The Guide

The Fantasy Baseball Guide 2013 Update == Is Out Now! And a correction.

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Updated projections and Big Prices for the Guide can be found here.

I just corrected a few projections wins totals from the March 14 update. What happened was I used the mechanical adjustment built into the Patton software to increase the projected value of Verlander, King Felix, and Jered Weaver. The mechanical adjustment gave each of them too many projected wins. Wins are a very arbitrary category, and while any of these excellent pitchers could win 23 or 25 wins, the odds are so much against them doing so that it’s silly to project them to do that. I’ve reduced their win totals. Their earnings suffer, but that’s because they’re projected for the injury risk, which is the best reason NOT to bid up pitchers. They sometimes get hurt, catastrophically.

Of course, when they don’t get hurt the best pitchers are usually the best pitchers, which is a good reason to bid them up to their true value (which is already discounted 33 percent because of the hitter/pitcher budget split). How you land on this question is usually a matter of whether you bought Chris Carpenter in is healthy or unhealthy years, or Roy Halladay last year.

Rotoman on Baseballhq Radio!

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Patrick Davitt invited me on to talk about Tout Wars and the Fantasy Baseball Guide and picks and pans (did I really diss Jordan Zimmerman, for no apparent reason except the, um, formula?). You can hear it here. Thanks for having me on Patrick.

March 8 Patton $ Updates/Corrections

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News of Rafael Furcal’s decision to have elbow surgery last week suggested there was some chance he might be back in July of this year. In the software I cut him down to a projected 235 optimistic at bats. It now seems that he’s going to miss the whole of 2013. I’m cutting his projected AB to 0. Pete Kozma, Daniel Descalso, and Kolten Wong absorb the at bats.

STATLAND is here!

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Screen Shot 2013-02-13 at 1.58.42 PMSince the original Fantasy Baseball Guide, in 2000, a section in the back of the book called STATLAND has included Profit and Loss charts and Multiposition Eligibility charts from the preceding year’s play.

This year, when the player profiles were longer than the hole we had to fill them, we decided to move STATLAND online. Here are the charts in a variety of formats.

STATLAND IN EXCEL
Multiposition PDF
2012 Profit-Loss PDF

Statland in Google Docs

Rewriting the Guide: Chris Carpenter

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When news overtakes the Guide, watch us rewrite.

Screen Shot 2013-02-06 at 5.01.37 PM

BIG PRICE: $0

He made three starts last September, with a 3.71 ERA in 17 innings (1.12 WHIP, 3 BB and 12 K), and based on today’s news they are likely to be the last three starts of his illustrious if injury-riddled career. He is just about certain to miss all of 2013, and given his age it’s hard to see him fighting to come back as a 39 year old. Note to self: Scratch from cheat sheet.

Department of Corrections 2013

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When we find things that are wrong in The Guide, we list them here.

pg. 7. Wil Myers is spelled Will Myers in great big letters. Wrong. Wil is right.

pg 52. Dexter Fowler gets the same pan from Jeffrey Winick that Winick gave to Jacoby Ellsbury. Wrong! It should read, WINICK PAN: “Top notch power/speed guy, right? Not so fast. Gets picked off way too often and doesn’t hit too well on the road. Don’t overpay.” Tip o’ the cap to Brian in Austin.

Read more

Rolen in the Deep: Will he sign?

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Scott-Rolen-2012-Reds One of the biggest, most time consuming tasks putting out the Guide is selecting which 1400 players get in.

I wish I could say there was some science to it, but over the years I’ve tried different rules-based approaches and have always ended up with a similar ratio: About 200 hitters and 200 pitchers we profile don’t play in the majors that year, and about 200 hitters and 200 pitchers we don’t profile do play in the majors that year.

Many of the guys we don’t profile who are called up from the minors would be impossible to select, don’t play very much and I’m resigned to missing them. In recent years, however, I’ve been more aggressive about cutting guys. The rule used to be, if you played in the majors last year you were in, unless you had announced your retirement, but now I let the standard be, “can you write a profile about him that really assumes he’ll be active this year?”

It was on those grounds that I cut Scott Rolen from the 2013 list. Always with an affinity for injury, the last two years he has been hurt a lot and failed to produce when he did play. I could not imagine how you could write a profile that didn’t assume his retirement.

I still can’t imagine it, but the reports today that the Dodgers are interested are interesting because the Dodgers don’t have a third baseman. (Apologies to Mrs. Cruz.) If Rolen does end up in camp we’ll profile him here and at pattonandco.com. My bet is he’s going to do the right thing and go fishing, but I’m sure it galls him to contemplate ending it on such a low note. If he thinks he can do better he’s probably wrong, but I wouldn’t blame him for trying.

Reviewing Your Work: Mike’s A Moron Edition

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My friends at Roto Think Tank put out a first-rate website full of servicey advice and strategic insight. RTT’s Mike Gianella has been a contributor to the Fantasy Baseball Guide for a number of years now, and today posted his comments about his Picks and Pans in the 2012 edition. How’d they work? Not so hot, which is why he gets to use the funny title. Though he’s way too hard on himself for Bonifacio and a couple others.

What I love about Picks and Pans is that it’s a blank slate. The experts are encouraged to pick and pan whoever they want, which usually means they meant it when they said it. So you get a somewhat objective view of a group of peoples’ subjective judgments about the upcoming season, before the season. And afterwards we get to see just how easy it is to be wrong.

Bravo to Mike for manning up.

Get Your Mid March Fantasy Baseball Guide 2012 Update Here!

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Download the spreadsheet by clicking here. Includes fully updated projections and bid prices for 5×5, just like in the Guide.

Questions about a player? Come visit pattonandco.com and join the discussion.

The Fantasy Baseball Guide 2012 is now also available online!

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Go to thefantasysportsguide.com for details.

It looks great, is adapted for computer monitor and iPad and other tablets, and can be read on smartphones in a pinch, though it isn’t designed for phones.

Here’s a screenshot. It looks just like the printed magazine, except it’s electrons!Â