Fantasy Sites

Dealing from the basement

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Tout Wars NL-Only League – Joe Sheehan

Somebody has to be in last place, even in an expert league, and the usual reason (in an expert league) is the last place team suffered an inordinate number of injuries. It can be argued that avoiding injuries is a skill, at least sometimes, but most injuries are pretty random. This is especially true in auction leagues, where at least two people agree on each player’s fair (including injury risk) price.

Joe Sheehan’s Tout Wars piece this week (like all of this remarkable series running on Sportsline) describes his measured plan to climb out of the basement. One of his prime motivations, it seems, was to not break the Ask Rotoman record for worst finish in Tout Wars AL!

Reading this, I was stunned. I reeled. I rocked. I’ve had some bad years, but I didn’t know that I held the record for worst finish ever (I’m pretty sure this is in the AL version of the league). Then I remembered: The year was 2000. The draft was in Chicago. I couldn’t attend and I asked a guy who wrote for my magazine that year to represent Ask Rotoman.

Over the years there have been some bad Rotoman teams, and I was responsible for all of them, except that record breaker. For the record.

Fantasy Sports Ventures buys BaseballHQ

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PlayerSearch Blog

Ron Shandler sells BaseballHQ but he’s not going anywhere for four years. This blog post is about what the buying company is up to. Clearly this is all part of the maturation of the fantasy sports business and the maturation of the internet advertising business. Anything that gets us more of Ron researching baseball and writing about it is a good thing. Congratulations to him.

Fantasy Advice From the Front Office to Your Office

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MLB Front Office

These guys sent me an email today and asked me (and I’m sure everyone else they could think of) to write about them. The site is brand new and a little thin. The two big news stories are the launch of the new design, which is more exciting for them than us, and their season preview, which isn’t yet available. It’s also one of those widgeted together CMS jobs, not unattractive (at all) but distractingly overwhelming with information on the front page. And, I would suggest, not terribly helpful steering me toward what I should be reading.

But I looked around some more and found a nice simple story in the articles section about contact rates and batting average that will be very useful if true for fantasy players, and made me want to put together my own study.

There’s also a piece, linked to here, about the very varying ADP for some fellas with similar stats last year. I like this sort of thing and thought it might be of interest for me to post my projections for the five guys (rather than the writer’s use of last year’s stats).

Player A   550   116   45    133   2    .306

Player B   600    91   32   121     5   .323

Player C   550     91  35    110    5    .296

Player D   550    83    33   109   1   .300

Player E   450    89   26     88   5    .321

I think my projections explain why Player E is being drafted 66th (I have him rated a little lower, as the 50th best hitter) this year. He’s old and he’s been hurt recently. But as the writer says in this useful piece, when the perception runs ahead of the player’s decline (one hopes) there’s a chance to find some real value. (Actually, he ends the story with a rather wishy-washy conclusion, which suggests he thinks taking Player E with the 66th pick is pushing it a little, too. Good for him!)

Good luck to MLB Front Office. Or as my intellectual property attorney, Confucius, might say, May the legal team at MLB and MLBAM not hear about their site for a long time.

Decoding the Depth Charts: Red Sox CF

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When Jacoby Ellsbury roared past Coco Crisp as the Red Sox centerfielder in the World Series last year, change seemed inevitable and irreversible. Yet it also didn’t feel quite right. Crisp is a bonafide major leaguer who went cold at the wrong time. Ellsbury may prove to be a star, but he isn’t going to stay as hot as he was during that short stretch.

So, how to project them this spring? I’ve been assuming that Crisp is going to be a regular, with 560 plate appearances projected. But I’ve got Ellsbury projected for 470. If they’re both Red Sox that’s way too many at bats. But if Crisp is traded then it’s probably too few. How do the depth charts show it?

Rotowire has Crisp as the Red Sox starter, and Ellsbury as the reserve at all three OF positions.

BaseballHQ has Crisp down for 85 percent playing time. Ellsbury for 50 percent.

The ever contrarian Rototimes likes Ellsbury as the centerfieler, with Crisp the backup.

Sandlot Shrink goes for Ellsbury as the starter, Crisp as the backup.

ESPN.com likes Crisp as the starter, Ellsbury as the reserve at all three OF positions (which could mean a fair amount of playing time on a team starting the fragile JD Drew and the aging Manny Ramirez).

USA Today likes Ellsbury to start, Crisp to back him up, but Brandon Moss and Bobby Kielty to backup the corners.

The Rotoworld depth chart is identical to the USA Today. I suspect there is a good reason for that.

Sportsline goes with Ellsbury in center as the starter, Crisp as the backup, but Ellsbury as the backup in left field.

Yahoo’s minimalist depth chart features Ellsbury as the starter, Crisp the backup.

I have to say that I’m not swayed. The sites I know are thoughtful agree with me (Crisp the starter, Ellsbury the backup) and really the only argument I see for Ellsbury being the starter is if Crisp is traded.

Given the potential injuries to JD Drew and Manny Ramirez, and the reasonable chance that Crisp will be dealt, I’m going to stand pat for now. I’ve got too many AB in the Red Sox OF, but not too too many. For now it makes more sense to stick with the talent, and let the roles (and all important injuries) work themselves out.

The most important thing is that Crisp may be a bargain based on the feeling he’s lost the job and the chance he’ll be traded (and being hurt during spring training hasn’t helped him, for sure), and Ellsbury may be overpriced because he looks like a phenom speedster. That may be a good reason to invest in a cheap Crisp.

The 3 Stages of Rotisserie Grief

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BBTF’s Primate Studies Discussion :: Eugene Freedman

It sounds like this is Eugene’s first fantasy baseball article. He does a good job of explaining Patton’s roto stages and teases his next story, but things really take off when the discussion starts. There are no answers here, but it’s good to hear the chatter.

One suggestion: Do what you like. I’ve never played in a league with holds. Changing BA to OBP is the best move any league can make.

Patton & Co. is Free

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Patton & Co.

Sign ups have been slow and we don’t know why. If you haven’t signed up please let me know your thoughts. If you tried it out and stopped using it I’d like to know why, too. I’m constantly impressed when I get over there about the information on players, so I feel like the product has a use, especially since the level of postings has been really good.

Now, there will be no pay mode until well after the season starts (and I personally think the model works better with no pay mode at all, at least for the comment database, so I’m arguing for that).

So please check it out if you haven’t, and let me know what your problems are if you have and stopped. Write to askrotoman(at)gmail.com.

Thanks.

FANTASYLAND documentary film

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MLB Radio Fans Forum

We’re a fan of Sam Walker’s Fantasyland, about his year trying to beat the so-called experts in Tout Wars American League experts league, and so we can’t help but be a fan of the attempt of some filmmakers to recreate the magic in Fantasyland: the Documentary.

The link here is to a posting asking for those who might be interested in being the guy to walk in Sam’s shoes this year to respond. I can think of countless not-yet experts who can do the job. Whether or not that’s going to make a good movie is tough to say, but good luck out there.

Play Like the Pros: And in the end… – Fantasy Baseball

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ESPN

One of the roto writing highlights this year was Nando DiFino’s Play Like the Pros column at ESPN. Given the task of covering the stultifying business of expert league waiver claims he found wit and insight by the barrelfuls. The season’s last entry is a compilation of what the rest of us had to say about our mostly miserable seasons.  Not as witty or insightful perhaps, but a measure of what some of us think made or broke our teams this year.