Rotoman

If you didn’t know, the LABR NL draft is going on right this minute and if you clink .this link you can follow along, sort of.

Alex Patton and I are partners, but because of the memorial for my grandmother I wasn’t able to make it to the draft. Alex appears to be putting together the oldest team in the world right now. The good part of that is that we have Randy Johnson and Barry Bonds. The bad news is that we have Eric Karros and Vinny Castilla.

Alex did get me Preston Wilson, for $28, which is more than you want to pay for him, but not a bad deal at all.

At 9PM EST there will be a running commentary, which may make it a little more exciting to follow along. I have a party to go to, so I’ll probably check back in to discover that we also have Jesse Orsoco, Mike Morgan, Mark Grace and Jay Bell. Heck, maybe we’ll get Matt Williams, too. If it worked for the D’backs it can work for rototouts.com. Can’t it?

If you want to check out who got who for what in the AL go to the AL Roster page. Pedro went for $34. So did Ichiro. I’d love to have them both for $35, but then that’s LADR (League of Alterntative Drafting Reality).

I’m off on family business for the weekend, but we’ll be caught up on Monday. Please pardon my absence.

Detroit Tigers News

Catcher: For now, Brandon Inge with Javier Cardona backing up. If Mitch Meluskey can throw (he’s working on it) he will be the full-timer, with Inge the backup. Meluskey can hit. Inge might hit enough not to hurt you.

First Base: Right now, Dmitri Young is the man, with Randall Simon the backup.

Second Base: Damion Easley, spotted by Jose Macias.

Shortstop: Right now, Shane Halter tops the depth chart. The Tigers will probably make a move. Omar Infante is a young defensive player who might get called up but will not hit enough to be worth considering.

Third Base: Right now it’s all Craig Paquette, but expect to see Jarrod Patterson there, too, until Dean Palmer is able to make the throws.

Left Field: Bobby Higginson.

Center Field: Jose Macias most of the time, Wendell Magee sometimes. At least for a while. It is probable that Macias won’t hit enough, in which case the Tigers could try to put Higginson in center, Young in left, Fick in Right, Simon at first. You get the picture.

Right Field: Robert Fick for the time being, but he blew two plays in the Tigers’ first exhibition game. His D could play him into some DH/1B work, or much reduced playing time. Like Macias, he’s a starter right now but that could change in a hurry.

DH: Palmer for now, but if he can play third base there will be a lot of rotating going on.

Starting Pitchers: Jeff Weaver, Jose Lima, Steve Sparks, Nate Cornejo. The fifth spot is open right now. Brian Moehler isn’t expected back until mid-season. Adam Pettyjohn is feeled by a serious case of colitis. Heath Murray is not very good. Victor Santos needs more seasoning.

Closer: Matt Anderson, with a new wicked slider. If he can throw strikes he’ll be very good.

In Waiting: Danny Patterson, Adam Bernero. The latter was a starter in the minors, but he’s coming off an awful year.

Hi, I’m having trouble deciding how to spread out my auction $$$. I’m in a
5×5 mixed league with 12 teams with a $280 cap & 25 man roster.

I also like the idea of drafting studs from weak positions. I’d like to land Piazza and A-Rod. My questions is, Is it wise to go after two expensive players and have not much $$ left for the rest of the team. What’s a good balance? How many $1 players should I have?

There are a few different approaches to this issue and I’ve heard and made all the arguments at one time or another. And while it would be comforting if there were one right answer, there certainly isn’t. So here are the basics:

The object is to get the most production for your $280. To do that you want to get the players least valued by the other owners who produce outsized amounts.

Alex Patton has done studies of who earns what in any given year. You can find the articles, which originally appeared at Baseball HQ, on our sister site, RotoTouts. Alex repeatedly find that there is no sweet spot, that in any given year the more expensive players or the least expensive players might produce the most profits. Some years the profits are distributed across the board.

Which means, I’d say, that the best approach is to figure out how your opponents are playing and zig when they zag.

The point is, if they’re playing a lot for the big stars, let them. But if they’re not paying the projected amounts, go for the stars.

If you end up with a lot of expensive players, don’t be afraid to carry a few $1 players into the season. But if you blanche at the prices being paid for the stars, be patient. Eventually you’ll have more money than anyone else and can load up on a whole roster of mid-level players who will get you loads of at bats and production.

The final point is: Keep your options open. It’s fine to target players at particular prices, but if you start overpaying for players because you want them, unless all your speculations turn out, you’re going to overpay for them. And that’s exactly what you don’t want.

I play in a 10 team, 5X5 roto league, during the auction, should I bid higher for Byung Hyun Kim or Matt Mantei (who do you think is going to be the closer in Arizona?)

Right now Mantei is throwing well and apparently without problem, but it is still a long slow rehab he has to get through before he’ll rejoin the big club for real games. Projections right now are for a May return, until which time Kim is the closer.

If your 10 team league is an NL only league, I think modest bets on both Kim and Mantei are in order. If Mantei is truly healthy he will reclaim the job from Kim, but he has quite a few hoops to jump through before that happens. Meanwhile, Kim is great when he’s on, and not very good at all when he isn’t. It is possible Mantei could not make it back and Kim wouldn’t hold the closer job.

How much to bid on Kim? Maybe $8 or $10 if you want to play it safe. Will someone bid higher? Almost certainly. But that’s okay. This is a very unsettled situation and throwing money at it isn’t going to solve it. Mantei should cost even less.

In a 10 team mixed league I don’t think you should pay more than a buck or two for either of them. Relievers in 5×5 are of limited value.

1) What do you think about drafting “Push Year” players?
2) What do you think about avoiding “short arm pitchers” ie Ken Hill, Pat
Hentgen or Randy Wolf?
3) Do you look at the mix of pitches used by pitchers?
4) How can a person spot from a pitchers statistics if he was “wild over the plate”?
5) What do you think about forecasting based on a player’s personal goal?
Example Clemens wants 300 wins and will get enough this year to make his goal.
Also Eric Young said he wants to break the Brewer record for steals of 54.

Let me know please.

You ask a lot of questions:

1) In some cases you might get an edge. Most of the time not.

2) I think it’s a good idea to avoid Ken Hill forever and Pat Hentgen for this year at least, but I’d recommend Wolf, without going overboard on him. Are you asking whether shortarmers develop arm problems? I’ve not seen a systematic survey and I’m not sure it matters. They do what they have to do to do well. We can capitalize on it before they break down, if they do break down more.

3) Does a pitcher throw hard? Or does a pitcher get by on craftiness? I think these issues matter, but mostly I think if a pitcher throws strikes and gets strikeouts, what type of stuff he throws isn’t that important.

4) Wild over the plate is one of those expressions that doesn’t really describe all that much, or rather, doesn’t mean anything specific.

5) Players often have goals, don’t usually talk about them and while they sometimes achieve them they also sometimes fail to achieve them. If the goal makes sense, if it seems plausible, it can’t hurt to add that info to the mix. But an awful lot of things are out of a player’s control, so I wouldn’t make major decisions based on this sort of information.

6) Players come with price tags attached, which in theory should equalize them. The best players to get are the ones who produce more value than they cost to acquire. Some of these will be established players, some will be sleepers. If there were a trend the prices would change and eliminate the discrepancies.

7) When trying to figure out whether a pitcher will get better or worse I look at the defense he’ll be playing in front of and whether it will be better or worse. Range factor is a tool for measuring defense, but extremely team dependant. Zone rating isn’t team dependent but it’s subjective. I’m looking forward to learning about Bill James’ defensive ratings in Win Shares. I suspect that if we find a way to measure defense effectively we’ll discover that a lot of what we attribute to pitchers is really the defense.

8) Old players skills? I’m not sure which those are.

9) I’m sure there is some impact of a player’s personality upon umpires, for better or worse. Because there are so many umpires I doubt that the impact is huge, and it’s probably impossible to measure, but it would seem insanely naive to think that umpires aren’t influenced to some extent.

Now you know.

Fantasy Baseball: Baseball Shrink (02/27/02)

The train is leaving the station. Everyone is dumping on closers, including me. Which means it may be time to think about closers again.

My advice has been, in many situations, to dump closers. Don’t go after them. Don’t pay more than $2 for closers in waiting. Try to get lucky, don’t try to make your own luck.

But if more owners than not in your league are on that train and the prices of closers drop, your advantage is to be found in picking them up. Yes, it is the ol’ zig and zag theory, and it is irrefutable in a gambling game where the biggest edge is to be found in acquiring bargain priced players.

Saves is a category. There are points to be gained there. When saves are expensive it’s a good idea to look elsewhere, but if saves get cheaper you’d better start collecting them, or someone else will.

I read your last set of questions and answers (at mlb.com) and it raised another
question I have for you. You said in 4×4 (nl only) that it is smart to
have as few starters as possible, but in a 5×5 league you would fill your
staff with starters. I am in a 5×5 league with 13 teams with $260 to spend
and have Jose. Mesa ($11) going into the draft. I was thinking about filling
the rest of my staff with low dollar guys, possibly 5 starters and 3 middle
relievers that have a chance to get a few saves here and there. I feel I
can finish in the middle of the pack in saves (7 points), toward the top in
era and ratio (11 points each), and possibly pull about 4 points each for
strikeouts and wins. That would give me about 37 points for pitching. I
am only planning on spending about $70 on pitching and $190 on hitting.
Hopefully spending that much on hitting will put me in the top 5 in every
hitting category and give me a total of about 50 points. Do you think I
would need more starters to compete or do you think I might have a shot
with this strategy?

The point I was making in the article at mlb.com about 5×5 and starters is that the closest correlation between strikeouts and more strikeouts is innings and more innings. While there are some exceptions, if you want to avoid high priced pitchers in 5×5, to compete in strikeouts you’re going to have to accumulate innings pitched.

Meanwhile, good qualitative middle relievers, who are quite valuable in 4×4, don’t usually contribute much of anything in 5×5 because they don’t pitch enough innings. Again, there are exceptions, but I don’t think it’s a good idea build a 5×5 strategy around middle relievers.

Get all the starters you can. Look for guys who had good ERA and WHIP but bad results last year, or guys with good K/BB and HR/9 ratios. Don’t be afraid of third or fourth starters, if they’re underlying skills are sound. There is safety in numbers and you want to throw as much pitching stuff at the wall as you can, then collect the good stuff that sticks. Pardon my bowdlerization.

The goal, I think, has to be to finish in the middle in saves if possible, high in wins and strikeouts, while maintaining a middle of the pack rank in the qualitatives. That should give you 35-40 pitching points while spending less than $70 on pitching.

Obviously this strategy isn’t going to work for everyone if everyone tries it, but I don’t think there’s another approach that better deals with the problems 5×5 play raises.

Inge will catch against collegians – 02/27/02

I’m working on the Team by Teams, which will start appearing on Friday, and came upon this story which says that the Tigers are essentially whole.

Right.

This team is a house of cards, built on a such bizarre premises that it’s hard to imagine how they might best be sorted out. The bottom line is the team doesn’t really have a centerfielder, right fielder, third baseman, shortstop or catcher.

But Dmitri Young qualifies at first, third and outfield.

I am in a AL only league that is 4X4 where we only allowed to keep 3 hitters and 2 pitchers. I have my hitters all set, however I am having problems with my pitchers, which 2 should I keep? $1 Paul Abbott, $33 Tim Hudson, $5 Cory Lidle, $30 Mariano Rivera, $3 Jarrod Washburn, $8 Joe Mays or $5 Joel Pineiro…Can you see my dilemma?

What is more important is can I see my way out of your dilemma. I think so…

You don’t say what sort of inflation you expect in your auction. No matter what I’d take Rivera, who is undervalued and is beaucoup productive.

If your inflation rate is low, say less than 15 percent, I’d take Mays, whose effectiveness I don’t trust but who earned $30 last year. He’s going to cost $15 at least this year. If he gets off to any kind of start at all you should be able to deal him for something real. Or maybe find out he is for real.

If your inflation rate is high, say more than 25 percent, I’d take Hudson, who is an ace and fairly valued at $33 and clearly undervalued if inflation is running high.

If inflation is between 15 and 25 percent, it’s a close call. I’d lean toward Hudson but I’d keep an eye on his ankle. If there are any doubts about him being ready by mid April, it’s best to avoid the large investment and go with Mays.

The other guys are all well-priced and worth having, but none is the type of sure thing you’d like to get with your keeps, which means one or the other should be available in the auction at a discount compared to Mays and Hudson.