Prices

ASK ROTOMAN: A One Or A Two?

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Rotoman!

I’m in a 12 team roto league keeper. my keeper options are either keeping Paul Goldschmidt and Carlos Gonzalez or Goldschmidt, Yasiel Puig and Jason Kipnis?. So really the question is Cargo or Puig/Kipnis? We can keep players forever so I want to make sure I make the right decision. 

“Eternally Yours”

Dear Eternally:

What I don’t know, because you didn’t tell me, is why you can only keep one extra guy if you keep Cargo, or  the two other guys if you go that way. That feels unusual to me, but let’s run with it because we can make something of a closer look, whatever your rules are.

Of the three, Gonzalez is probably the best hitter, but because of injuries he didn’t earn as much as Kipnis last year. Still, I have him at $34 for this year, with Kipnis at $27 and Puig at $24. Puig is a bit of a wild card here. It would not be a surprise if he was a bust, but it would not be a surprise if he earned well into the 30s. We don’t know how he’s going to adapt to pitchers adaptations, and we don’t know whether the 26 pounds he added in the offseason was because of hard work or sloth.

But we do know that Kipnis earned $29 as a 26 year old. We also know that Gonzalez is 29 this year, while Puig turns 24. Which means the two guys have seven years on Gonzalez. If we assume each of these guys will play well until they’re 35, you’ll get six years out of Gonzalez, while you’ll get 19 years out of the other two. By that measure take the two.

But, I’m sure that isn’t the measure. Here’s what is:

Let’s assume that Cargo is $7 more valuable than Kipnis in a deep league for each of the next six years. That’s $42 more value, which is whittled down some amount in a shallow league because Kipnis plays a more valuable defensive position.

The question for you is whether Puig is going to outearn the player you would end up with instead by that same $42 or more over the next six years. Obviously, given the information I have I can’t answer that.

But what is important here for everyone to remember is, in multiplayer deals the measure isn’t just the players in the deal, but also the player who would have to be added or dropped who isn’t in the deal in order to make the rosters whole.

Completely incomplete,
Rotoman

LABR AL Results 2014

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Have been posted at Real Time Sports.

What you need to know: Tanaka went for $19. Most expensive starter was Yu Darvish at $28. Scherzer and King Felix were $27.

Jose Abreu went for $24, and Prince Fielder in Texas went for $33. Top hitters were expensive, generally. Pujols went for $29, Manny Machado for $19. Trout was $45, Miggy went for $42.

 

ASK ROTOMAN: May I Please Have a Top 250 Please

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Dear Rotoman:

I appreciate your magazine ..love the experts picks and pans ..strategy ideas…etc. You guys set the bar. I would like to offer an addition to your magazine for ’15. How about a cheat sheet that is perforated that can be torn out to use at drafts? Or at least a centralized location  for rankings and dollar values for easier reference.

Thanks and continued good stuff!

“EZ Tear”

Dear EZ:

the250-copyThanks for writing. I got a fair number of requests for a Top 250 or Top 300 cheat sheet last year, enough that I seriously considered adding the feature this year. But after careful consideration I just couldn’t do it. Here’s why:

First off, there is the matter of format. What rules should apply to the list? The Big Prices in the Guide are a buyers guide for only-league Rotisserie players, but they have the virtue of identifying and ranking players for 12 and 15 team roto, and 8 and 12 team ESPN leagues, and 12 and 20 team Yahoo leagues. List players by position and you have a fair rank order.

But each of these leagues would have a somewhat different Top 250 because league depth changes the values of the rare talents at each position relative to the polloi, the easily replaced guys, which will change the ranking order a little, depending on the size of the league.

The categories matter, too, of course. Everybody has different scoring rules. I play in a 12-team AL 4×4 league, a 12-team NL 5×5 league that uses OBP, a 15-team mixed 5×5 league that uses OBP, and a 20 team Yahoo 5×5 league. Each of these leagues would have a different Top 250, even before we factor in the reserve and FAAB rules in each league (which also change values).

And then there is timing. The fact of the matter is that the 2014 Guide closed on December 9th, 2013. The rankings and values in the Guide, as in all the print magazines, are a valiant attempt to keep up with events before they happen. That’s why so much of the Guide is given over to the player profiles, which address each player’s past history and intrinsic talents.

Those life details are the elements that will help us make up our minds about each guy as the spring proceeds. I do my best to make the best values for all players in the Guide, but realistically we all have to know that much is going to change. Ryan Dempster is going to take a year off, Cory Leubke is going to have another TJ. Etc etc.

I use the Guide all through the preseason to remind myself about what we all said about players, to help me fine tune my player evaluations as the news changes a player’s role or team or makes me rethink his skills.

In this context, making a fixed Top 250 in December seems not only quixotic, but misleading. To tell you the truth, as we approach March 1st and the start of the exhibition season, it still doesn’t make much more sense to me, for all those category and format reasons. But enough people have asked that I think I’ve come up with a solution.

When I post the March 6th projections and prices update for owners of the Guide, I’m going to create some sort of one-page position-by-position ranking of players. This will be a one-page updated version of the Draft At A Glance charts in the Guide.

I will still suggest that you use the provided spreadsheet to create your own list of bid prices based on your league’s rules and your own evaluation of players. Isn’t that the fun of the game? But I’m happy to offer up mine at that point, for your entertainment pleasure.

Listing,
Rotoman

Ps. I’m reminded, however, of a day when the lists in the Guide were used in a real draft.

It was a draft Major League Baseball Advanced Media held to launch the MLB network. This was maybe 2000 or so. There were 10 or so experts (I was a columnist at mlb.com) and a few regular guy contest winners, drafting a bar on the Bowery in Manhattan that had deep pod-like booths for weekend night mating reason. I ended up sitting in a booth with Craig Leshen, one of the regular guys. Craig is a nice guy and he knew his stuff, but he also used the Draft at a Glance pages in the Guide throughout the draft to help him choose players.

Because of the need to take breaks throughout the draft, to film segments for the MLB network, it got late and patience started to get short. At some point MLBAM announced that the winner of this draft-and-hold league would win $2000, which got our attention.

Needless to say, perhaps (for why else would I be telling this story), the season started and Craig’s team got out to an enormous lead. One it did not relinquish all season (though it was telling how, over the course of the season, without transactions, the teams that got off to bad starts improved, and the teams that got off to good starts did worse, a prime example of regression to the mean).

For Craig, it was money and glory, just a little of the latter which reflected on the Fantasy Baseball Guide.

Patton $ Online: New Update is Out February 22nd.

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pattonlogoThis week’s update includes more batting order and pitching role info, a listing of the MLB Top 100 Rookies, updated projections and team assignments, and the ever evolving bid prices of Rotoman and Mike Fenger in 5×5, and Alex Patton in 4×4. Updates will continue through April 3.

Subscribers can update at the secret download page.

For more information about the software, spreadsheet and text files, visit software.askrotoman.com.

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: Your Prices Seem Low!

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Dear Rotoman:

Your values for top players seem low. I am in an AL 4×4 12-team $260 keeper league. Its the keepers that inflate the value of the top players on draft day. Do you have a formula I can apply to your prices that takes into account how many players we are drafting and how many dollars are left (after keepers).

“Inflate Me”

Dear IM:

Yes! You are absolutely right. In a keeper league (4×4 or 5×5 doesn’t matter), where inexpensive players are carried over from one year to the next, you need to adjust the startup prices in the Guide or prices create yourself or you obtain elsewhere to account for these lower priced players.

For example, I allocate $3120 for 168 hitters and 108 pitchers in each 12-team AL and NL league, because that is what is going to be spent.

In your keeper league, however, you may have 50 hitter freezes and 20 pitcher freezes. What you need to figure out is how much money is going to be “saved” by your having these freezes.

To do this, list the players in your league who are going to be frozen. Then compare their keeper prices to the startup league prices from the Guide (or the updates). Total each column.

Let’s say the 70 keepers in your league are going to cost their teams $700 in keeper fees, but my price list says that they’re actually worth $1000. How is that going to affect your league’s prices in the auction?

1. To start we have $3120 in value.

2. In your league (after keepers) you’ll have $3120 minus $700 which equals $2420 in cash for buying the available players.

3. Based on the values in the Guide, this money is chasing $3120 minus $1000  in value, which equals $2120 total value in your auction.

4. Figure out an inflation rate by dividing the amount of cash you have by the amount of value ($2420/$2120) which equals 14 percent.

5. This extra money is available to be spent in your auction, which means that a player I gave a price of $35 might actually cost 14 percent more, or $40. (Multiply $35 * 1.14 = $40)

The important thing to recognize here is that teams that don’t take the inflation into account will stop bidding at $35 or $36, thinking they’re going over budget. The savvy player will know that a player’s par price is higher than that (in some leagues, depending on the keeper rules, it can be much much higher).

So, knowing your inflation rate is a big help while tracking your auction, but there are some confounding issues.

The 14 percent inflation is usually not distributed evenly. 

For one thing, the 14 percent increase in price of a $3 player doesn’t round up to $4, so what rounds down is distributed to more expensive players. This effect is echoed up the line, so that more money is distributed to more expensive players.

But it also makes strategic sense to manually allocate more bid money to more expensive players.

Would you rather pay $4 for a $3 player, or get the edge when budgeting of going to $41 on the player who rounds up to $40. The fact is that you might still get the same cheaper player and the more expensive one if your budget allocates the inflation money to the top group.

In which case the important number is not the 14 percent, but rather the $300 extra you have to pay the available player pool. Go through your list and bump the prices of top players you like the 14 percent, and then distribute the remaining money (which you didn’t give to those players who cost less than $12) to the players you fancy.

This is subjective, of course, so you’re going to want to be careful, but the effect of inflation is somewhat subjective, too. As an aggressive player you should make sure you err going after the players you value more than those you don’t. Your budgeting can help make those choices clearer in advance.

Another reason to allocate the money to more expensive players is because if you don’t spend on them early on, you may end up holding the bag in the end game by either not having spent all your money, or by being compelled to pour too much extra cash into the last available (and now wildly overpriced) talent.

It’s much more effective to spend an extra dollar on three or four expensive guys than to spend $5 on a $1 player at the end. Or leave $4 (or more) on the table, unspent.

The bottom line is that the proper tracking of inflation can give you a huge advantage over owners who either don’t think about it or try to wing it. Knowing whether owners are spending more or less than they should in the early rounds of the auction will help you decide whether to spend now or wait for bargains later.

Coldly,
Rotoman

ASK ROTOMAN: Is HBP A Skill?

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Dear Rotoman:

Jose Abreu gets hit by a TON of pitches.  How much more valuable does that make him in a OBP-instead-of-Avg league?

“Abreuised”

Dear A:

José_Dariel_Abreu_on_March_9,_2013One thing we don’t know is how many pitches Jose Abreu will be hit by in the major leagues. In 2010-11 he was hit 21 times in Cuba, which ranked fourth in the league. Considering he led the league in hitting and slugging and tied for the most homers (with Yoenis Cespedes), fourth doesn’t seem like a lot.

But let’s look at what it means to be hit a lot by major league pitchers. Last year the leader in the category was Shin-Soo Choo, who was plunked 26 times, followed by Starling Marte (24) and  Shane Victorino (18).

But as a percentage of plate appearances Marte led all of baseball last year, getting hit in 4.2 percent. He made a hit in 25.2 percent of his plate appearances and walked in 4.4 percent, so getting hit by a pitch represents one seventh of his on base value.

This compares with the average batting title qualifier, who made a hit in 24.4 percent of his appearances, walked 8.5 percent of the time, and was hit by a pitch 0.8 percent of the time (or about one thirty-third of his on base value).

There are two ways to look at this.

One seventh is 14 percent, a small but measurable part of a player’s value. Let’s say a hitter was worth $20, $4 in each of the five cats. One seventh of $4 would reduce his value in OBP from $4 to $3.42, or $3. His total value would be $19, not $20, which seems small but represents a five percent decline.

The other way is to note that the average player is hit about one percent of the time. Someone who gets hit like Marte is hit about five time more often, so he gets five times more value than players who don’t get hit. For someone like Marte, who doesn’t walk that much, the HBP boosts his OBP up to the average level for a batting title qualifier.

Either way, it matters, but isn’t a game changer.

One final thought about those HBP. In discussing them above, I treated them as if the choice was between a HBP or an out, but clearly some HBP would lead to bases on balls, and some bases on balls for a regular player might become a HBP for a player who crowds the plate or tends to dive in on the delivery. That narrows the difference some, and reduces the expected value of our most prolific guys with a talent for getting hit (not hits).

ron-hunt-hitWe don’t know if Juan Abreu is going to be Starling Marte or Shin-Soo Choo. He probably won’t be Mark Trumbo, who had the most at bats with no HBP last year in the major leagues, and he could turn out to be Ron Hunt, who holds the modern record for most HPB in a season. That would be 50 in 1971, which represented 7.8 percent of his plate appearances!

That was 20 percent of his on base value that year. Let’s consider that the ceiling, at least until we get to see Abreu play regularly.

Painfully,
Rotoman

 

ASK ROTOMAN: My League Is Using New Categories. Help!

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Dear Rotoman,

My 5×5 Rotisserrie – 10 team NL-Only Yahoo League is switching categories this year:  New Categories are XBH, OBP and E, replacing HR, BA & SB to go with RBI and R for five categories.  In pitching we are keeping W, Sv, ERA & Whip and replacing K with K/BB.  How do I project what I will need in categories without a previous history of scoring?

“Categorically Insane”

Dear CI:

Wow. I’m a big fan of experimentation and innovation, and I love the fact that your league is jumping into it head first, but I’m sorry to inform you that you are uncorking an Albert Belle bat’s worth of complication with your changes (the least of which is projecting how much of any category you’re going to need to win). Here’s why:

Valuing stats is easy. Knowing how many you’ll need to win isn’t, but isn’t necessary unless your league doesn’t allow you to trade. And even then you’ll be better off knowing how much each player is worth than targeting category totals.

Your goal is to amass value, which means buying stats that others are undervaluing. Targeting category totals too often leads to teams overbidding to reach their goals.

Obviously, there is a point when too much is too much, when you have way more steals or saves than you can gain points for in roto scoring, but common sense should be enough to guide you there. In the meantime, collect value.

The problem for your league is that some of your changes are provocative and disrupt the way we usually play the game.

Not XBH, which is just like HR, only it rewards Doubles and Triples hitters. And not OBP, which is just like BA, but rewards guys who take a walk. But Errors? Hell yes.

Errors is a backward category. The lower the number, the better. The problem is that fielders make errors not only in proportion to how many they make, but by how much they play. The more they play, the more errors they make.

More playing time has long been a key strategy for 5×5 roto. You want to win the AB race, even though AB isn’t a category, because the more AB your team puts up the more Runs and RBI and HR it will accrue.

So, if we look at the top 15 NL shortstops last year in fewest Errors allowed (200 AB minimum), they averaged 621 innings played and 7 errors (84 innings per error), while the top 15 NL shortstop last year in Offensive contribution (not including steals, which you’re replacing), averaged 990 inning played and 12 errors (83 innings per error).

As you can see, there’s almost no difference in quality as a group, but the heavier offensive contributors play more and hurt more in your Error category.

While there are clear winners (Troy Tulowitzki, maybe Jose Iglesias) and losers (Jonathan Villar! Dee Gordon!), it isn’t clear to me how you go about choosing whether to roster Brandon Crawford, good defender but makes errors because he plays a lot and is a marginal offensive talent, or Daniel Descalso, who played much less, contributed less offensively, but hardly made half as many errors.

And since the player pool determines the value of players, every change to the pool has the potential to shift all the prices. Fascinating stuff. And good luck with it.

(SIDEBAR: To value the reverse category you would credit each player with Each Error He Didn’t Make. So, Starlin Castro made the most errors as a SS in the NL last year, with 22. Every other player Didn’t Make 22-the number of errors he did make.)

Converting from Strikeouts to Strikeouts Divided By Bases on Balls is a whole ‘nother matter. Here you’re switching from a quantitative stat that measures playing time almost as much as quality, there are many leagues that play with IP as their fifth 5×5 category rather than strikeouts. Put this together with ERA and WHIP, also qualitative stats, and you’re almost begging for teams to try pare their innings pitched to a minimum.

Remember that no starters earn Saves, and few closers rank highly in Wins, so you’re basically measuring pitchers on their quality innings. I’m a bit skeptical about this innovation being a good idea, but if you have a stringent minimum IP limit it might work.

Still, if you’re playing with real Yahoo rosters, guys who qualify as SP but work in relief are going to be gold.

To get back to your question. In standard roto leagues, a good benchmark for last place in the qualitative categories is the major league average. Players who do better than that are some roto help. In your somewhat smaller league the right number is going to be better. To figure out K/BB I recommend sorting last year’s stats based on different IP threshholds.

With a minimum IP of 40 last year, 22 of the Top 30 pitchers in K/BB were relievers.

 

Changes. February 7, 2014

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I’m going through my projections and prices, looking at situations that have changed and where a player’s price or projection needs adjustment. Here are some significant ones for today:

Danny Farquhar is no longer the closer of the Mariners. Cut his Saves to a handful and his price to $4. Fernando Rodney, whose save numbers I’d never cut, needs no real adjustment.

Jeremy Hellickson didn’t excite big expectations this year, but news that he had minor elbow surgery and will miss the first two months of the season, lowers them some more. And reduces his IP. I still like him if goes for $5 or less.

Yasmani Grandal’s rehab appears to be going better than expected. I’ve bumped his price to $8. If he really is playing on opening day he might get to $10, but I’d be worried about going that high.

Bobby Abreu has signed with the Phillies, as a left-handed bat off the bench. I remember when the Phillies acquired the top prospect from the Rays for Kevin Stocker, a horrible trade from a different millenium. Long enough ago that both Abreu and the Phillies should now know better.

I have both Archie Bradley and Randall Delgado throwing app. 150 innings. Delgado earns $6, Bradley earns $5. To start the season one or the other is likely to be in the minors, and maybe both. Neither of them has a bid price yet. Too much uncertainty.

Vidal Nuno is in position to earn a spot in the Yankee’s rotation. I like him as a late play in AL only leagues.

Rougned Odor will be invited to the Rangers big league camp, but despite my delight in typing his name is very unlikely to see any major league time this year.