Ask Rotoman

Works of Bill James

Some years ago I had the idea that indexing the works of Bill James would be an incredibly useful project, though a terribly time consuming one. It’s the sort of perfect gig for someone who has an office job with lots of down time.

Stephen Roney has gotten the project underway, and the initial results appear to be helpful. You can find them here. The efforts of people like Stephen, which are laborious and certainly won’t be appropriately compensated, should be acknowledged.

Yet he’s just scratched the surface so far.

ESPN.com – MLB – Stark: Winners and losers

This is a pretty good survey of the draft day results. The f unny part is that the aggregate of the Mets’ two deals looks whacky, but if pitching coach Rich Peterson really can straighten Victor Zambrano out the Kris Benson acquisition isn’t a bad risk. Even though the odds of winning this year are long. And if Peterson really gives the Mets and advantage in signing Benson next year, all the better.

It still looks pretty funky to deal your three best prospects for two mediocre pitchers.

Major League Baseball : Midseason Prices

It took awhile but I finally got the midseason prices for Single League 4×4 and Mixed League 12 Team 5×5 (and preseason Single League 4×4 bid prices) calculated and posted at mlb.com. There is a lot of information here about preseason expectations, and how they pan out. Let me know what you think.

Major League Baseball : Ask Rotoman

There’s a new Ask Rotoman at mlb.com. Would you take Lyle, Wily or Justin for the rest of this year? Should you let emotions decide your roto decisions? And who is backing up those closers about to be dealt at the trading deadline?
This week’s column explores the possibilities.

TOUT WARS: Battle of the Experts: FAAB Extravaganza

Each year Tout Wars participants show up and bid on players on the bulletin board the night of the ML trading deadline. This year’s event is Saturday night from 8-11, but the going really gets going in the last hour.

I think this format, using the bulletin board for bidding, would make a pretty excellent draft format in the preseason for owners who are stretched far and wide. Which is just another reason to check out the action.

Yahoo! Sports – MLB – Box Score- Seattle

The Mariners released John Olerud so they could give an opportunity to Dave Hansen at first base?

Rotoworld.com Player Page

Major League Baseball : Last Team Standing

Back in May MLB invited me and 11 other players to draft teams for a No Transaction League. The first few rounds of the draft were shown MLB.tv. At the time we knew that health was going to be a big factor, but I don’t think we really had a feel for how this thing would play out.

First of all, for some reason MLB inserted three ringers into the league. Along with a bunch of us so-called experts were a contestant on an ESPN reality show about working on SportsCenter, the host of ESPN2’s Cold Pizza, and an ad exec who won an MLB.com fantasy league last year.

Right now Craig Leshen, the ad exec, is way out in front, as he has been all year, and I’m the only so-called expert in the top four (second, thank you very much). Does this mean I’m the best expert? Or the second best amateur? I don’t really know.

What I do know is that Leshen put together an amazing team (studying the Fantasy Baseball Guide 2004 feverishly between picks, by the way), so that while he lost Frank Thomas and Roy Halladay recently, he’s got Jose Contrera and Jason Bay just picking up steam.

This article is nicely done, though perhaps I’m interested only because I’m in the league. But it occured to me as I was writing to Mark, the writer, that this sort of “hypothetical” league is the perfect place to test pricing theory. We’ll revisit that at another time, maybe in Craig Leshen’s Strategies of Champions piece in the Fantasy Baseball Guide 2005.

Major League Baseball : Ask Rotoman

The new one is out, with talk about FAAB and out-of-league trades, a look at catchers scraped off the bottom of the barrel, trading Jake Peavy for Mark Teixeira, and how to deal with dealing with close competitors.

RotoMagazine.com

These guys asked for a plug, and in my quick perusal of their pdf-based magazine my reaction is positive. I’m not sure the world needs more player capsules, but it can always use clever and occasionally funny ones, even if the price is an occasional reach. The 2nd Half projections seem to be reasonable, too, which could prove helpful.

And you can’t beat the price.