Rotoman

Fantasy Baseball: Fantasy Baseball ’03 Player Rankings

ESPN.com is touting the new auction prices in their new fantasy guide. I haven’t done the math to see how they add up, but it sure looks like the numbers are too low..

Todd Helton for $29? It’s never going to happen. Jeff Bagwell for $18? No, I don’t think so.

Over the years I’ve worked to come up with the most meaningful preauction prices and I have to admit that there is no perfect system. The auction is a dynamic event and the prices of players change as it goes along, and they are different for each team depending on strategies, smart moves and dumb plays.

If the ESPN numbers add up to the money that will actually be spent in an auction ($3120 in 12 team AL only leagues, $3380 in 13 team NL only leagues), then someone who uses them is going to end up with 23 $13 players. That might not be a bad strategy, but if elite players have prices that will not buy one elite player in any sane auction, the prices aren’t right.

The problem here is that the prices don’t change between the MLB universe list and the NL universe list.

ESPN makes pretty pages and these lists aren’t unhelpful in some ways, but don’t pay much attention to the prices. They’re wrong.

UVA Computer Science: The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia

How many steps to Kevin Bacon from any actor or actress? This web site has the answer. It also has a link to a feature that finds the links between any two actors.

It was written by the guy who wrote the new feature at baseballreference.com that links any two baseball players. It turns out to be just three small steps from Shoeless Joe to Pete Rose.

ESPN.com: MLB – Kieschnick deserves a shot with Brewers

We’ve been writing about Two-way Brooks for a while, and it’s nice to see the story develop legs. What will really play is if BK strikes out some folks during spring training, and even better if he knocks a few out of Peoria.

As I’ve written before, fantasy leagues are going to have to decide whether he qualifies as a hitter or a pitcher. That’s never happened before.

And while we’re on Neyer, I’m hard pressed to see what the issue is here. Clearly using Dunn as the lead off guy is unusual but perfectly legitimate given all that Neyer has written over the past handful of years.

It isn’t that Dunn and his big OBP are ideal for the leadoff slot, but that there is no one better on the Reds for the job. Putting Dunn there rather than the aging Larkin strikes me as creative, or at least not hidebound.

Which is probably why it won’t happen. But it’s refreshing that the right move is being floated as the innovative idea, rather than something irrefutably dumb.

MLB.com Fantasy: Ask Rotoman

I headed north this week to get some snow and missed the big storm, though we’ve seen about a foot of it. I also filed the first Ask Rotoman column of the year at mlb.com.

Postings here, at the discussion board (which I’m afraid has been acting a little funky) and pattonandco.com will be sparse for a few more days.

But I’ll be back.

ESPN.com – MLB – MLB Transactions

The link is to the transactions page at espn.com, where I notice that Sid Thrift has landed another job. If memory serves Sid has spent much of the last decade wrecking the Pirates and Orioles. He must be a heck of a guy to keep getting jobs.

And now, no worries. There’s no way anybody can wreck the Devil Rays more than they already are.

ESPN.com: MLB – Done deal: Millar officially joins Red Sox

Okay, the deal is finally done. Now what?

I sure don’t know. Essentially, Millar, Giambi, Ortiz, Hillenbrand and Mueller are going to split 3B, 1B and DH. But since Millar and Giambi don’t show any platoon disadadvantage, it looks like there are two too many players.

I’m willing to bet Hillenbrand and Ortiz end up elsewhere, unless Giambi ticks off his new bosses. For now, assume everyone is going to get about the same playing time they got last year. They just won’t all do it for Boston.

Trace Woods: Is Barry Bonds for Real?

Trace Woods does a lot of legwork, ostensibly trying to determine whether Barry’s two year jag in his late thirties has any precedent, and whether it is caused by his use of performance enhancing drugs.

He makes two errors, I think.

Bonds hasn’t missed more games the last two years than he did in the years before that. Looking at plate appearances rather than Games Played makes that clear.

He should have used SLG to show how much better Bonds has been the last two years, rather than OPS, if the bulk of the performance enhancing drugs argument hinges on strength. Bonds’ OBP has gone up just as much these two years as his SLG has.

These weaknesses notwithstanding, Trace makes the case in a way that forces one to confront the issue. Alas, he doesn’t clean up the mess that confrontation creates, but maybe he’ll do that another time.

2003 First Pitch Forums

At the end of this month I’m making appearances at two of Ron Shandler’s First Pitch Forums, in New Jersey and Long Island. I’m supposed to make a 20-minute talk about something roto related and I’ve come up with a concept:

Rotoman’s Top 10 Most Misunderstood Fantasy Baseball Concepts

The idea is to count down quickly, David Letterman style, shouting out the misunderstood concept, why it’s misunderstood and offering an idea that makes better sense.

I have twenty minutes to speak, so this isn’t a heavy talk but rather a fun way to cover a lot of ground. I hope.

Here are the questions:

Interesting idea?

What concepts to you think are misunderstood, or you misunderstand?

Is there another topic you’d rather hear about?

I appreciate any thoughts you might have about this. Write to me at peter@askrotoman.com.

BTW, I need to nail this down by noon on Wednesday.

Fantasy Baseball: Fantasy Baseball ’01 Stadium Stats

Now that the Stats Red Book is no more, established ways of finding important information have to be reprogrammed.

Today, when I saw that Rick Helling had been signed by the Orioles, I was curious what difference the new ballpark might make for him. While I’m sure somewhere out there someone has complete park effects, I don’t know where that is.

So for now, I turn to this page at ESPN.com, which gives you some tools for evaluating the differences between parks. Not as many as the red book, mind you, but enough to let me feel comfortable saying that Helling isn’t going to get killed this year because of the change.

The American Book Center

The other day a longtime reader now living in the Netherlands asked if the magazine was available online. It isn’t, because shipping costs either raise the price too much or eat away any profits. But I offered to send him a copy if he’d pay the hefty freight overseas. Instead, I heard back this morning:

Peter:

Bo

I think it’s very cool to be found on the rack in Amsterdam. I’m wondering if the regular Rotoman readers in Kazakhstan, Vietnam and the Phillipines (or other points abroad) have had similar luck.