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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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.

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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.

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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

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.

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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.

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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

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.

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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.

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“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.

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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

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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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

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

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

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

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.

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