Ask Rotoman

Questions and answers

Ask Rotoman! November 19, 2012

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Rotoman:

Would you take Justin Upton and Miguel Sano for Jason Heyward in a long-term keeper league?

“Odd Future Value”

Dear ODV:

Let’s compare what Upton and Heyward have done when they were the same age:

At 21, Heyward earned $20, while Upton earned $6.

At 22, Heyward earned $7, while upton earned $29.

At 23, Heyward earned $28, while Upton earned $20.

Though their paths were different the results of their performances before they turned 24 years old are roughly similar. In his 24th year Upton earned $35. We have yet to see what will happen to Heyward, but no one would be surprised if he had a big year this year.

So, you’re looking at two young players of comparable talents. Heyward appears to have a little more power, Upton a better chance to hit for average, but when discussing future value here I think it’s fair to say that Upton is a bit more established because he’s been around longer, but that has also served to show some of the flaws in his game. Because Heyward is two years younger I’d give him the edge in a head to head comparison. But there is, of course, another body involved.

Miguel Sano is a young power-hitting prospect for the Twins who spent all of 2012 in Low-A, hitting for power, drawing walks and striking out a ton. He’s considered one of the top hitting prospects in the game, but he has a long way to go before he reaches the major leagues. He isn’t helped by the fact that he’s a third baseman who doesn’t play his position all that well.

I don’t see a huge difference between Heyward and Upton over the next few years, but Heyward’s long-term prospects are better. Sano is considered a top prospect, but he’s likely three years away, and it is prudent to notice the flaws of youngsters playing in Low-A, not because they can’t overcome them, but because they often don’t.

If your league has so many long-term keepers that there is significant value in having guys like Sano to hold onto, trading Heyward for Upton and Sano makes sense. But I think I’d prefer to have Heyward’s career going forward over Upton’s.

Sincerely,
Rotoman

Patton $: March 1st Update is Out!

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Some little fixes have been made to the program, but the big news is the inclusion of CBS Sports Expert League prices for the AL (thus far) in the Lg1 column, and full active 4×4 and 5×5 Patton$ formulas in the excel spreadsheet. When you change a projection the prices will change. It’s hours of good fun and a big help in making lists.

Available now!

Head over to software.askrotoman.com for all the detail and to order yours today.

The Forecasters Challenge 2011: We have a winner!

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Yes, in this quirky little game that Tom Tango has put together over at the ever enjoyable and challenging insidethebook.com blog, Ask Rotoman won the official Best Projections of 2011 competition, edging out the Consensus picks of all 22 forecasters (as well as beating the 21 other forecasters, as well).

You can read Tom’s post about the competition, which is for the most part his way of trying to demonstrate that the value added of a “projection system” over the weighted averages he uses for his Marcel the Monkey projection are slight. There is another side to that story, but we’ll leave that quarrel for another time.

The bottom line is that projections take many forms, for a variety of distinct purposes, and no one has come close to cracking the rather substantial variance in player performance that can only be attributed to luck (or unluck). I make projections for my own use, because I need to know what’s going into them, and I offer them to customers because they ask for them. I hope that’s because they trust that what I’m putting into them is the best stuff we have to work with. This year it turned out that the Challenge agreed, which is nice.

Congratulations to Consensus, RotoWorld and KFFL, each of which won one of the unofficial contests, and to Consensus and RotoWorld, which finished high atop the z-score derived standing for the four combined contests.

Forecasters Challenge

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Tom Tango runs a neat little competition at The Book blog. He’s just published year’s first results for the three unofficial contests and the official one. My projections were in the top quarter in 2009 and are there again this year.

It’s exciting, even if the takeway is that our Consensus picks are better than any individual forecaster’s.

Rob Neyer leaves ESPN

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I started working for ESPN in 1995, when the newly launched ESPN Sportszone paid me for the baseball projections I’d put together for the book, “How to Win at Rotisserie Baseball.” The book wasn’t published that year because the publisher worried that the lockout, which killed the 1994 World Series, would kill the 1995 season. The ESPN Sportszone launched in April, shortly after the players and owners settled, and my projections became the first fantasy content on the fledgling website.

In 1996, ESPN paid me to go to Spring Training and report from the camps of Florida from a fantasy perspective, and somewhere in there Ask Rotoman was born. At some point that year, Rob Neyer became my editor. As he says in the fairwell note he posted on his blog at ESPN this week, he was an improbable fantasy baseball editor, and my recollection is that he pretty much left me alone. Now he’s moved on from ESPN, and good luck to him at what I hope proves to be a lively and successful tenure at SB Nation.

His first week there as National Baseball Editor has been energetic and promising. Rob is one of the most original and vibrant of modern baseball writers of the Internet era ( though not necessarily on the Internet). He’ll have a broader canvas to work on at SB Nation, and a chance to wrest some of the power away from the corporate giants. Go get ’em, Rob, for all of us.

A New Year Resolution

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Ask Rotoman will be active this year, at least until the middle of April. That means Rotoman will be answering questions. So please, send away, to askrotoman at gmail.com. (Please fill in the blanks)

In the meantime, I’ll be uploading the Rotoman archives. Mostly the ESPN stuff. You can still find my work at Baseball Prospectus and MLB.com on their sites.

Thanks for visiting. Have a great new year! And visit us at pattonandco.com, too.
Peter

Blog Advisory!

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I’ve not been posting here much. I have some plans that are having to wait until this year’s Fantasy Football Guide hits the street (or at least goes to the printers sometime in June).

Who would you like to see on the cover? If you can get past the registration process, please vote in the comments. I’m aiming for Brigitte Bardot. Whaddaya think?

I’ve been commenting too much at thtfantasy.com and crfantasybaseball.com in recent weeks, because I think there are really good reasons to challenge the conventional wisdom, but I have to admit that I’ve been frustrated. But the discussion has been intense, weird, and should be of interest to anyone who plays the game. I regret that Robert and Bill aren’t more assertive. When challenged they withdraw rather than discuss, but I think that aligns with their actual position, as smart guys who have figured out where the rest of us were 15  years ago. The issue for all of us since then is how we move the ball forward. I hope they end up contributing to that talk, but in the meantime you have a lot of really good fantasy heads hashing things out at the cardrunners site.

And I haven’t even gotten into the position scarcity issue in deep leagues. There will be less  here at the askrotoman blog, maybe none (as there is every year) until the mag is closed, but I appreciate your visits, and next up is, finally, as far as I’m concerned, Rotoman’s Guide, which will explain it all. Get ready for that. I need your thinking caps.

Cheers,

Peter