slipped back above .800.

2B – Mark DeRosa, Cubs (ADP: Undrafted; EVR: 72)
Mynci – Added April 19 by MM. Dropped May 8 by MM. Added May 11 by BUMS.

3B – Mark Reynolds, Diamondbacks (ADP: Undrafted; EVR: 56 )
Mynci - Added April 8 by MM. Dropped May 18 by MM. Added June 3 by CUDA.

SS – Cristian Guzman, Nationals (ADP: Undrafted; EVR: 74)
Mynci - Added April 30 by SS. Dropped May 4 by SS. Added May 12 by CORN.

MI – Jose Lopez, Mariners (ADP: Undrafted; EVR: 103)
Mynci – Added April 8 by HO. Dropped April 11 by HO. Added April 13 by SS. Dropped June 13 by SS. The story here is that Lopez almost never walks and the Mynci is an OBP league. When you exchange a good .301 AVG for a terrible .320 OBP, all Lopez offers is a few RBIs. He is a one-category hitter.

CI – Jorge Cantu, Marlins (ADP: Undrafted; EVR: 96)
Mynci – Added April 24 by CORN.

OF – Carlos Quentin, White Sox (ADP: Undrafted; EVR: 19)
Mynci – Added April 26 by MM.

OF – Ryan Ludwick, Cardinals (ADP: Undrafted; EVR: 48)
Mynci – Added April 21 by MM. Dropped April 21 by MM. Added May 10 by HO. Dropped July 1 by HO. Added July 6 by BUS.

OF – Milton Bradley, Rangers (ADP: 226.9; EVR: 27)
Mynci – Drafted by CORN (198). Dropped April 29 by CORN. Added May 5 by CORN. The CORN inexplicably almost lost a draft day steal, but no one took advantage.

OF – J.D. Drew, Red Sox (ADP: 213.4; EVR: 41)
Mynci – Added April 5 by MSOX.

OF – Nate McLouth, Pirates (ADP: 193.2; EVR: 25)
Mynci – Drafted by MM (240).

UT – Kevin Youkilis, Red Sox (ADP: 177.2; EVR: 47)
Mynci – Drafted by CUDA (167).

SP – Edinson Volquez, Reds (ADP: Undrafted; EVR: 12)
Mynci - Added April 6 by MM.

SP – Cliff Lee, Indians (ADP: Undrafted; EVR: 11)
Mynci - Added April 12 by MM.

SP- Ervin Santana, Angels (ADP: Undrafted; EVR: 39)
Mynci - Added March 31 by PLIM. Dropped April 13 by PLIM. Added April 20 by PLIM.

SP – Justin Duchscherer, Athletics (ADP: Undrafted; EVR: 40 )
Mynci – Added April 11 by MSOX.

SP – Joe Saunders, Angels (ADP: Undrafted; EVR: 79)
Mynci – Added April 9 by HO.

SP – John Danks, White Sox (ADP: Undrafted; EVR: 104)
Mynci – Added April 22 by HO. Dropped May 28 by HO. Added May 31 by BUS. Traded June 8 BUS to PLIM.

MR – Hong-Chih Kuo, Dodgers (ADP: Undrafted; EVR: 170)
Mynci – Added April 14 by P. Dropped April 27 by P. Added May 8 by MM. Dropped May 25 by MM. Added June 1 by MM. Dropped June 7 by MM. Added June 10 by CORN. I originally added Kuo as a starter. That didn’t turn out well. Otherwise, in a head-to-head league he is of minimal value, contributing perhaps 4Ks and a tickmark improvement in ERA and WHIP each week, but no wins and no saves.

CL – Jon Rauch, Nationals (ADP: Undrafted; EVR: 123)
Mynci – Drafted by RFP (254). Dropped April 13 by RFP. Added April 17 by HO. This represents a wrenching missed opportunity by RFP. On April 12 Rauch had an ERA of 9.00, 1 save, and 1 blown save. Starting with a save on April 13, Rauch never looked back.

CL – Kerry Wood, Cubs (ADP: 185.9; EVR: 74)
Mynci – Drafted by BUS (166).

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

In fantasy baseball, I hate playing players from the Red Sox. It ruins the real game for me. Instead of following the action, I get distracted by the individual at bat or inning pitched. I do not want to care if a player gets a walk instead of a hit. I do not want to be rooting for a player to steal a base when the team is up by nine runs.

I hate playing players from the American League East. Because those players often play Red Sox. I do not want to have mixed feelings about a Red Sox win. Is it okay if Aubrey Huff hits a home run when the Sox are already ahead by 6? I do not want to think like that.

Another problem is this: I know too much about the Sox. Listening to games on the radio I will hear about who’s in a slump, who doesn’t look sharp, who has a nagging injury, and all of this is bad information. All that matters in fantasy baseball are the numbers. Impressionistic color commentary is mind-junk.

Now, do I avoid drafting Sox players? Do I avoid the entire AL East? Not consciously. Aubrey Huff is my Paul Konerko replacement at the moment. I have several times tried to put together a deal this season for Kevin Youkilis (let’s just say I’ve lucked out with Aubrey Huff.)

But there must be a subconscious disincentive at work, a potential bias in my player analysis given that I’m definitely happy to have no Red Sox players on my fantasy team.

If ever I play a single-league competition, it must be the National League. I don’t care a whit about the National League.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Boston Red Sox, Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

When Aubrey Huff plays in a National League park.

Dumb mistake. Huff, who sports first- and third-base eligibility in many leagues, did not play yesterday in the Orioles interleague game at Wrigley Field. So far this season, Huff has played 6 games at first, 10 at third (9 starts), and 56 at DH. He’ll probably play in the infield today or tomorrow, but I hate this kind of guesswork. I’m just going to bench him.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

As I described in an earlier post, one way I’m trying to get an edge in pitching is to attack the WHIP category. As baseball fans, we are conditioned to focus on ERA, which means that control pitchers with average ERA are often available. Find one on a decent team and you have a chance to pick up wins as well.

Now my WHIP strategy centers on two Minnesota Twins: Scott Baker and Kevin Slowey.

Both are young players whose minimal hype (compare them to Joba Chamberlain or even Andrew Miller, for example) has helped them slip under the radar. Yet they both have great potential. Slowey, in particular, has astonishing minor-league numbers, a 1.94 ERA and 0.85 WHIP over 397.1 innings.

I signed both pitchers on May 12. Slowey has pitched seven starts for the Buckets while Baker has had three since coming off the DL. Here are the results:

Slowey: 7 starts, 3 wins, 43.1 IP, 29 Ks, 4.44 ERA, 1.19 WHIP
Baker: 3 starts, 0 wins, 18 IP, 13 Ks, 3.00 ERA, 1.33 WHIP

These aren’t great stats, but not shabby, either. Remember the context — these are free agent starters signed to fill the fifth and sixth spots in my rotation. In my mind, Slowey remains the more interesting prospect. He’s managed to post that 4.44 ERA and 1.19 WHIP even with a disasterous June 8th start in which he gave up 8 runs, 10 hits and 1 walk in 3.0 innings. One bad start out of seven I can live with.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis, Strategy

How sweet it is to see Nick Swisher — who I drafted with the 132nd pick of the Mynci Draft, who I stuck with through a bad April and worse May, who was shunned by the experts (scroll down to “The five big fallers I’m on board with”) — how sweet it is to see Swisher become this week’s hot pickup. Yesterday he lead all hitters in ESPN leagues with plus 16.1% ownership. Today he’s up another 5.6%. Thanks for noticing.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

Talking about free agent pickups in the market efficency post, reminded me of a well known problem in probability, often illustrated by way of romance.

A woman (or man) dates a number of potential spouses in sequence, where N is the maximum number she will encounter in her “dating life.”

The question for our heroine (Myrtle) as phrased by John Allen Paulos in Innumeracy (1988) is this:

When should I accept Mr. X and forego the suitors who would come after him some of who may possibly be “better” than he?

The answer, based on conditional probability is wonderfully precise. After rejecting the first 37% of the potential maximum, Myrtle should pick the first one that surpasses all that came before.

For example, if Myrtle predicts she’ll encounter 10 eligible suitors in her dating life, she should reject the first three before looking for Mr. Right. If the first three rate 5 1 2, and number four rates 6, she takes him. If not, she tries number five, then number six, and so on, until she either says yes or runs out of suitors.

For fantasy baseball, as with romance, this is a totally unhelpful model. Most free agent adds are driven by multiple factors including position eligibility, injuries, and statistical needs.

But let’s try it out anyway.

We can model the question several ways. For example: Say you decide to try one new free agent each week. At the end of the week you either keep that player for the rest of the season or drop him for someone else. Assume that every player you drop is grabbed by another owner in your league and no longer available.

When should you stop churning?

In a 25 week season the answer is 25 x .37 = 9.25, or week nine. Leading into weeks one through eight, you always drop your free agent (note that for week one, you start by dropping your most unfortunate draft pick) and add a new one. Leading into week nine you evaluate your current free agent against all previous and keep him if he rates “the best” (whatever that means).

Another scenario centers on the problem of the sixth starter. Perhaps you play in a weekly head-to-head league with a seven game-start limit and playoffs. Your goal is to assemble the best starting pitching squad possible by the last week of the season, the championship. You want a sixth starter for that match to ensure that you hit the game-start limit.

Assume that you give each free agent pitcher three starts before you drop him and try another. That sets N at about 12, which means that free agent starter number five is the first of the lot you consider keeping (12 x .37 = 4.51).

Paulos gets the last word (for his scenario and mine):

Then comes the hard part: living with Mr. Right.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Strategy

A. J. Mass devotes a column to the nonsense of home and away splits:

As we always say here at “Playing With Numbers,” stats that identify trends in past performance don’t guarantee the same trends in future performance. But at some point, the proof clearly is there in your proverbial pudding, and it might be time to earn your just desserts.

No, no, no, no, no. There is no proof. There is just a probability distribution. The randomness that underlies these numbers means that the average player’s home/away split has no more likelihood of continuing forward from this moment than does its opposite.

Take a look at Vladimir Guerrero, one of the players on Mass’ poor home list. Does Guerrero have a bad history in Angels Stadium? No. In 2007 his home vs. away OPS was .954 vs. .946. From 2005 through 2007 (now our sample size is getting reasonably significant) the difference was .969 at home and .925 away.

Given Guerrero’s historical stats, the most likely thing to happen in the coming weeks and months is a return to the mean. Do you really want him on your bench when that happens? Look at your keyboard. That’s a board with which to hit yourself when Mass’ advice loses you a matchup.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Strategy

In the comments to my Efficient Markets post, Shayne points out that one way to apply market efficiency thinking to fantasy baseball is to minimize transactions and line-up changes. You can’t outguess the market so don’t try.

He’s right. If you’ve evaluated and signed a particular player for a particular reason you should be ready to ride out the slumps. Over time the better player should produce.

The gambling strategy I propose applies to the players who are marginal to start with. If you need to get lucky to win your league (which you probably do), you need to find the marginal player with the biggest upside among the larger group of the consistently marginal.

Good luck on that.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Strategy

There has been a lot debate in the Mynci this week about a trade that just went through: Derrek Lee for Prince Fielder.

The general mood amongst us onlookers was anti-Fielder. Given that, it’s interesting to see that ESPN analyst Matthew Berry ranks them 19 and 24 in his current player rankings, with Fielder on top.

A more theoretical question was whether or not the swapping of two similar players at the same position was even worth the trouble. The future owner of Prince Fielder provided a pretty interesting answer:

Lee has gotten off to a fantastic start and he gave some good times. But now I think he is overrated… I think [Fielder] is going to get going again. I think Lee is going to level off. As for upside, we’re in a keeper league and Fielder is a potential keeper. It is faith in the big fella, a reaction to vegetarian jokes, and I’d like to make my fantasy team be a team that I like. I don’t particularly like Derek Lee, I like Prince Fielder…

The future owner of Derrek Lee summed it up:

I think what it came down to is he felt more comfortable with Fielder and I with Lee.

Why not have your fantasy team be a team you like? That is a profound question. I haven’t got around to writing about yet, but now I’m going to start putting my thoughts together.

Comments (1)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

In past years, Kevin Youkilis was always a solid first baseman of last resort.

He was okay for average and great for OBP, if you played with OBP. And even if (in past years) he didn’t hit for power, the Boston Red Sox offense give him lots of opportunities to score and drive in runs.

This season, everyone knows about Kevin Youkilis. If you need a good average

Comments (1)  |  Filed under: Baseball, Boston Red Sox, Fantasy Baseball, Other teams, Player Analysis

So writes my brother:

He has no power, diminishing range and he made several painful mental mistakes in last night’s game. Fortunately only the lack of power impacts my fantasy team. But who do the Yankees have in the pipeline for next season?

The thing about Derek Jeter is that he has been aging for a while. What masked his decline was an outlier year in 2006. Here’s Jeter’s OPS, and steals from 1999 – 2007, not including 2006:

1999: .990 OPS, 19 SB
2000: .897 OPS, 22 SB
2001: .857 OPS, 27 SB
2002: .794 OPS, 32 SB
2003: .843 OPS, 11 SB (in 119 games)
2004: .823 OPS, 23 SB
2005: .839 OPS, 14 SB
2007: .840 OPS, 15 SB

Clearly this is a player who stepped down a notch about 6 years ago. The 2006 year, however, messes up the picture:

1999: .990 OPS, 19 SB
2000: .897 OPS, 22 SB
2001: .857 OPS, 27 SB
2002: .794 OPS, 32 SB
2003: .843 OPS, 11 SB
2004: .823 OPS, 23 SB
2005: .839 OPS, 14 SB
2006: .900 OPS, 34 SB
2007: .840 OPS, 15 SB

With an OPS of .732 to date in 2008, Jeter may just be having a poor start, or he may have stepped down another notch. After 2001, excepting 2006, Jeter’s OPS slipped below .850 for good. Perhaps 2008 is the year that his OPS slips below .800 for good.

That said, Jeter has two secondary qualities that always add to his value. First, the Yankees always score lots of runs. Second, other than in 2003, he never gets injured. Until this year.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Baseball, Fantasy Baseball, New York Yankees, Player Analysis

When the fellow said “I’d rather be lucky than good” he was talking about wins in baseball.

Last week the player who was both lucky and good was Takashi Saito.

Considering how hard wins are to find, Saito put up what appears to be a unique fantasy line (scroll down):

2 wins, 2 saves, 8 Ks, 0.00 ERA, 0.46 WHIP, 4.1 IP

How unusual is this? In the 12-team Mynci, through 8 weeks, there have actually been 3 other relievers to post two wins in one week:

Jonathan Papelbon, Week 5 (April 28 – May 4): 2 wins, 1 save, 3 Ks, 0.00 ERA, 0.46 WHIP, 4.1 IP
Tom Gordon, Week 4 (April 21 – 27): 2 wins, 0 saves, 4 Ks, 0.00 ERA, 0.67 WHIP, 3.0 IP
Bobby Jenks, Week 4 (April 21 - 27): 2 wins, 0 saves, 1K, 0.00 ERA, 1.88 WHIP, 2.2 IP

While Papelbon’s Week 5 was surprisingly similar, Saito’s Ks and conversion factor (win, save, save, win) make his effort that much more exceptional.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

Never underestimate the ability of a professional athlete to come back from injury.

I learned this in my first fantasy baseball league, back in 1995. The great steal in the draft (not by me) was Ron Gant, the Cincinnati outfielder who had missed the entire 1994 season with a broken leg. When that league broke up at the All Star break (that’s another story), Gant had tallied 20 home runs and 54 RBIs in just 64 games. He had an on-base percentage of .393 and slugged .613 for an OPS of 1.006. 

Now it’s Francisco Liriano‘s turn. In 2006 Liriano posted a 2.16 ERA, 12 wins, and 144 Ks in just 121 innings. Then he developed arm troubles, had Tommy John surgery and missed the entire 2007 season.

He was ineffective early this season and the Twins sent him to the minors. He hasn’t been bad in his most recent starts at AAA Rochester, so he’s back for another try in the majors. But the numbers aren’t all that reassuring. Compared to his previous minor league numbers, his walks are way up and his strikeouts are way down. Even my Ron Gant experience can’t convince me to pick him up.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

Finally someone in the Mynci signed Aaron Laffey. His ESPN ownership is at 23% and not moving, despite his stunning numbers — 1.35 ERA and .086 WHIP in 26.2 innings. Part of the downside is the mumbling from Cleveland that he won’t stay in the rotation once Jake Westbrook returns from the DL. Another negative is his lack of strikeouts. On paper he looks very average.

Maybe Laffey is channeling the ghost of Greg Maddux in Atlanta, but with a minor-league ERA of 3.35 and WHIP of 1.26 Laffey’s major-league numbers this season are due for a big correction.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

Efficient Market Theory says that financial information is processed so aggressively that individuals can’t outperform the market average. It doesn’t matter that the information is not always good information. Here’s economics blogger Megan McArdle on the subject:

…when there are errors or information asymmetries, they tend to attract a lot of people trying to make money off of them. They rapidly bid down the arbitrage opportunity to zero…. Even if you have identified a price anomaly, you may not be able to act on that information. I am acquainted with someone who shorted the stock market in 2000 and made a killing. Unfortunately, he also shorted it in 1997, 1998, and 1999, and was very close to being totally bankrupt before the market went south. As traders like to put it, “the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent”.

This last point is key, which is where I slide this idea toward fantasy baseball. It is impossible to predict future performance, even for the best players. Who knew Alex Rodriguez would get injured? Who knew Chipper Jones would stay healthy? Breakouts are even harder to predict. Cliff Lee, anyone? 

Even in the small market represented by a 12-team league with reasonably active owners, great players will not be readily exposed. Some 200 to 300 players will be drafted, meaning all the remaining free agents are flawed in some way — either they are mediocre or high risk.

My choice is to go after the high risk players, which generally means going after the slumping, the inexperienced, or the oft-injured. 

For example, Willy Taveras is a mediocre player. He has 15 stolen bases and is owned by 98.1% of all ESPN leagues. But he also has an OBP of .302 and no guaranteed spot in the Rockies starting lineup. If you’re looking for stolen bases, maybe Fred Lewis, 19% ownership, is the better gamble. He has a career .823 OPS in the majors and 10 steals in 13 attempts. he’s been slumping recently, but that’s good. It means he’s more likely to be available.

Of course, he could just keep slumping. And Taveras could start playing like he did in 2007. You don’t know. The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

Comments (5)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis, Strategy

Mike Mussina was available. I picked up Andy Sonnanstine.

Mike Mussina was available. I picked up Dana Eveland.

Mike Mussina was available. I picked up Kevin Slowey.

Milke Mussina is still available.

Why not pick up Mussina (17.8% owned in ESPN leagues) when he’s pitching well for a team that should generate wins? Why not pick up Tom Glavine (11% owned)? Because these guys are history. Literally. When Mussina broke into the big leagues, Orioles teammate Cal Ripken was almost five full seasons from breaking Lou Gehrig’s consecutive games record. When Glavine was called up to the Braves, his teammates included Doyle Alexander, Phil Niekro, and Ken Griffey. Senior.

Despite a great 2006 season, Mussina has a 4.36 ERA and 1.30 WHIP over the last five seasons. His strikeouts per 9 IP declined from over 7 in 2004 – 2006, to 5.4 in 2007 and 4.2 so far this season.

But declining skills are not the issue. The issue is minimal upside. At the end of the season, I don’t want my fifth starter to be a predictable veteran. I want my fifth starter to be another Fausto Carmona – the pitcher last year’s Mynci champions signed on July 2, 2007. That means keep gambling.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

Andy Sonnastine was dreadful this week. His control did not serve owners well as he posted 10 hits and 1 walk in 6 innings on Tuesday, followed by 8 hits and 2 walks in 5 innings last night. My strategy of trading off ERA for WHIP was overwhelmed by ineptitude.

Digger deeper into this hole line of analysis, let me introduce Kevin Slowey. Coming off a decent rookie campaign, Slowey has had two starts this season, bracketing a DL-stint, resulting in a 6.48 ERA, and a 0.96 WHIP.

But if there’s any player who merits consideration for WHIP, Slowey is it. Through 2007, his minor-league WHIP was 0.86. Last season before his major-league call-up, he posted a 1.89 ERA and 0.96 WHIP in 15 AAA starts.

The key difference between those numbers and what he’s done in the majors is in home runs given up. In the majors he’s given up 2.28 HR per 9 IP. In last year’s AAA season the rate was 0.27. What he accomplishes this season will depend a lot on the mean to which he reverts.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

Picking up where I left off yesterday, if I was looking for a catcher, the sort by plate appearances isn’t a bad place to start.

Here’s the top 15 catchers by total plate appearances with percent-ownership in ESPN leagues:

1. Russell Martin: 142 PA, 100% owned
2. Kurt Suzuki: 140 PA, 35.5%
3. Geovany Soto: 132 PA, 100%
4. Brian McCann: 131 PA, 100%
5. Ivan Rodriguez: 126 PA, 96.5%
6. Josh Bard: 120 PA, 0.6%
6. Jason Kendall: 120 PA, 15.8%
6. Joe Mauer: 120 PA, 100%
9. Yadier Molina: 116 PA, 5.3%
10. A.J. Pierzynski: 115 PA, 84.3%
11. Bengie Molina:113 PA, 100%
12. Ramon Hernandez: 111 PA, 23.2%
13. Gerald Laird: 107 PA, 0.9%
14. Kenji Johjima: 105 PA, 29.4%
14. Jason Varitek: 105 PA, 58.4%

In the top ten, four players stand out: Suzuki, Bard, Kendall, and Yadier Molina. One or more of these should be available in most leagues. If not, I’ll add the little-owned Laird to the list, despite the fact that he’s about to start losing time to Jarrod Saltalamacchia. This is how they look on offense:

Suzuki: 36 for 127, 12 runs, 1 HR, 12 RBI, 1 steal, .350 OBP
Bard: 22 for 105, 8 runs, 0 HR, 6 RBI, 0 steals, .303 OBP
Kendall: 30 for 105, 14 runs 0 HR, 10 RBI, 1 steal, .361 OBP
Molina: 32 for 106, 7 runs, 2 HR, 11 RBI, 0 steals, .353 OBP
Laird: 26 for 97, 14 runs, 3 HR, 13 RBI, 0 steals, .324 OBP

These aren’t great players, but their playing time offers promise. First, it demonstrates that they have the confidence of their managers; someone besides their moms thinks they should start. Second, just by hacking away at the plate every day, they’re bound to drive in a few runs or even score on occasion.

Surprisingly, only Bard and Laird really draw down your average (or OBP). Even they are worth the pain (really). Certainly Laird has some pop. And while Bard plays in a terrible hitter’s park, has little power, and mostly bats eighth in front of a pitcher, his career average is .270 and his career OBP is .338, so he could improve. To be honest, I wouldn’t touch him, but he’s better than no catcher at all.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

Geovany Soto is looking like one of the better fantasy backstops this season. Not only is he hitting well, but he’s playing almost every single day. In plate appearances, Soto is third in the majors for catchers after Russell Martin and Kurt Suzuki.

1. Russell Martin: 142 PA in 34 Games (9 PA as a 3B, 2 as a pinch hitter)
2. Kurt Suzuki: 140 PA in 33 Games
3. Geovany Soto: 132 PA in 31 Games (2 PA as a pinch hitter)
4. Brian McCann: 131 PA in 32 Games (2 PA as a pinch hitter)
5. Ivan Rodriguez: 126 PA in 30 Games

Rodriguez is the exception that proves the rule, as the only one of the top five that is over the age of 25.

The question with all these guys is whether or not they run out of gas in September.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

Here they are, the 2008 Buckets 5th (and 6th) starters:

Rich Hill (Drafted 10th Round, Dropped May 3)
Ubaldo Jimenez (Drafted 21st Round, Dropped April 27)
Hong-Chih Kuo (Added April 14, Dropped April 27)
Scott Olsen (Added April 27, Dropped April 30)
Dana Eveland (Added May 3)
Andy Sonnanstine (Added May 3)

Filling out the rotation is the most difficult problem in fantasy baseball. In a weekly head-to-head league you need a minimum of five starters to get seven starts some of the time; you need six starters to get seven starts consistently. Many owners add and drop one or two starters every week to hit that limit, or better, to double-up on Sunday and get eight starts. I can’t say that I’m much different. I just do it in slow motion.

Where do these throwers come from? Usually the free agent list casts up two options.

The high velocity guy with no control. Think Daniel Cabrera.

Or, the control guy with no stuff. Think Paul Byrd.

Rookie and sophomore pitchers are the wild card. They often fall into the Cabrera category — see Jimenez, Hill, and Kuo, above. Velocity is why they are in the majors. I know one owner who consistently grabs minor-league call-ups and slots them in for their lonely single starts. The theory is that the unknown rookie, pumped on adrenalin, will pitch at least one great game before major league hitters figure out his weaknesses.

With Sonnanstine I’m trying something different. Baseball fans are conditioned to evaluate pitchers by ERA, it’s a built-in filter. In fantasy, median-ERA pitchers with a good WHIP are often available. Sonnanstine, for example. As a minor-leaguer he posted a 1.00 WHIP over 495 IP, with an average of only 1.36 walks per nine IP. That’s promising.

Correspondingly, thinking about WHIP is why I only gave Olsen one start before dropping him (perhaps to my regret). His minor league average of 3.55 walks per nine IP reminds me too much of the number five and number six starters that I drafted.

Comments (2)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

Most fantasy baseball commentary of the “who’s hot” variety is useless. There is no extrapolation of next week’s performance from last week’s streak.

Consider Conor Jackson’s recent weekly lines:

Week 2: 6 runs, 0 home runs, 5 RBI, 0 steals, .381 OBP
Week 3: 10 runs, 3 home runs, 10 RBI, 1 steal, .519 OBP
Week 4: 3 runs, 0 home runs, 3 RBI, 0 steals, .323 OBP

Or compare Scott Olsen and Jon Lester. Entering this week, Olsen had much superior statistics:

Lester: 1 win, 2 losses, 5.42 ERA, 16 Ks in 32.2 IP
Olsen: 3 win, 0 losses, 2.06 ERA, 13 Ks in 35.0 IP

If you dropped Lester to start Olsen this week, you may still have a hangover. That’s the point of this post. Chasing stats will entice you to destruction. It leads to reactive, high-risk, short-term thinking. Don’t do it.

Of course, that statement begs the question: if you don’t chase stats, how do you improve your team? Some players will get hot and stay hot. How long do you wait to be convinced?

The short answer is: You don’t know. No one knows.

The long answer is: Expand your analysis. A week of data is meaningless. Look at the player’s season and career numbers and consider: 

• Was he once a lauded prospect?
• Is he recovering from an old injury?
• Do scouting reports or splits indicate that he has fixed a weakness?
• Is he on a new team or been surrounded by new teammates?
• Has he performed like this before for multiple seasons?

I can’t emphasize that last point enough. Even an entire season is a small sample set when you’re trying to predict future performance. Oliver Perez had a 2.99 ERA in 2004, his only season between 2003 and 2006 with an ERA under 5. Melvin Mora had two plus .900 OPS years in 2003 and 2004, a level to which he has never returned.

This is why you needed to shut out ESPN analyst Matthew Berry’s hype for Corey Hart over Grady Sizemore back in March. Here’s an example of Berry’s logic:

…look at their numbers from last season:

Sizemore: 628 at-bats, 118 runs, 24 home runs, 78 RBIs, 33 steals, .277 average
Hart: 505 at-bats, 86 runs, 24 home runs, 81 RBIs, 23 steals, .295 average.

Hart had 123 fewer at-bats and still beat or tied Sizemore in three of five categories.

Now, let’s check in on them this year, through Sunday.

Sizemore: 48 at-bats, 5 runs, 1 home run, 8 RBIs, 3 steals, .313 average.
Hart: 44 at-bats, 8 runs, 0 home runs, 5 RBIs, 3 steals, .295 average.

Sizemore is off to a slightly better start, but my statement is not nearly as crazy as you think, now is it?

Both players now have more than 100 at-bats and Grady Sizemore is still off to a better start:

Sizemore: 29 for 105, 16 runs, 3 home runs, 14 RBIs, 7 steals, .394 OBP.
Hart: 31 for 103, 13 runs, 1 home run, 12 RBIs, 4 steals, .360 OBP.

This is not to say that Hart can’t have a better season than Sizemore. Who knows? But Sizemore has repeated this performance at the major league level three years in a row. Who would you want to put your money on?

Comments (1)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis, Strategy

The past two years I have had a late draft position — 11th in 2007; 12th in 2008.

A late draft position means a high waiver position. This is an important asset. Sometime between April and June, some other owner will release a significant talent. This will likely be a high draft pick who has slumped out of the gate. If you’ve kept your high waiver slot, this player may be yours.

The important thing is not to jump too early. You’re looking for a player drafted in the first 10 rounds. Unless you’re playing with idiots, such a player will only be released after he plays so poorly for so long that your competitor drops him out of sheer frustration. Lots of “rest” days for the struggling star will help.

Sometimes it doesn’t happen. In 2007 I held off until June 14th to use my #2 waiver position to sign the unexceptional Jered Weaver, an 11th round pick.

This season looks more promising. I used my #1 waiver position to sign Paul Konerko, a 5th round pick, on April 29. When dropped he had an OPS of .685. Sadly, his two home-run game occurred while he was on waivers. Now, one game in for the Buckets he is 0 for 3 with a walk. Time will tell.

Comments (2)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Strategy

Andruw Jones may be my first reasonably-high draft pick (round 13) to get dropped. I have Shane Victorino coming off the DL next week and need to make a spot. Between Jones’ slump and the pile-on, like this Eric Karabell column, there’s zero trade interest. Karabell writes:

I wouldn’t trade for Jones, because again, I don’t think things are going to get much better. He’s hitting .159 with a token home run he mashed at Atlanta. That’s it. He batted second Wednesday, in an effort to get him better pitches, I suppose, and he raised his average three points by getting one single in five at-bats. You could call it a bad start and I wouldn’t disagree, but at what point is a bad start just, well, the real deal? His swing looks long, slow and robotic. His home park isn’t exactly friendly to the long ball. The Dodgers have three other outfielders worthy of everyday play. Jones might not be.

In poor performance, if not profile, Jones reminds me of a similiar player I drafted in the teens and dropped early a year ago: J.D. Drew. Both were coming off mediocre years but seemingly had great upside. They were changing teams, which suggested thoughts of a new start. In J.D. Drew’s case, he was coming to a great lineup and hitters park. In Jones’ case, he was coming to a team with some developing talent and leaving a terrible hitters park, one that was signficantly worse than Dodger Stadium in 2007. In fact, Karabell is factually wrong when he writes that “[h]is home park isn’t exactly friendly to the long ball.” Dodger Stadium has been better than the MLB average in home vs. away home-run production every year since 2003 and significantly better than Turner Field this millenium.

But when Karabell writes “long, slow and robotic” it just makes you want to drop the guy yesterday.

Update: On Sunday Jones goes 0-4 with three Ks and four men left on base. He’s released.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

Every year, Baseball Crank produces his established win shares. This evaluation of player capability as a factor of team win/loss record is not fantasy-focused. Great players on bad teams don’t evaluate well.

But it is still a good resource for strategic thinking. First, good teams make good players better. Hitters are more likely to hit with runners on base — and score once they make it on base. Pitchers are more likely to get wins if supported by good hitters and a good bullpen. So thinking of players in the context of the team provides a way to assess off-season moves and rookie call-ups. Second, Baseball Crank is a smart guy who has plenty to say about individual players.

Consider some of the comments from this year’s ESWL (just scroll down):

• Jeff Francis may be harder to replace than most teams’ aces, but he still will never contribute as much positively to the Rockies as a guy in another park who can throw 20 more innings and exert more influence on the game.
• Given that [Yadier] Molina is only 25, it may turn out that he will hit some after all; his brother Bengie didn’t hit until he was 28.
• [Derek] Jeter … seems on the path of slow, gradual decline, with age starting to eat away around the corners of several of his assets, breaking down his weak defense and stripping some of his speed and power. I expect Jeter to continue to be productive into his late 30s, like similar hitters like Paul Molitor and Pete Rose; just a little less like the Jeter of old.
• I can’t add much to the Joba [Chamberlain] saga except to note the obvious that his future path will probably be determined less by his own performance than by Mussina’s and by Mariano’s health.
• Dontrelle Willis has escaped the Marlins’ woeful defense (well, except for Cabrera) that contributed to a terrible .682 DER last year, but defense alone didn’t drive up Willis’ rates of homers, walks and line drives allowed (his HR rate nearly tripled since 2005), nor the decline in his K rate. This season will tell us a lot about whether Willis is healthy or not — if he is, he seems a good turnaround candidate, but the markers pointing to latent arm injuries have been flashing red for a while.

This is a resource most useful for draft preparation, but it is also a good filter for making mid-season adjustments.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Draft, Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis, Resources

Among the Mynci, the number of transactions ranges from zero to 57.

At zero is the last place Canned Corn. At 57 is the eighth place Maniacs. Does this mean anything at all? Probably not. The first place Excelsiors have six transactions total.

What predicates a lot of movement, secondary to owner impatience, is a specific weakness at a particular position. The most likely problem, after a shallow starting pitching staff (a future topic), is a hole in the infield.

This point brings me to Brandon Funston’s Red Hot Corner skinny this week. Funston mentions two infielders to grab: Edwin Encarnacion and Ryan Theriot.

This won’t be much help for most fantasy owners. Both of these players are at over 50% ownership in Yahoo and ESPN leagues. In the Mynci both players were draft picks. In most leagues, likely free agent infielders (those below 50% ESPN ownership) range from the wildly inconsistent to the flat-out mediocre:

C. Ramon Hernandex (28.3%), Mike Napoli (27.4%), Jason Kendall (21.6%) 
1B. Richie Sexson (34.6%), Adam LaRoche (24.1%), Aubrey Huff (22.4%)
2B. Placido Polanco (43.8%), Mark Ellis (33.4%), Erick Aybar (29.7%)
3B. Troy Glaus (47.2%), Ty Wigginton (23.0%), Jorge Cantu (17.0%)
SS. J.J. Hardy (46.8%), Christian Guzman (42.8%), Erick Aybar (29.7%), Clint Barmes (23.4%)

The short story is that if you need help in the infield, especially the right side of the infield, you’re in trouble. If you don’t need help, you might want to consider an insurance policy, assuming players like Encarnacion and Theriot are still available. Do you really need that fifth outfielder?

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

Hunter Pence has reached the point where it is painful to keep him on a fantasy roster.

Not because he isn’t hitting. Slumps never bother me. Good hitters don’t slump forever. Any game can be the game they start hitting again.

Last season Dustin Pedroia hit .182 in April. Then, on May 3, 2007, everything turned around. Pedroia came into the game on a 1 for 14 slide. His average had hit a season low .172. Five games later he was hitting .267:

May 3: 1 for 3, 1 R, RBI
May 5: 2 for 2, 1 RBI
May 6: 3 for 4, 1 R
May 8: 2 for 4, 1 R, 1 HR, 3RBI
May 9: 2 for 4, 2 R

So I’m not worried that Pence is hitting .161 and has gone 0 for 10 in his last three games. What worries me is the Astros giving up on him. He was benched on Sunday and again today. There’s nothing I hate more than a hole in the lineup. It is bad enough juggling catchers without having to worry about Hunter Pence.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

On the Mynci bulletin board, my brother proposes doing something about closers:

Someday I hope the Mynci has the epiphany and declares a team can only have a maximum of 2 closers on its active roster. In a 12 team league all teams would have 2 closers on their roster. The contest would then come down to who had the better closers (and luck) rather than who prioritized closers in the draft and got lucky with injuries ( BJ Ryan anyone?) This change would also place a greater emphasis on incorporating middle relievers on one’s roster since the remaining relief pitcher positions would have to be filled by non-closers.

My own preference would be to combine holds and saves into a single aggregate category. That would greatly expand the pool of pitchers that could profitably help a team, without requiring superhuman efforts from the league commissioner to keep teams from drafting (or signing) more than two closers.

The way it is now, when a closer goes down, an owner is out of luck:

It’s a given that every closer and likely closer will be drafted. This means one must decide in March whether or not he even wishes to compete for saves and then gamble that the closer(s) he drafts stay healthy….

Putting a quota on the number of closers per roster would ensure there was always a pool of undrafted closers, which would ensure that every team would be able to compete for this category. Some teams would still have better closers than others but it would no longer be a binary issue. The luck of getting save chances would be the same. What would be remedied is the catastrophic bad luck of having a highly drafted closer go down with an injury — which seems to happen all too often.

The result is a huge spread between the haves and have-nots. Three weeks into the season, the Mynci saves category ranges from 0 to 17:

0, 1, 1, 5, 6, 9, 9, 10, 10, 12, 15, 17

The bottom three teams have one active closer between them. The top three teams in saves have (respectively) five, three, and four closers. The luck of the draw is that the Bus (17) and Buckets (12) both used later picks to draft marginal closers that have (so far) succeeded, while the Juicers (15) drafted three studs that have (so far) avoided injury. Here’s how I ended up with a healthy, effective bullpen:

61. Billy Wagner, NYM (Round 6)
181. Brad Lidge, Phi (Round 16)
204. George Sherrill, Bal (Round 17)
228. C.J. Wilson, Tex (Round 19)

Update: Sometimes you can learn things just by checking. ESPN does have a Saves + Holds category. Make note for next year.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Draft, Fantasy Baseball, Strategy

Why no buzz for Hong-Chih Kuo this spring?

The answer lies partly in Kuo’s history, partly in the way baseball promotes prospects.

Signed as a teenager, Kuo blew out his elbow in his first professional start. He has had two Tommy John surgeries. His major league ERA over four seasons is 5.03. His major league record is 2 wins, 10 losses, and 1 blown save. 

Once a prospect fails to prosper, not once, but two or three times, there is no buzz left.

And yet. If you think of Kuo as a prospect, not a washed-up 26-year-old, the braille-like data points of Kuo’s intermittent minor-league career point to awsome potential: 

2.93 ERA
1.24 WHIP
12.34 K/9

The numbers also tell the other story: only 169.1 innings pitched over seven seasons.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

AJ Mass has a terribly wrongheaded column up at the moment. Like many misguided efforts, it starts with bad math:

In one of my recent chats, Sean from Los Angeles posed the following question to me: “Is it unwise to bench a player, thus leaving a position empty, in a head-to-head league?”

Bizarrely, Mass answers no, then, even more bizarrely, explains that being an innumerate is unethical:

Even though the mathematical answer probably is yes, the fact remains that such a move shouldn’t be allowed. And to his credit, Sean realized that such a move was unethical. Let’s face the facts, folks. If the rules of your league describe a starting lineup as having X number of players, including a catcher, then starting “X minus 1″ players, with no catchers, is illegal.

Assuming a default head-to-head league, the answer to Sean’s question is yes, it is unwise, and the answer to Mass is no, it is not unethical to play by fantasy rules.

On the math question, Mass buys into the gambler’s fallacy, assuming that Martin’s 0 for 4 yesterday means an 0 for 4 today. The problem is that no one knows when Martin will break out of his slump. When he does, he will put up numbers. Every time Sean sits his catcher, he loses an opportunity to add to his score in the cumulative fantasy categories. This is especially misguided for a catcher who actually steals bases.

On the ethical point, Mass argues by analogy. A real baseball manager can’t choose not to start a catcher, therefore it is an unethical tactic in fantasy. Of course, a real baseball manager has a backup catcher, an unlikely luxury for an owner with a 21-player fantasy roster. Mass also forgets that most commissioner use a service to run their leagues. A service like ESPN Fantasy Baseball. We expect our owners to play by preconfigured settings, not by the qualms of a fantasy Ford Frick. There are no asterisks in fantasy baseball.

Update: Mass responds to his critics in this week’s column.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Strategy

One big difference between the Rotisserie and Head-to-Head formats is the chase for Ks. In Rotisserie, with a season IP limit, it is very easy to be competitive in strikeouts. First, you never ever draft a Mark Buerhle or Chien-Ming Wang. Second, you stock your bullpen with guys like Carlos Marmol and Joba Chamberlain. It doesn’t matter if they don’t get saves; they’ll get you Ks. Third, you don’t let yourself fall behind the limit. Start playing matchups and you’ll have to hand the ball to a Jake Westbrook to catch up.

In a league with a weekly game start limit, the Ks competition is much more difficult. A starter with good K/IP ratio does nothing for you if he doesn’t last past three innings, like Rich Hill last week. A fastballer who has a great outing means nothing if you’ve reached your weekly start limit, as I had when Tim Lincecum pitched last Sunday.

Furthermore, you have no control over which pitchers will give you two starts in a particular week. Week One I got two starts out of Jake Peavy, but due to the oddities of opening week and Lincecum’s four-inning non-start, only six starts total. Week Two I got two starts and 14 innings out of Cole Hamels, but had the aforementioned Rich Hill fiasco and no other start past 6 innings. Both weeks I lost the Ks point.

Admittedly I lost the category to the two other Mynci managers who most aggressively work for strikeouts. But still, something more needs to be done.

So as a replacement for Shane Victorino on the DL (and after a one-game appearance by Luke Scott), I signed the inimitable Hong-Chih Kuo. He’s owned by 0% of ESPN fantasy owners, and the trend is down. There are more owners holding onto Daniel Cabrera! What’s wrong with these people?

Update: Today the trend is up. Kuo is at 15.4% ownership.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis, Strategy

Here’s the first Mynci trade of the 2008 season:

MSOX traded Carlos Pena, TB 1B to Foul Poles
RFP traded Ben Sheets, Mil SP to Maroon Sox

This is a very interesting deal. In the Mynci draft Pena went high, in the 6th round, while Sheets went in the 11th (in my own draft list I had Pena in the 7th and Sheets in the 10th). Sheets should have gone higher, except for the fact that his right arm is held together with scotch tape and staples, like one of those rubber-band-driven balsa wood airplanes that kids throw into walls:

2005: 22 starts
2006: 17 starts
2007: 24 starts

Remember that the Mynci is a head-to-head league. Except for winning just enough to make the playoffs, nothing matters until September.

In 2005 Sheets didn’t even pitch in September. In 2007 he pitched two starts in July, one start in August, then “came back” to post a 7.88 ERA over four September starts. 2006 was the exception. Sheets was on and off the DL for most of the season, then showed up strong the last four weeks.

This season Sheets is looking healthy now, which does not project well for later.

Pena is also high risk. He’s coming off a career year and a repeat of similar numbers is very questionable. Considering how lonely those 2007 numbers look to me now, I wonder why I rated him as high as I did. I’m glad someone else drafted him. I’m surprised Sheets was dealt for him. But he might be the better choice in the end.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

As referenced in yesterday’s post, ESPN analyst Shawn Peters writes “don’t make deals this week.”

Then he outlines why to make deals anyway:

[A]re we looking at a bounce back candidate?

[Do] we have former top prospects who were forgotten about[?]

[Is] a guy’s playing time … all but assured?

He’s right on all counts. Don’t make deals unless you make a good deal.

What I will add is some strategic gloss. Every trade is a bet on the future. Early season trades simply place the bet on a longer future. In other words, a early season trade is like your draft. When you make the trade, consider where you projected the players involved in March. Would you want to have drafted the team you are trading for?

Sure, if your new acquisitions go south, you’ll be in agony all season, but that’s luck, not strategy.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Strategy

Now is the time for all fantasy experts to say, don’t panic. Don’t make deals. Don’t overreact. Be patient.

Here’s another piece of advice. Save your draft notes.

Later on this season when I start looking for free agents to replace draft-day duds I first scan the category leaders in the past month (who’s hot?). Then I look at the stats from the past week (are they still hot?). Then I double-check season and career numbers (how flukey is this hotness?).

But what I really need to know is whether or not the numbers project forward. And that’s where I’ve learned to go back to draft notes. The draft is all about projections. That’s the time your mind is focused on the whole season rather than the daily numbers. Maybe, back in March, you actually had a clue.

The easiest player to spot is the one you already drafted and released. In 2007 I drafted Troy Tulowitzki in the 22nd of 23 rounds. Great prospect. Potential breakout year. Tulowitzki started slow and I released him two weeks into the season. In mid-June I actually added him for one game, dropped him again, then added him for good on June 21.

In a deep league with no transaction limit you can do things like this — up until the point that some other owner grabs the guy you should have kept on your team. Just remember: you made those late round picks for a reason. Right?

Comments (1)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Strategy

A good fantasy resource you never knew about is Yahoo’s Sabermetrics:

For batters (2007).

For pitchers (2007).

The tables aren’t sortable (A.J. Pierzynski is not the best of anything) but they are easy enough to copy off the screen and paste into Excel.

If you don’t have Excel, get it. Or an equivalent. It’s what Bill James uses.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Resources

Last week ESPN columnist AJ Mass posted a column on pitcher streaming in which he identifies a fantasy-strategy loophole, discounts an obvious remedy, and totally avoids the proximate problem.

Mass explains the loophole with a scenario. You set your pitching lineup on Monday morning, check back a week later, and discover that you’ve been overwhelmed in Wins and Ks:

How could a nine-man pitching staff put up those kinds of numbers in one week? That’s when you notice that your opponent doesn’t have a nine-man pitching staff. He has what amounts to a 63-man pitching staff: each day, he drops all of his pitchers and replaces them with ones who are going to start later that day. And then, once the games are over, rather than have no pitchers starting the next day, he drops them all again and picks up a fresh batch of scheduled starters. This is streaming.

There are several obvious remedies: A league transaction limit, weekly instead of daily roster changes, a starts or innings-pitched limit. I dislike transaction limits; they make the dog-days of August even more grim for non-contenders. And I’m in agreement with Mass that a league shouldn’t have to change roster and acquisition rules just to close the loophole.

But Mass is wrong on starts limits. He writes:

Some leagues like to have a maximum number of innings pitched or starts per week. That’s all well and good, but again this may penalize an otherwise innocent owner who just happens to have all of his pitchers making two starts that week.

A owner who just happens to have all his pitchers making two starts a particular week may be innocent, but that doesn’t make the outcome fair. Imagine you’re in your league playoffs and you lose decisively in Wins and Ks when your opponent runs out 11 starts to your 7. Sound fair to you?

A starts limit (mostly) kills pitcher streaming, encourages owners to actively manage their teams, and keeps matters of luck to the numbers in the field, not the calendar.

But there’s still a problem. And its author is ESPN.

This is the “Sunday Starts” bug. In ESPN, in any fantasy baseball format with a starts or innings-pitched limit, all pitcher statistics count the day the limit is reached. This means that in a weekly head-to-head league with a starts limit of seven (my league, for example), an owner can call up free agent starters for that last day and jump from six starts to ten or more.

During the regular season, most owners won’t want to drop more than a few players to gamble for an extra K or W point. But it does happen. And during a survive-and-advance single elimination playoff, owners are going to go for broke, even if it messes up their roster for the next round.

Once you select a starts limit, ESPN needs to offer the choice between the current fuzzy rule and a hard stop. The latter would cut off over-the-limit starts based on game time; ties could be decided by chance. Or each pitching slot could be ranked (SP1, SP2, SP3, SP4, P5, P6, RP7, RP8, etc.) with the cut-off determined by ascending order.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Strategy

For what it’s worth, we’re playing the following:

• 12 teams (10 returning managers, 2 new)
• Head to head, 22 weeks, 3 weeks of playoffs
• All MLB
• 24 Player Rosters
• 3 Keepers
• Live, online draft 
• Unlimited transactions

Oh sure, there are more settings than that, but nothing all that interesting.

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I activated the league a few weeks ago. The league is sited on ESPN. For several years we used Yahoo, but switched to ESPN last year. ESPN seemed to offer a better interface and more configuration options. Also contributing to our choice was the fact that most of us linked to ESPN constantly for box scores, depth charts, pitching starts, and the occasional intelligence to be gleaned from their experts.

Anyone who played an ESPN league in 2007 knows that the site was a disaster for the first month. Transactions and lineup changes got screwed, with cascading data compilation problems. Two weeks in, ESPN had to restart the season. Even then it took them another month to fix problems with the head-to-head pitcher starts limit. When a manager reached his or her weekly start limit, all subsequent pitching stats were denied. Managers were thinking they had to save a start through the end of the week in order to compile saves. Several of us emailed ESPN to find out: Was this a bug or feature?

With no immediate reply, the league entered upon a drawn-out message board discussion about the saves problem. I proposed tinkering with the starts limit to allow us all to manage our pitching staffs in conventional fashion. But, of course, changing the start limit would have created its own problem, and I can do without the honor system if at all possible.

Then, behold, ESPN fixed the problem. And the rest of the season proceded more or less without major technical problems.

So here we go again.

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The premise of Bill Simmons most recent column is this: Bill Simmons sends an email 25 years into the past to the eighth grade Bill Simmons. This reeks of deadline floundering. I almost didn’t click through. But Simmons actually has a thesis. For sports fans, life is good, as evidenced by the things we complain about. For example:

ESPN’s Web site doesn’t put all the baseball and basketball box scores on one page like a newspaper does, so every night, you have to click on each individual game to see the scores. You will complain about this….

Sometimes on Sundays, when you’re checking your up-to-the-minute fantasy scores on whatever Web site you’re using, so many people are checking at the same time that the site will load slowly. You will complain about this….

I once participated in a fantasy baseball league in which the commissioner heroically typed stats into a spreadsheet from the pages of USA Today every week. We almost had to throw out the first three weeks of the season because our guy used an AVERAGE function to calculate staff ERA instead of entering individual innings pitched and earned runs.

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