Answers to fantasy baseball questions (and much more) since 1996
Questions and answers
Major League Baseball : Fantasy : Fantasy
I’ve been traveling some of Appalachia’s blue highways this week, which has brought the blog to a complete stop, though Ask Rotoman appeared Wednesday as usual. Will Travis Hafner sit again during interleague play? How much difference does it make having Roy Oswalt rather than Mark Buehrle? How do you sort our oddball categories and pick players who suit them? Clemens? Podsednick? Betemit?
I didn’t anticipate that with Ian Kinsler going down with a bum finger that Gary Matthews would be called up right away. Knowing what I know now, especially given Matthews’ three-run triple tonight, take him over the recommended Kevin Millar. . . Wait! I recommended Millar instead of Matthews and Millar hit two homers, drove in four runs. Sweet! As usual, you should sort it all out for your league.
Elsewhere in this week’s model, frank discussion about Jeff Francoeur, the breakout (break down?) of a trade of big players (for educational purposes only), and some chatter about some Hots and Nots.
Be there! As some of us used to say in college.
Major League Baseball : Finding Future Fire
Looking for consistent cheap pitchers. Right! Impatient with Chris Reitsma. Right! The undrafted who may just make some heat this summer. Yes! Plus Julio Lugo, David Dellucci, and—for the impatient—Derek Lowe.
Boston Red Sox : Player Information
A reader wrote to point out that Mike Lowell, who is generally thought of as a third baseman, played nine games at 2B last year, and so qualifies there in some leagues. Lowell’s 2005 campaign was so woeful that there are surely some who would prefer Hector Luna at second, but Lowell’s past is distinguished enough that he has to be considered a pretty good buy-low candidate this spring.
BTW, he seems to be doing just fine this spring after a slow start, though he’s hit just one homer.
Curtis Granderson or Rocco Baldelli? A third-eye look at Ryan Zimmerman and Edwin Encarnacion. First basemen and outfielders who may qualify somewhere special. And a two-league position by position survey of some deep and shallow sleepers. Sweet dreams.
Major League Baseball : Fantasy : Fantasy
Dear Rotoman:
While I have a great deal of respect for anyone that
compiles as much data for baseball fans and fantasy
addicts as you, I did want to point out some major
flaws with your projections for 2006 regarding
pitchers’ statistics. I am assuming you use some sort
of stat compiler or program you invented to project
season statistics. Of the pitchers you estimated
statistics for, you’ve projected only eight MLB
pitchers totaling 14 wins or more in 2006. Was this an
oversight? Colon finishes with 16, Oswalt and Santana
with 15 each, and Suppan, Sabathia, Lee, Prior and
Halladay with 14. I understand that its difficult to
pay individual attention to each pitcher, but there
must be a way to plug in the frequency of 20-game
winners, 19-game winners, 18-game winners, etc., into
whatever formula you are using to project stats. It’s
unrealistic to project such marginal stat lines, and
its a disservice to your fans to kick out these
figures like a robot, especially if you were being
intentionally conservative. SOMEBODY in the majors is
going to win at least 17 games. I’m willing to bet my
life savings on it. Wouldn’t you?“Go for Broke”
Dear Go:
Absolutely, someone will win 18 games this year, but what good does it do to project the wrong guy to win 20 or 19 or 18 games?
It’s fun to model the whole year so it looks like the whole year (with 20 game winners and guys with 50+ homers) but it also means being wrong more often and by a larger amount, which doesn’t do anyone playing our game much good.
My projections are based on regressions of historical data modified by a few factors, the biggest one being age, combined with a different set of rate calculations, all of which are combined with a mechanical estimate of times at bat. I then go in and adjust based on probably changes in playing time and assessments of talent that don’t seem to be reflected in the projection. I call this tweaking, and it makes the boring regressions a little more lively and the overall correlation of the projections a good bit higher.
Then I scale everything so that the top 400 players projections are similar in total to the top 400 players actual stats. But the extremes in each stat just aren’t there, because the leaders in all categories usually change from year to year.
Thanks for writing,
Rotoman
Ps. I would not bet my life savings on the accumulation of any counting stat in a year when the Basic Agreement between the players and owners expires.
Rotoman!
You also have the MLB HR leader with 39 home runs.
When was the last time NOBODY hit 40 home runs?“GFB”
Dear Go:
One of the byproducts of the system is that the AB of regular players are reduced about 10 percent off their usual peaks, with a similar reduction in the other stats. So all the guys who would project to 43 homers end up at 39 or 38.
The reason the AB get reduced is because about 10 percent of expected AB from year to year are lost to injury or other problems. This doesn’t happen evenly, but it happens consistently. There are two ways to handle this. One would be to ignore it and give all players their full measure of AB and stats. The other is to scale the pool of projected stats to the actual stats that will be produced by the pool.
I do the latter, because it gives a more accurate assessment of how groups of players perform on the year. The other looks better when everyone stays healthy, but since they never all do my method measures as more accurate.
Peter
Tout Wars – Battle of the Experts
Tout Wars is big this year, in large part because of Sam Walker’s book Fantasyland. Sam’s outsider caricatures of his Tout Wars opponents seemed to ruffle some feathers, but these birds all liked the attention, which is why the draft was held in a conference room at a Times Square hotel, a huge step away from the year we drafted in Steve Moyer’s baseball shrine of a basement in Pennsylvania.
I drafted in the NL section Sunday, along with reps from Creative Sports, Mock Draft Central, Wise Guy Baseball, TQ Stats, Ultimate Fantasy Sports, Roto Junkie, RotoTimes, FantasyGuru, RotoWorld, BaseballHQ, Rotowire, and Fantasybaseball.com.
The only interesting thing that happened, as far as I’m concerned, is that I spent $11 on Colorado minor league DL candidate Ryan Shealy. This was one of those auction moments. I blame the NL. It’s really a sucky league. I kept not bidding on such talents as Jose Cruz and Jacque Jones beyond their projected value because, well, I really didn’t want those guys.
But there is such pervasive mediocrity in the NL that once you get beyond the top couple of stars at each position, it’s a wide sargasso sea of interchangeable pieces, some of whom are bound to pay off—but how can you tell?
You can’t. The teams that went Stars and Scrubs have an advantage, I think.
You can follow the link to see what we did. But back to Shealy. At the moment Shealy was nominated (by me) Lombardo, Zaleski and I had far more money than any of the other teams, and there wasn’t much talent left. I decided that Shealy, even if he only played a few months, was by far the most differentiated and valuable player. So, I went and got him. I was appalled that Lombardo kept raising me, but at that point in the draft it seemed like the time to commit, or end up with money at the end.
I subsequently got all the players I targetted, so from a strategic point of view I did the right thing. But I’m not sure my judgment that Shealy was the guy I wanted/needed was sound.
Auction is a great way to play this game because it opens up all these various pathways to success and failure. I look at the teams and I think the teams that went Stars and Scrubs (notably John Hoyos’s RotoJunkie squad and Jason Pliml’s Mock Draft Central) did best. That’s because the NL is so devoid of talent.
But if Shealy’s shoulder heals and he gets 350 AB in the OF, or if Helton’s back crumbles and he gets plenty of AB at 1B, I’m not surrendering.
(This story is a warning that expert league drafts are good fun to follow, and may give you an idea of what might happen in your league, but the exigencies of the situation are way more important than anything as pedestrian as projected values. Which is how Hector Luna ended up going for $8. But that’s the same story, just a different verse.)
Major League Baseball : Fantasy : Fantasy
Kotchman or Hillenbrand? I surprise myself with the answer. What affect does platooning in the real game affect the fantasy game, and is there a way the fantasy owner can take advantage? Five hurt pitchers coming back, or are they? And some chatter, too.
MLB.com has been running my player projections for the past five years, usually a set at the end of February and an update just before the start of the season. This year they asked for more categories (doubles, caught stealing, among others) and for a set at the end of January, which I delivered. And then nothing. I was scheduled to deliver an update the first week of March, but in all the busy-ness of things didn’t get to it until last week, when I also finally asked my editor what happened to the first set of projections.
It turns out they’re being used in a game. And now for the first time the MLB.com Rotoman projections are posted at mlb.com, along with bid values for 4×4, 5×5, and mixed leagues. There will be an update March 29, for posterity’s (and late drafters’) sake.
A few years ago a regular scanned all of the non player profile pages of Alex Patton’s roto ouvre. They were posted for a time at rototouts.com, but when I let that site lapse I didn’t get them reposted until this week. They’re classic, funny, smart, sometimes exciting and sometimes aggravating. I can’t think of a better place to get into the murky theoretical issues in fantasy baseball, and haul them out into the daylight. Prosit.