Drafts

In The News: Lord Zola Proclaims 2-20-14

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Todd Zola and I were members of the alt.rec.fantasy.baseball usenet group back when George Clinton was president. We knew what was coming.

And now, today, umpteen years later, we both published charts linking draft order to auction prices, which seems to be the new orange. Make of it what you will.

I think Todd’s story does a fine job pointing out that using ADP for your mixed draft analysis is not enough. And I’m happy to embrace Todd’s perfectly independently concluded idea that draft value is akin to auction value.

FWIW Todd and I are talking about sharing data and working on some new ideas, too.

ASK ROTOMAN: Calculating Inflation

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Rotoman,

Years ago The Fantasy Baseball Guide had a section where there was a formula for inflation in keeper leagues. I think maybe the article was from maybe seven to nine years ago? It may have been even 10 years ago. Would it be possible to have that formula again?

Thanks in advance,
Charles

Dear Charles:

To calculate inflation:

Subtract the bid prices of the frozen players from your total league budget. That leaves you with how much money will be available to spend in your auction.

Subtract the projected value of the frozen players from the total league budget. That leaves you with how much talent will be available to spend in your auction.

For instance, in a 12 team league the total budget is $3120. Let’s say the price of all the kept players is $500. Your league will have $2620 to spend.

If the projected value of the frozen players is $1000, your league will be chasing $2120 worth of talent with $2620 of money. Divide the talent into the money and you discover that your inflation rate is 24 percent.

Note that the inflation is usually not distributed evenly in the auction. You should allocate the $500 inflated dollars to players you want (being realistic about what other players might go for and distributing inflation to them, too). The danger is backing off the best players because their price is 24 percent over the “book” value, letting them go at par, and then getting stuck spending your inflated dollars in the endgame so you don’t leave money on the table.

Largely,
Rotoman

Measuring Up to the Rules: Mea Culpa

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“A rule is a rule.” –Common Sense

“It’s not a rule if you can’t break it.” –Schoolyard Sense

“Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.” –Henry David Thoreau

Fantasy baseball is a game, and games have rules. Rules are the way we limit behavior in the game play, to shape the competition in some foreordained way that makes the game fair. And fun. The funny thing is that not everyone agrees on what the rules mean, or when the rules should be followed, or when common sense says a rule should be ignored. Sorting out these ambiguities can be a pain, but they’re also part of the game. A good constitution can help settle most disputes, but you’ll be surprised how often your rules will be subverted by good intentions and misunderstandings.

Some examples of the rules coming into play from some recent drafts I was involved in.

1. Tout Wars AL

I was running the live blog of the Tout Wars AL auction, which at this point in the story was into the endgame. An owner nominated: “Peacock, ah, $3.” There was a titter.

Almost immediately the nominating owner said: “Oops. I mean Trout. (laughter). Um, 3.”

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Tout Wars NL Draft: The Askrotoman Team

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Ah, the best laid plans.

I really thought I had a shot at buying the team. No problem on Posey, Aramis Ramirez, Stephen Strasburg and the young and blooming starting pitchers, but either I didn’t play the auction right on Ian Stewart, Aaron Hill, Willie Bloomquist, and Jordan Schafer, or the dynamics of this particular auction doomed me.

What I know for sure is that Nate Ravitz spent a lot of money early and then repeatedly tried to pick off guys off the lower auction tiers by surprise, and thus I lost Jesus Guzman.

I thought I had Loney at my price for him, but then Phil Hertz blurted $17 and I let him go. Phil didn’t love the purchase. I would have been happy at $16.

And that was the point of this exercise. To try to identify soft spots and get players who play at prices below par. The problem was that I lost Hunter Pence to Lenny Melnick, who adopted a My Guys at Any Price approach. So I ended up with Drew Stubbs and Jason Heyward rather than Pence and Jose Tabata.

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Getting Ready for Tout Wars: What I’m Going to Do.

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I am participating in Tout Wars NL auction this Sunday. I think it’s my 13th NL draft and I’m sorry to say that I’ve never won. I’ve finished second once, fourth once and fifth five times. I’ve had a few very bad years, too, usually because of injuries, though it is fair to say that the good years were at least in part because of lack of injuries.

Tout Wars drafts are the toughest. The pace is unrelenting. Keeping up on the live blog, which you’ll find during the auctions on Saturday and Sunday at toutwars.com, is tough. But the pace actually makes the auction fun. It is go, go, go, time only for action, when your moment comes. And then you are brushed aside, like a newspaper in a strong wind, and the room is onto something new, and maybe you are, too.

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LABR Results

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The AL spreadsheet is here. The NL spreadsheet is here.

Chatter about both over at pattonandco.com.

There is a new special edition of the Patton $ Online with Rotoman’s projections in the works at software.askrotoman.com. It will include full results from the CBS Sports Experts 5×5 AL and NL drafts, and full results from LABR AL and NL drafts, as well as bid prices from me, Alex Patton and Mike Fenger. I’ll post a notice here and at the software site when it’s posted.

RotoWire magazine mock–sneak preview

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I was invited to participate in a 15 round NFBC style mock draft. I had the 10th pick and took Carlos Gonzalez (over Adrian Gonzalez and Robinson Cano). I share my whole team over at pattonandco.com, in the Carlos Gonzalez comment. But here is a taste of the endgame (last 10 rounds)…

14) Justin Masterson–Like this.
15) Lonnie Chisenhall–I’ve never been that sold on this guy, but he was a funner pick than Danny Valencia.
16) Ryan Doumit–Yes, two Twins catchers in 16 rounds.
17) Johnny Giavotella–A bit of a risk but the alternative was Maicer Izturis, no knock on him.
18) Dayan Viciedo–A young star or a wipeout, it’s hard to tell. My other needs were pitchers, and it seemed like there were a bunch of similar ones.
19) Edwin Jackson–Veteran stability in the clubhouse.
20) Dan Bard–I certainly don’t know if that’s a good pick.
21) Phil Hughes–I think this is a very reasonable bet.
22) Francisco Liriano–Same here.
23) Gerardo Parra–With the Kubel signing maybe Parra’s PT is endangered, but that’s crazy. Parra is a great defender and produced with the bat and feet last year. Push him aside for a star, but for Jason Kubel? I have no idea about the D’backs’ plans.

It’s a fun group. The magazine comes out in the middle of February.
I really like my team, blah blah blah.

LABR AL results are out!

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A paper in Tucson, I assume a Gannet paper, has posted the LABR AL results.

The list is here.

A quick perusal reveals that Tom Trudeau, from Bloomberg News, appears to have overpaid for nearly every dude on his team. Oh, you can argue a few cases, but my prediction is that this is a last place team, unless the thousands of Saves points saves him.

The Accuracy of Projections–the hitting optimizer

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I participated in my first auction last night, the Cardrunners League, and because we’re using CBSsports.com to run the league, you can easily get a chart with the projected stats for each team. I did that and learned that according to the CBS projections my hitting is mediocre (uh-oh, and they’re not as negative on Grady Sizemore as they probably should be) and my pitching is pretty good. Overall, it looks like 75 points or so for my team, which I’ll take.

But then I found on the CBSsports.com site, a story by Al Melchior and a widget that lets you graphically compare the CBSsports projections and the Accuscore projections. The differences are striking, and a good reminder that projections give you a very limited amount of information.

You can find out more about my draft at Patton and Co, in the Kevin Gregg discussion.