Fantasy Sites

Baseball Prospectus Goodie

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Jim Baker’s Column

I stopped my BP subscription a year or so ago, not because I didn’t enjoy the writing of many of the BP guys, and didn’t value their observations, but because it was all getting a little familiar. For free, I’d attend every day, but having to pay made it a little easy to stay away.

I’ve been surprised how few times I’ve felt like I was missing something since. I still read the newsletter and the beginnings of the stories, and I’m still awfully impressed by a lot of the work that goes on at BP, but I end up feeling like I’m already on their page, I don’t need to be hectored about this and that.

But the lede to this story is choice. Or as my friend Fleming Meeks has said, cherce. Jim Baker discovers an orphaned pool of BP stats about teams and their rate of being shut out. What I learned is that the 1981 Blue Jays were shut out 20 percent of the time.

These days that seems pretty much impossible, but things in baseball change. 1981 was the dawn of Rotisserie baseball and baseball’s age of statistics. I have no other point than at this moment I wish I could read the rest of Jim’s story.

Straight Draft Post Mortem

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Baseball HQ

The link is going to take you to a page that requires a subscription of some sort to baseballHQ.com. I’m going to tell you what Ray Murphy’s straight draft research tells me that’s of interest to all of us: Fantasy teams that finished higher, on average, than other teams in the National Fantasy Baseball Championships had younger players than teams that finished lower. They also had players who had lower reliability scores (Shandler’s system) than other teams.

I’m fairly confident that the whole idea of reliability scores is a crock. Well, not in intent, but as a measurement. Manny Ramirez earns $31-$33 every year, until we decide that’s a reliable benchmark, and then he doesn’t. The problem with all ballplayers is that by the time they can be judged reliable, they’re old enough to become unreliable.

Ray’s conclusion is right, however. You need to stock up on the reliable players, and then take chances when the choice is between a reliable mediocrity and anybody else whose pulse might beat proudly.

I know, you knew that, but seeing the excellent numbers the NFBC throws off really helps. Which is a good reason to become a baseballHQ.com subscriber. For smart fantasy baseball analysis (and lots of it) there’s no better site.

Judge: Fantasy leagues allowed to use MLB player names, stats – MLB – Yahoo! Sports

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MLB – Yahoo! Sports

My opinion is that this will was the rational conclusion, and it will also prove to be the best one for the fantasy sports business and the leagues, too. MLB has plenty to sell beyond the stats and names, and they will benefit because the grass roots development of leagues and games won’t be squelched before they start.

Should be: The Indispensible Baseball Musings

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Baseball Musings


DAVID PINTO WROTE: “Update: Jason Marquis is allowed to take a beating for the second time this year. He gives up two hits in the sixth before he comes out of the game. Just to finish his night off, the bullpen allows the runner they inherited from Jason to score. He’s charged with 12 runs. He allowed 14 against the White Sox earlier this season. Almost 30% of the runs Marquis allowed this year came in those two games.”

Pinto has created a baseball news site with fantasy relevance, excellent data tools, and it’s all free. Unless you do the right thing and pony up some cash, if you feel the way I do. I sent money last year and I’m not bragging, it wasn’t really enough. So I’m sending more this year.

Highly recommended.

As for Marquis, he’s killing me. Or Tony LaRussa is. I’d been riding the matchups the last couple of weeks (since the last time he was left in to take a beating) and it’s worked out well, so I didn’t see the spot to dump him. Mercy.

RotoRob

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A New Baseball (and other sports, too) blog.

Rob Blackstien has been writing and editing the Fantasy Baseball and Football Guides for a couple of years now, so I wasn’t surprised how well written and good looking his new site is. I’ve been travelling and I’ve also been surprised how often I’ve checked in just to get Rob’s take on the latest stories. Check it out, click some links, buy some stuff, and if you like Rotorob like I do, support a good writer who loves (and plays) baseball.

Midseason Fantasy Prices

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MLB.com Fantasy

As usual, my midseason fantasy prices (single and mixed leagues) are up at mlb.com. Even if you don’t play by the exact rules you can make use of them by comparing the preseason prices (guesses) and the actual thing. Most surprising to me is just how valueless Dontrelle Willis’s season has been so far, but pitching prices swing wildly when they run hot or cold.

Taking One for the Team

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MLB – St. Louis Cardinals/Chicago White Sox Box Score Wednesday June 21, 2006 – Yahoo! Sports

That’s what Jason Marquis is doing tonight, dragging down my Tout Wars NL pitching staff, which went into tonight with the second best ERA and Ratio in the league. Amazingly, after 12 runs in four innings I’ve still got 12 points in both categories, though the margin of error is significantly smaller now.

WasWatching.com:

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It’s A-Rod Season!

Presents evidence that A-Rod is having a really crumby season when the Yankees are trailing by one or two runs, but it’s only 54 plate appearances. Everybody seems to have an opinion about whether A-Rod is always so bad in the clutch (though it should be noted, as the writer here does, that A-Rod has four hits after the seventh inning that put the Yankees ahead, while Justin Morneau leads the league with five).

Last year A-Rod had a couple of game score situations in which he didn’t hit nearly as well as in all other situations. One of them was down by two runs, but the other was up by two runs. He had a 1.096 OPS when down by one run.

In 2004 he was incredible in down by one run (1.416 OPS), fair when down by two runs (.910 OPS), sucked when down by three or up by two (.701/.556) and not so hot when the team was up by five runs (.724).

My conclusion? I love baseballmusings.com and David Pinto’s amazing database. Unconvincing attempts to impugn A-Rod’s clutchiness? Not so much.

Baseball Buzz Bot!

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Ballbug

I don’t think I’ve given proper respect to Ballbug, an excellent news feed aggregator. Ballbug collects the big baseball stories of the day from the mainstream media, and augments them with a healthy collection of related blog entries. It sometimes takes a little longer than I would like for the latest news to cycle to the top of the page during the day, at least sometimes, but it’s a great place to start your daily baseball reading. Highly recommended.

David Appelman: Pujols’ hot spots

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SI.com – MLB  Wednesday May 17, 2006 12:26PM

When I was a boy perhaps the most influential thing I read was the issue of Sports Illustrated excerpting Ted Williams’ book about hitting, Science of Hitting. Most notably, a chart that showed his batting average when the ball was thrown in each spot in the strike zone and out.

I’m a little embarrassed now that I have no idea how the data for that chart was compiled and whether it was even real. Collecting such data in the early 60s was a lot harder than it is today. David Appelman is one of a growing number of baseball analysts who are drawing on the ever expanding trove of data Baseball Info Solutions has been collecting, and his Fangraphs.com site has been linked to here before.

These hitter charts are of interest, of course, but it seems to me that they tell the wrong half of the story. Player performance isn’t a constant, and wouldn’t it be really interesting to be able to see the distribution of pitches when Adrian Beltre was going bad and compare it to when he was going good?

The other thing that should be noted is that BIS derives most if not all of it’s data off of television broadcasts. While I trust that a reporter’s mark showing where the ball crossed the plate will be sort of accurate (and I believe the company employs multiple reporters for each game), there are plenty of reasons to suspect that they won’t be pinpoint. And if the analysis is meant to show scintillating differences in performance based on pitch location (remember, that the camera distance and angle is different in every ballpark), the noise of subjective judgement is likely to wipe out the little differences.

This isn’t to derogate Appelman’s work, or to impugn the value of what BIS is doing. But it is important to remember that better and more finely grained data isn’t necessarily objective data. Enjoy these excellent visuals, and imagine what they tell us about these hitters, but don’t imagine this is the end. In some ways it is just the beginning.