Who Walks Most?

BOW copyTout Wars, you may have heard, is moving it’s Mixed Leagues to On Base Percentage this year, rather than that old standby category Batting Average. The reason, as described here, is because OBP measures a player’s ability to draw walks, which is a valuable baseball skill that the traditional fantasy stats undervalue.

Some Tout Warriors are arguing that OBP is a baseball metric that measures better baseball players, but that using it in the fantasy game will break the delicate balance of fantasy baseball’s categorical imperatives. Steve Gardner, in USA Today, summarized: “Dissenters pointed out that eliminating batting average gives far too much weight to sluggers, many of whom have higher than normal walk rates, when those power hitters already get additional credit in runs and RBI for every home run they hit.”

My first response was fear that this was true. That the guys whose value would jump most were already valuable guys. That wasn’t why we’d changed the rule. But the fact is that some players in every strata of the game, from homer hitters to speed merchants, show an ability to walk, while others with those same talents don’t show that ability. The adoption of the OBP rule was intended to value home run hitters who walked more than home run hitters who didn’t walk. It was intended to value stolen base guys who walked more than those who didn’t walk. It was intended to value guys who hit for a high average who walked more than those who hit for high average who didn’t. The bottom line was, walks are a valuable skill that fantasy baseball has valued only peripherally, and as I noted here the other day in the Derek Carty is Absolutely Right post: By giving up an at-bat when taking a walk, a player hurts his fantasy value overall while often improving his real baseball team. Guys who walk get fewer chances to homer, fewer changes to drive in runs, and can even end up with a low batting average while their high on base percentage helps their team win games.

My second response was to see if this claim that the guys who would be helped most actually were the supposedly already-overvalued home run hitters. Here are the top 25 hitters with 250 or more AB with the highest walk rate in 2012. These are the guys whose value would be most improved by using OBP rather than BA (in parens 2012 PA/HR):

  • Joey Votto (475/14)
    Adam Dunn (649/41)
    John Jaso (361/10)
    Chris Carter (260/16)
    Dan Uggla (630/19)
    Carlos Santana (609/18)
    Jose Bautista (399/27)
    David Ortiz (383/23)
    Ben Zobrist (668/20)
    Carlos Pena (600/19)
    Bobby Abreu (257/3)
    Alex Avila (434/9)
    Joe Mauer (641/10)
    Todd Helton (283/7)
    Mark Reynolds (538/23)
    Mike Napoli (417/24)
    Jonny Gomes (333/18)
    Edwin Encarnacion (644/42)
    AJ Ellis (505/13)
    Dexter Fowler (530/13)
    Chris Snyder (258/7)
    Miguel Montero (573/15)
    Chipper Jones (448/14)
    Josh Willingham (615/35)
    Chase Headley (699/31)

There are a few sluggers on that list, many guys who hit home runs, but certainly not only the best home run hitters. Many of these are guys whose baseball creds are mocked by fantasy players, because they don’t hit for big power and have bad batting averages. Why do they even have jobs, the neophyte wonders? Because getting on base is a valued skill. It has real value that fantasy leagues that don’t use OBP aren’t capturing. It’s also a skill that a player like Joey Votto has when his power deserts him because of injury.

So, just for giggles, who are the guys with the lowest walk rate? Who will get hurt most by the change? Let’s go 10 deep:

  • Miguel Olivo (323/12)
    Alexei Ramirez (621/9)
    Pedro Ciriaco (272/2)
    Luis Cruz (296/6)
    Josh Rutledge (291/8)
    Delmon Young (608/18)
    Ichiro Suzuki (663/9)
    Josh Harrison (276/3)
    Willie Bloomquist (338/0)
    Omar Infante (588/12)

It’s true, not as many sluggers here. And a lot of marginal offensive talents, or special talents (Ichiro) whose ability to hit for BA while not taking bases on balls should be noted, not applauded, by fantasy players. Welcome OBP!

(illustration adopted from bluejayhunter.com)

Derek Carty is Absolutely Right! Except that he’s wrong.

Todd Zola ran a Roundtable I participated in over at KFFL this week, about Tout Wars move to on base percentage instead of batting average as a category in the Mixed league this year. The support of the merry knights was fairly strong, which surprised me. We decided to ease into OBP in mixed only because we’d disrupted the AL and NL leagues last year introducing the Swingman.

parry_riposteNow, Derek Carty has laid out an argument against using OBP, at his blog.

I agree with him 110 percent that the object of the fantasy game is not to mimic the real game. The fantasy game is derivative of a real world game, but it has it’s own very distinct rules and strategies and calls on totally different skills to play. For me this is a major point of the thing. When I was young I played baseball on the diamond. If I wanted to keep playing that game I’d play it, or a computer version of it. To my mind the genius of the fantasy game was the establishment of eight categories that collect data about the skills and roles of players, allowing one to create a great or crappy team based on one’s ability to collect the categories efficiently. I begrudge the move to ten cats, we don’t really need more than that, and I have no desire to play with more (though many people do).

As Derek points out, these basic categories are not the ones that best represent a player’s skills. What I want to point out is that these trad cats collect players with a variety of talents into a team that can compete against other teams, ensuring that diversity and scarcity are valued. But that doesn’t mean these cats can’t be improved, and I think the obvious improvement we’ve been waiting for has been adopting OBP instead of BA. There are two reasons for this:

1) Taking a walk is a fundamental skill, and the only ways the original roto categories valued walks was in runs scored (guys on base more score more) and stolen base opportunities. So, walks weren’t nothing, but they weren’t much either. OBP gives real value to hitters whose game involves getting on base more, at the expense of less-talented hitters who don’t take walks.

2) When fantasy leagues use BA as a category, a player who takes a walk can help his major league team and hurt his minor league team. Every BB in standard roto is a miss, a lost chance to get a hit or (usually) drive in a run or hit a home run. In standard fantasy, if you draft a team of guys who walk a lot you’ll lose the at-bats race, and often (though not necessarily) lag in the counting categories. Shouldn’t fantasy value the better hitter more if it can?

I think OBP is an obvious improvement over BA, and maybe the knights of the roundtable did too because many of them have played in the XFL, which adopted OBP 11 seasons ago. The differences aren’t huge, but suddenly the .255 hitter with a .380 OBP becomes the stud he is in real life and it feels right. That’s the way it should be.

ASK ROTOMAN: A Pain in the Astros

I am in AL only auction leagues. We use the $260 salary cap for a 5×5 league with 9 pitchers and 14 hitters. With the Houston Astros coming the AL, I am wonder what changes you might suggest. Do we add one more pitcher? Add another DH? How do we handle the minimum IP and AB requirements? Thanks for your thoughtful response.

“Honey, I Blew Up the American League”

Dear Honey:

Adding the Astros to the American League means that there will be about 5,500 more at bats available for a 12 team AL only fantasy league, and about 1,425 additional innings. This is a lot. These at bats and innings pitched dilute the pool by about 15 percent, so it’s going to make a difference. But how much of one?

A different way to look at it is to consider that the AL is adding one regular catcher, one regular first baseman, one regular second baseman, etc. etc. I’ll stop, I think you get the point. So the practical difference is that instead of 12 roto teams selecting 24 catchers out of a pool of (roughly) 28 AL catchers, the roto teams are taking 28 catchers out of a pool of 30. Two catchers don’t make the cut and are part of six undrafted catchers, rather than four. Since these two additions to the free agent pool are the worst available players, the total difference on your game will be negligible.

The same is true at every position. The number of quality players goes up a little, the amount of available stats goes up 15 percent, the improvement in the replacement pool is very small.

What rules changes should you make because of this? I think it’s a fair guess that if you don’t make any changes to your game it will be fine. You will have some additional players in the free agent pool, at least at the start of the season, but depending on your reserve rules I doubt this will make much difference (or that they’ll stay in the pool if they’re any help at all).

The increase in available stats will make it easier for teams to get to the minimum at bats and innings pitched. You don’t say what level you have for these, but in a 5×5 league they should be pretty irrelevant. The only reason to have them is to keep teams that are suffering from bad luck from desperately adopting a Sweeny-type plan on the fly during the season. It should be every team’s goal in 5×5 to collect as many AB and IP as possible, so raise these minimums if you think it might help, but it probably isn’t necessary.

In terms of roster configuration, I can report that in the American Dream League (AL, 4×4) last year we added a 10th pitcher as an experiment, and I don’t think anyone thought it made the game much better or much worse. It was fine. There’s every reason to go that way this year, but you probably won’t notice much of a difference.

In Tout Wars last year, we converted the fifth OF to a Swingman, essentially a second DH or a Pitcher. Team managers liked having the option to play a 10th pitcher when there wasn’t a worthwhile hitter available in the FA pool. There aren’t many leagues playing with this rule yet, but I think it’s a very natural progression. One alternative in your league might be to continue to roster five outfielders, and add a Utility Swingman, who could qualify at any position or be a pitcher, increasing your overall roster from 23 to 24 players.

I’m sure that would work, but I’m equally sure that if you do nothing no catastrophe will ensue.

Sincerely,
Rotoman

A Rule Is A Rule, Unless There’s No Replay

Uh oh. Here we go again. Not necessarily the game, but 1-0 is a lot different than 3-0. Using replays (or replay challenges) on plays like this Robinson Cano tag on Omar Infante in the second game of the ALCS between the Tigers and the Yankees seems like a no brainer. Why won’t MLB do it?

I keep thinking that there must be more complicated game situations that would be further complicated if an umpire’s ruling in the first part of a play were to be overturned. I bet there are some of those. But I bet we can deal with them. ML rules have pages and pages and pages of examples of situations and rules interpretations, meant to interpret the rules in a practical way. One of the reasons we love the game is because every day we see something we’ve never seen before.

The thing we should never see again is an obviously botched call stand when the replay is irrefutable. Let’s argue about how all those contingent events should be handled. That won’t be easy. But getting the calls right, when the video is clear, should be.

Measuring Up to the Rules: Mea Culpa

“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.”

Read more

Convince your league to replace BA with OBP

Rotographs

In standard 4×4 and 5×5 leagues, OBP is clearly so much superior a rate stat to BA and we all know it, that I’m shocked everyone hasn’t made the change. Once you’re tried it you’ll never go back, because players values actually reflect their values (minus defense) in the major leagues.

But it’s hard to get people to change, which is why only one of my leagues use OBP instead of BA. We’ve talked about making the change in Tout Wars, but since part of the league’s goal is to offer draft guidance, it isn’t going to happen until you all switch over. Get going!

Fantasy Baseball internet radio by Jeff Erickson

BlogTalkRadio

In about 45 minutes I’ll be on Jeff Erickson’s Fantasy Focus radio show, on blogtalkradio.com. I’ll let you guess what we’re going to talk about. If you get here late, the program is also a podcast, which should live on forever. Classic.

Here’s the show:

We had decided to talk about wonky subjects, which was fine by me. I’m resistent to the whole “who’s your best sleeper” approach to the radio. I have a few elaborations.

In NL and AL only leagues position scarcity gets figured in if you properly price your players using the proper pool. That is, you give everyone their relative price and you find that you only have 10 positive values for catchers, and you need 24/26. You delete all the other players with positive and negative values who aren’t catchers, until the 24/26 catchers are in your pool, and then reallocate the money, making the last catcher worth a buck. Catchers alone don’t get all the benefit of scarcity.

The same holds true in Mixed Leagues, but there are two differences. It’s much harder to draw the line at the bottom, so it’s a little haphazard who makes the draft list and who doesn’t when the catchers are added. And, mixed league prices aren’t linear, so the best players get paid more for being reliable and better than the abundantly replaceable players in the middle and bottom. So the best catchers’ prices go up because they’re the best, period, as well as because they’re catchers. I’m not sure how you would go about quantifying this. I guess aggregated real world results compared to linear prices would get you part way.

As to rules, I don’t have a dog in any rules fight. I think players should play a game that satisfies them and makes them happy. It’s fine if you want to promote dump trading, and it is equally fine to squelch it. I discuss different rules and wrinkles with an eye to solving problems people are having in their leagues, which doesn’t make them happy.

The sleepers I wrote down before the show were Cincinnati’s Ramon Ramirez and the Cardinals’ Joe Mather. You can find more at pattonandco.com.