This year’s guide is at the printer, and should start showing up in stores soon. Here’s the front cover.
The Guide
Bomb-Bedard-ed! What do you get for chasing? Eric-ed.
Anyone who plays roto knows that what you pay for your players can be just as important as who was on your team. The fantasy game is one of markets, and the winner’s objective is always to get as many players as possible that the market undervalued. How do you know a player was undervalued? At the end of the season he’s earned more than you paid for him.
The funny thing is that despite the importance of what guys cost, once Jerry Heath sold his legendary stat service back in the mid-90s, nobody kept track of what players actually cost each year. Nobody, that is, until I started collecting and publishing that info in the Fantasy Baseball Guide (ON SALE NOW) six or seven years ago.
Right now I’m putting the polish on the stats and projections that are going into the Patton $ Online product we sell (free trial going on now at software.askrotoman.com) and I came across the Cost and Price Scans for Eric Bedard, and do they tell a story:
In 2006, we paid $8 for Bedard, and he went out and earned us $17.
So, in 2007, we paid $19 for Bedard, and he went out and earned us $29.
So, in 2008, we paid $30 for Bedard, and he fell off the edge, earning $7.
But in 2009, we paid $19 because he was Eric Bedard, and he bounced back to earn $12 and lose us money.
Last year, we paid $8 for Bedard, and he didn’t pitch. What are we going to pay him this year?
Alex Patton says $5 right now. Mike Fenger says $4. I say he looks like a reserve to me, a guy who is worth controlling, but not such a good bet to spend money on, though if he’s having a good spring I’d pay a few dollars for his talented arm. The problem is that if he’s having a good spring his price is going to go back up to $8 or even more come opening day.
The point is that we tend to pay the most talented players as if they’re going to have as good a season as we can imagine, even if they’ve let us down recently. Bedard’s price went up lockstep with his earnings in 2007 and 2008, but when the injuries grabbed hold of him the air didn’t rush out of expectations. We kept bidding him up, hoping he’d get healthy again and the little discount we thought we were getting for his iffy health would become a big one.
The problem with this is that we’re actually still investing top dollar in a fragile economy. Over the past five years we’ve spent $81 on Bedard and he’s earned back $65. That’s not a disaster, but it isn’t a winning strategy either. You want to pay up for the guys who are going up before they go up, like Bedard in 2006 and 2007, and try to avoid the guys who are at their peak with nowhere to go but down, as the oft-injured Bedard has proved the last three years.
It isn’t always easy and it’s a call all of us get wrong more than we’d like, but it is the single most important mental adjustment you can make. Paying for last year’s stats, especially from players without a serious track record of success and health, is often a losing game.
The Fantasy Baseball Guide 2010 is OUT NOW!
On newstands everywhere!
San Diego State 2009 Baseball Statistics
SAN DIEGO STATE OFFICIAL ATHLETIC SITE
I was writing the profile of Stephen Strasburg for the Guide tonight, and chanced to visit the San Diego State baseball stats site. Strasburg’s line is incredible, which is why we’re all salivating over him, but the curious fact is that every player on the site has a link to a player page except Strasburg.
I don’t have time to investigate now, but it would seem that SS has pulled a BB (remember when Barry Bonds removed himself from the MLBPA licensing agreements, so he could make his own deals?), or else San Diego State doesn’t want to pay the bandwidth charges for all the people looking to read Mr. Strasburg’s bio.
The Cluelessness of WHIP
Tout Wars AL Standings- CBSSports.com
For years, in the Fantasy Baseball Guide (which I edit), we ran the pitching stat called Ratio. Every year, people would complain and tell me that in their league they used the pitching stat called WHIP, and ask why we didn’t publish that instead.
For years, I replied that:
1) Ratio (((Hits+Walks)*9)/IP)) is much more descriptive/granular than WHIP ((Hits+Walks)/IP), and that,
2) Ratio looks better, since it’s on the same scale as ERA.
I then usually also note that I used Ratio in the leagues I played in, and if they had a problem they should do the same.
I didn’t win this argument. Many readers said they saw my point, but even if they agreed with me, the other people in their league did not, and so weren’t inclined to change. After a lengthy discussion with such readers a few years ago, I changed the magazine. We now publish WHIP instead of Ratio.
To ease the transition, the first year I included a handy WHIP to Ratio converter to cut out of the magazine, which I assume some people are still using. It featured a bodacious picture of WHIP kitten Anna Benson. Unfortunately, I’ve lost mine.
I bring this up now because I was looking at the Tout Wars AL standings just now and was struck by the WHIP category:
| Team | WHIP | Pts | Dif |
| Siano – MLB.com | 1.32 | 12 | 0 |
| Colton/Wolf – RotoWorld | 1.34 | 11 | 0 |
| Sam Walker – FantasyLandtheBook.com | 1.34 | 10 | 0 |
| Moyer – Baseball Info Solutions | 1.37 | 9 | 2.5 |
| Erickson – Rotowire.com | 1.37 | 8 | -1 |
| Michaels – Creative Sports.com | 1.37 | 7 | 0.5 |
| Berry – ESPN.com | 1.37 | 6 | -2 |
| Shandler – Baseball HQ | 1.37 | 5 | 0 |
| Peterson – STATS LLC | 1.38 | 4 | 0 |
| Collette – OwnersEdge.com | 1.38 | 3 | 0 |
| Grey – ESPN | 1.41 | 2 | 0 |
| Sheehan – Baseball Prospectus | 1.42 | 1 | 0 |
My first reaction, assessing the three-way race between Siano, Michaels, and Shandler, is that this is unbearably close. After all, there are five teams at 1.37 and two more at 1.38. Siano is safely atop the category, but couldn’t Michaels easily gain two points? Couldn’t Shandler easily gain four?
In both cases, such gains would erase Siano’s lead. And certainly the numbers say it’s that close. It’s a virtual tie, for pete’s sake.
In fact, it’s not, but WHIP isn’t granular enough to tell you that. Here is the same rankings using Ratio.
| Team | Ratio | Pts | Dif |
| Siano – MLB.com | 11.84 | 12 | 0 |
| Colton/Wolf – RotoWorld | 12.02 | 11 | 0 |
| Sam Walker – FantasyLandtheBook.com | 12.10 | 10 | 0 |
| Moyer – Baseball Info Solutions | 12.292 | 9 | 2.5 |
| Erickson – Rotowire.com | 12.294 | 8 | -1 |
| Michaels – Creative Sports.com | 12.312 | 7 | 0.5 |
| Berry – ESPN.com | 12.330 | 6 | -2 |
| Shandler – Baseball HQ | 12.367 | 5 | 0 |
| Peterson – STATS LLC | 12.387 | 4 | 0 |
| Collette – OwnersEdge.com | 12.451 | 3 | 0 |
| Grey – ESPN | 12.65 | 2 | 0 |
| Sheehan – Baseball Prospectus | 12.75 | 1 | 0 |
I went to the third place among the “tied” teams to show a little more information. To show how much distance there is between these tied teams, here are few facts, looking at Shandler since he’s the last of the teams with a 1.37 WHIP:
If Shandler gets 10 innings with no hits or walks his Ratio drops to 12.263, enough to pass everyone, and his WHIP drops to 1.363.
If Shandler gets 10 innings with 10 hits+walks, a pretty good performance, his ratio drops to 12.338, and he gains no points.
What if Shandler pitches 25 innings the rest of the way, with an excellent Ratio of 9.00 (a WHIP of 1.00) which would be way good, his Ratio would end up at 1.366, which would gain him two points but would still look like 1.37 on the CBSSports reports. His Ratio would drop to 12.297.
The point is that using WHIP, especially displayed to the second place, it looks like there’s a virtual tie, when the reality is that the standings are close, but it would take an extraordinarily good effort for one team to break ahead of the others. Ratio better illustrates this and it provides better and more information, which is why I still think it is a vastly superior stat.
Which is why I think you should change. Let me know when you do.
About The Guide 2009
The last post I wrote was about the Fantasy Baseball Guide 2009, of which I’m the editor. I think we create an excellent preseason fantasy preview that also has, unlike nearly every other fantasy mag, value all season long. When a guy gets called up in midseason there’s a good chance he’ll be in the Guide.
The Guide also has last year’s Games Played by Position data (major leagues and minor), which you won’t find anywhere else in such easy format (for the 1500+ players included in the Guide).
I also want to point out that the Guide is a fantasy product that is fact based. The arguments made for and against players are based on information that is divulged as the argument is made. A lot of the world of baseball happens randomly, a great deal of the game’s outcomes are random, but that shouldn’t be an excuse for spouting. Maybe it’s a style thing, but I hate guys (always guys) shouting at me about what matters.
What matters isn’t shouting.
Thanks for listening, Peter.
Ps. The Guide has perceptive player profiles, the picks and pans of many industry lights, my bid prices (far in advance of the season) and access via the link in the editor’s letter to updated projections (which are way better than the mechanical projections we can do in November) and prices on the website. Plus strategy pieces from experts who won tough leagues, about how they did it. And the Creativesports.com Mock Draft, which saddled me with the first pick this year. I went with Pujols, though that isn’t the consensus choice. But that’s why we do it.
the Fantasy Baseball Guide 2009
The new Fantasy Baseball Guide 2009 has been out for a few weeks now, but I’ve been so busy and this is the offseason I hadn’t plugged it here. New this year are complete Major League and Minor League Games Played by Position for all the listed players.
Once again the five year Player Cost and Player Earned scans give a most excellent idea about how prices change after a player has had an inexplicably bad year. Not much. They also give a good idea of player’s real value, apart from whatever spike or slough he’s just gone through.
And, of course, there are the crowd pleasing Picks and Pans, in which a broad cross section of fantasy experts write their own player comments for the players they care for or loath most.
The mag is out in all the usual Barnes and Nobles and Walmarts and Borders and other newsstands and groceries. Enjoy.
The city of brotherly losers
Bruce has written for the Fantasy Baseball Guide, but I didn’t know until just now that he wrote a piece for Salon about the Phillies losing 10,000 games faster (if you can call it that) than any other franchise. Bruce is promoting his book Walking Broad, in which he walks the length of Broad Street and revisits his home town, his history, it’s history and all the people who share their histories and lives there.
I bring this up because the book is a good one, even if you’re not particularly interested in Philadelphia, but also because he mentions that the Atlanta Braves are only 300 loses behind the Phillies. But does that count? Does the accumulative history of losing carry over from Boston to Milwaukee to Atlanta?
This matters because all sorts of baseball history is tied up in the towns we live in, and the teams we root for there, and it does a disservice to the localism to tie records to the legal entity of the franchise. Is Andre Dawson really the premier home run hitter of the Washington Nationals?
Heater Magazine – Home
Looking for batting order information for Matt Murton and Cliff Floyd earlier today I remembered that Heater Magazine has such stuff. I nipped over to www.heatermagazine.com, downloaded the giant weekly compendium of stats, charts, baseball writing, more charts, graphs, lists and more charts and found exactly what I was looking for. Plus the writing of this year’s Guide rookies, Craig Brown and Jeff Sackman, and the always excellent Dave Studeman and Deric McCamey.
There’s also a Saturday supplement. This is what Baseball Weekly might have done with their stat pages, but instead John Burnson put it together. It’s cheap. Just $19 samoleans for the whole season.
The only problem is that all the information really makes me want to have one of those 30″ Apple CinemaDisplays on my desk. But even without it, this is one useful bunch of baseball/fantasy information.
Ps. I don’t make any money on this. It’s just highly recommended.
We always like to hear nice words, and in this Podcast from the energetic Fantasy Man he plugs the Guide. Thanks, Fantasy Man, we’ll check out your writing, too.