I usually agree with you but I’m trying to figure out something I saw at RotoTouts.com. Mike Piazza and Roger Cedeno are both valued at $27.
I know Roger is a base stealing giant but Piazza is arguably the best hitting catcher in baseball (maybe I-Rod, if he weren’t coming off injury) and good hitting catchers are so hard to find. In addition, Piazza will actually have a number of studs hitting around him this year to boost his numbers even higher. I can see a 40 HR 120 RBI year ahead for him. I’d bid $30-31 in a MLB universe and $33-34 in a NL only league. Not that I wouldn’t like to have Cedeno too, but after steals and runs, what do you really have?
Piazza’s earnings the last five years: $48, $25, $26, $30, $22.
Cedeno’s earnings the last five years: $4, $2, $39, $16, $36
Clearly, Piazza is the better hitter, especially considering he plays the tougher position. But I think you’d be more wrong making a larger bid on him than you would on Cedeno, for two reasons:
First, Piazza is a catcher, and catchers get hurt. Piazza has been fabulously durable, but all it takes is one bad tipoff or an errant overswing and Piazza could miss weeks and weeks of playing time.
Second, Piazza’s skills are less rare. While his homers represent a little less than one percent of the marginal pool of home runs taken in fantasy leagues, Cedeno’s steals represent nearly two percent of the marginal steals pool. That means, in very rough terms, that one of Cedeno’s steals is worth two Piazza homers. (I should note that in the pricing formulas I use steals are downgraded about 20 percent, because of strategic factors. I’m not always pleased by this downgrading in a valuation sense, but it does help the prices better reflect what prices players go for in the auction.)
Piazza’s impact in RBI and AVG manage to close the gap, but they don’t really overcome it, at least in deep leagues. In a mixed league situation, where fewer players are taken, the fact that Piazza plays catcher really does give him extra value.
But in strict roto terms, in the last three years Piazza has averaged earnings of $26 per year, while Cedeno has averaged earnings of $30.