peter

Fantasy baseball advice for those who ask.

Ode to Chris Liss

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Many years ago, a lifetime perhaps, I got into a pissing match with Chris Liss about the serial comma (or, as Vampire Weekend calls it, the Oxford comma). But who really cares about that?

Back then, Chris Liss also wrote a story for the Fantasy Football Guide about how our brains are way more adaptable than formulas and other pedantic bs we create for fantasy sports. We think better than we compute, was Chris’s point, and we would be smart to rely more on our brains than any formulas. I said then and I say now, I think he’s right.

Tonight I read something else from Chris: http://www.rotowire.com/baseball/features/2010_LissStrategy.htm

The story linked here, about how Chris won Tout Wars Mixed and the Yahoo Friends and Family League that Rotowire (Chris’s domain) runs, is excellent.

Chris also wrote a story for the Fantasy Baseball Guide 2010 (on newstands now!), the magazine I edit, about the same stuff.

My point is that Chris is pretty much right. Our brains are quicker and more fluid than any formula we could create. You still need to know your league, and know the players (all the players) and how rostering them will change your team—which is what my earning and cost values and other objective measures provide—but once you’ve internalized that data, you can do better on your own than poring over some cheat sheet.

Good stuff.

Forecaster and Handbook are out!

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I got my copy of the Baseball Forecaster about 10 days ago, but closing the magazine meant not cracking it, even though I’ve got a short bit in it (which happened to run here first, about WHIP v. WH/9), until now.

Ron’s lead essay is very smart. It’s about how wrong we are about players, year after year, and he wonders why we pursue exacting but nearly always wrong projections. Then he comes up with something new, called the Mayberry Method.

There’s a lot to like about the way the MM summarizes a player’s skills in a descriptive way. Yet despite it’s simplicity, I’m not convinced it is going to catch on. New stuff often doesn’t, even when it has real merit. On the other hand, the benchmarks MM describes so succinctly are becoming increasingly entrenched as leading indicators, making me wonder why–if we’re getting better at defining leading indicators–we’re not getting better predicting breakouts.

As Ron says in the piece, we may be smarter now than we were 20 years ago, but that may not be such a good thing.

Steve Moyer always gives us so-called experts a copy of the hot-off-the-press Bill James Handbook at First Pitch Arizona, for which I am very grateful. Not that I wouldn’t buy it, I have many times, but this way it ends up in my hands even sooner.

The book continues to grow, with increased focus on the defense awards and rankings, focus on baserunning skills, and the ever useful park factors. I’m a great fan of baseball-reference.com and fangraphs.com, both of which I use all day long, but I sit and read the Bill James Handbook, poring over its pages as if it were a ripping good yarn, which in many ways it is.

I’m glad for both these books and recommend them highly.

The Forecasters Challenge 2009–revisited again

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The Forecasters Challenge 2009

Tom Tango said today he’ll be running the Forecasters Challenge again in 2010. The primary judging will come from the Pros-Joes format, which is described in the link above. The idea, basically, is to have each pro draft against 21 inferior lists. In last year’s challenge my projections ranked 3rd using this method.

For the record, using the 22 pros against all the other pros, my projections ranked 5th.

In the head to head scoring system, I was second division.

Overall, Rotoworld and John Eric Hanson seemed to score the best.

San Diego State 2009 Baseball Statistics

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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.

An Interview with Oakland GM Billy Beane

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John Sickels of Minor League Ball

I was working on Brett Wallace yesterday for the Guide (on sale in January!), and came to the conclusion that Wallace can hit and the A’s can use a third baseman, though he may not be that good a defensive player. Billy Beane agrees!

Nice interview by John, and Billy gives thoughtful answers. He just doesn’t trash anyone. Oh well.

Trust the eyes or the numbers? Defensive analysis still highly subjective – ESPN

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Jerry Crasnick

I don’t think the answer goes one way or another. But we’ll have to let time prove that.

The bottom line, and the big picture, should be that these determinations are very specific, and even then may not mean much. That isn’t to say that it doesn’t suck to be categorized, but maybe it does.

You be the judge.

XFL: Xperts Fantasy League Draft Results

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XFL: Xperts Fantasy League

For those of you who follow the league of friends who are mostly in the fantasy baseball business, here is the draft sheet from the 2010 draft (took place in Phoenix on Nov. 6th). The red guys are keeps.

XFLTRACKER2010-1