February – 2010 – Last Player Picked

Archive for February, 2010

Can Auction Leagues Make a Comeback?

3 Comments

February 16th, 2010 by Mays

For me, a fantasy auction is like a game of chess, and a fantasy draft is like a game of checkers.

Sure, checkers has its own unique strategies, but those strategies are restricted by the limited moves you can make. With chess, you have lots of different moves at your disposal and lots of strategic options. Freedom makes a much deeper and involved game. While auctions give you lots of choices, with a draft you’re just deciding which piece to move forward one square.

So it’s always been amusing to me that fantasy baseball started out with auctions but has since become dominated by serpentine drafts. It’s like chess players converting en masse to checkers or Garry Kasparov dropping out of tournament play to take up draughts.

Ironically, I’d guess that it’s technology that is responsible for — from the point of view of someone who favors auctions — a dramatic step backwards in the fantasy gaming experience. Internet-based fantasy baseball seems like the biggest factor in the rise of serpentine drafts. (I think that could work as an action movie — “The Rise of the Serpents.”) Technology couldn’t handle an online auction but could deal with a straight pick ‘em, and so the quality of the game regresses.

The Internet causing something to take a step backwards is not unparalleled, I guess. Think about Internet communication — an instant message is in many ways a step backwards from talking face-to-face. You have the advantage of communicating at a distance, but you miss out on tone and expression and body language. It took years for the technology to catch up with the old-fashioned experience — with faster connections speeds and the popularity of video chat. (And, honestly, even video chat has yet to replicate a face-to-face conversation.) But technology can take a while before it compares with a live experience.

Finally, though, it looks like the fantasy baseball technology is starting to catch up. After years of making people rely on straight drafts, Yahoo’s 2010 game is offering online auction drafts.

The question: Can auctions make a comeback? Will people who have spent the last decade doing serpentine drafts make the switch now that online auction technology is available?

I’m clearly biased towards auctions, but I’d like to think that when people try out auctions, they’ll be won over by the superior method. Once people are no longer forced to play checkers, they’ll start to see why so many people like chess.

LIMA 2010: Not Necessarily Low Investments

2 Comments

February 15th, 2010 by Mays

Categories: LIMA, Sleepers

As we look at 2010’s LIMA candidates, let’s start off by looking at some guys who meet the statistical LIMA qualifications, but probably miss the “low investment” requirement. They were good enough last year that they aren’t going to come cheap. However, there’s still room for them to take another step forward in 2010, much like LIMA-qualifiers Felix Hernandez and Matt Cain did in 2009.

The pitchers in this group for 2010 are:

Josh Johnson
Jair Jurrjens
Wandy Rodriguez
Clayton Kershaw
Tommy Hanson

With the LIMA strategy, you’re obviously going to be passing on the big names (Halladay, Sabathia, Greinke, etc.) so that you can use that money for hitting. But maybe you can still target one of these guys as your staff ace. You can get similar production as you would from the household names in the top-tier, but at a bit better price.

With this tier of LIMA pitchers, there’s both good news and bad news. The good news: All of them were very good in 2009, although Hanson’s limited innings pitched capped his value a bit. The bad news: They are all projected for significant decline in 2010.

While I know the math behind the projections is — on the whole — solid, I can’t help but feel that these pitchers are being underestimated a little. Take a look at the projected ERA’s compared to last year:

2009 Actual ERA
Josh Johnson 3.23
Jair Jurrjens 2.60
Wandy Rodriguez 3.02
Clayton Kershaw 2.79
Tommy Hanson 2.89
Average 2.91

2010 Projected ERA
Josh Johnson 3.47
Jair Jurrjens 3.71
Wandy Rodriguez 3.74
Clayton Kershaw 3.65
Tommy Hanson 4.17
Average 3.74

Does that seem a little pessimistic to anyone else? They are projected to give up the same number of earned runs in 2010 as in 2009 (300) while pitching 200 fewer innings, and the result is an average ERA jump from 2.91 to 3.74!

One good sign for their future is that adding ZiPS would make these projections all a little brighter — across the board increases in IP and a significant improvement in ERA for Hanson, Kershaw, and Jurrjens. Based on last year’s results where the projections tended to miss the improvements made by LIMA pitchers, I’m going to err on the optimistic side this year.

So, no, I’m not going to stop bidding on Tommy Hanson at $5.

More Support for OBP

No Comments

February 12th, 2010 by Mays

Categories: Other Sites

I’m glad to see others are taking up the cause for replacing BA with OBP that I mentioned last week. Here’s what Zach at FanGraphs Fantasy Baseball wrote recently:

Chances are, someone reading this is wondering why a league would want to complicate things and switch to OBP, or are thinking about convincing their league to do the same. Here are some simple arguments as to why a league should adopt OBP:

1. When a player reaches base, I want credit for it. It really is a simple concept. I cannot tell you how many 0-2 games it seems I had from Manny last year, where I received no credit for him reaching base in his other trips to the plate.

2. The player is helping his team by reaching first base, so why shouldn’t he help mine? Again, a very simple and straightforward idea, but some still cannot wrap their head around it.

That makes sense to me. There are several fantasy stats that are less than ideal (like wins), but BA is the one that has the most workable replacement.

I’d love to see OBP become the new fantasy standard, so hopefully people continue to bring this up.

Want to Upload Your Own Projections?

21 Comments

February 11th, 2010 by Mays

Categories: Site News

I’m working on a new feature for the Price Guide — the ability to upload your own projections to use when generating player values.

I’m still getting the details worked out, but I’m looking for some people who would like to try it out. If you are interested in testing this out, leave a comment below or email me (mcopeland@lastplayerpicked.com), and I will send you the link to access it.

How Valuable is Multi-Positional Eligibility?

1 Comment

February 10th, 2010 by Mays

Categories: Fantasy Basics, Theory

I commented earlier on players that will be eligible at multiple positions in 2010. I think everyone would agree that there is fantasy value in being able to shift a player to a new position. The question is determining how much that ability is worth.

While I don’t have a precise formula for putting a dollar amount on extra eligibility, I think there are several important factors:

Some extra positions are more valuable than others.
Victor Martinez may qualify at both C and 1B, but his value at C is so much greater that it isn’t that useful to be able to put him at 1B.

As far as specific positions, I’d guess that the most valuable are players who qualify at both SS and 2B, like Asdrubal Cabrera. The next most valuable are middle infielders that also qualify at 3B, like Ian Stewart or Jhonny Peralta.

Less valuable are the players who just add 1B eligibility. Not only are there plenty of regular 1B available, but 1B is also the most common extra position in fantasy.

Multiple eligibility is less valuable in leagues with CI/MI positions.
Traditional fantasy leagues start both a “corner infielder” (either 1B or 3B) and a “middle infielder” (either 2B or SS) in addition to the actual baseball positions. These “flex” positions give you some natural wiggle-room: If your 1B gets hurt, you can maybe slide your CI to 1B, and replace your CI with either a 1B or a 3B.

Since you can use either a 1B or a 3B, in this situation a 1B/3B player is less important. But this makes a huge difference in a standard Yahoo or ESPN league that only starts one infielder at each position.

A multi-positional player is more important in a league that starts fewer players and less important in a traditional league with CI and MI.

Multiple eligibility is less valuable in leagues with transaction limits.
If your fantasy league lets you make daily roster changes and doesn’t cap games played, a multi-positional player is great. The simple ability to fit players in the lineup more often means you have an advantage in counting stat categories like HR, SB, R, and RBI.

However, if your league only allows weekly transactions, this strategy doesn’t work as well. Really, a multi-positional player just gives you a little extra coverage when you have a player go down with injuries.

All told, I’d probably be willing to spend an extra $3-4 for a multi-position player, or maybe draft them a round early. But that evaluation is very dependent on the context.

2009 Forecast Evaluations

4 Comments

February 9th, 2010 by Mays

Categories: Other Sites, Projections

Jared Cross has recently taken the time to see how well last year’s projections matched up with what really happened in 2009.

Here are the correlations they observed in fantasy (SGP) terms:

Averaged Projections
Fantistics
The Sporting News
Marcel
Steamer
ZiPS
CHONE
PECOTA
2008 Stats

Averaging all the projections together produced the best results, but the next best options were the Fantisticsand TSN projections.

For projection rate stats, it was the completely computerized CHONE and ZiPS projections that did the best job. However, for fantasy, it is even more important to have accurate playing-time projections than to just forecast a player’s ability. So the systems that had human-created playing-time forecasts (Marcel and Steamer used community playing-time projections) ended up on top in fantasy rankings.

Unsurprisingly, predicting 2009 stats based on 2008 ended up at the bottom, but PECOTA did pretty terribly, as well. Rumor is that Baseball Prospectus has done some work to get it back in shape for 2010.

The Fantistics projections are new to me, but that’s because they cost money ($40). It could be something worth looking at for people who are willing to pay for a fantasy resource, though.

It looks like our idea of “composite” projections is on the right track for accurate fantasy values. And combining the free, computer-generated projections with human-developed, playing-time forecasts looks to be ideal.

2010’s LIMA Candidates

2 Comments

February 8th, 2010 by Mays

Categories: LIMA, Sleepers

Last year, I highlighted 17 pitchers who showed signs of becoming very good pitchers in 2009: They struck guys out and limited the walks and homeruns. Despite these indicators of success, they were still priced cheaply enough to provide a good fantasy return on investment.

As we saw last week, 12 of those 17 pitchers improved on their 2008 marks in 2009. Felix Hernandez, Adam Wainwright, Matt Cain, Randy Wolf, and Jon Lester surged to greatness. Even players who the projections panned (John Danks, Wandy Rodriguez, Jorge De La Rosa) made a fantasy impact in 2009.

So let’s try the same thing for 2010. If 2009 is any guide, these are players whose skills may be a better indicator of future fantasy success than the projections on the Price Guide.

We’ll first eliminate the top tier of pitchers who meet the LIMA qualifications — LIMA is about building a cheap staff and Roy Halladay and Zack Greinke aren’t coming cheap. It’s interesting that several names from last year’s list (the aforementioned Hernandez, Wainwright, Lester, and Cain) have graduated into the top fantasy tier.

We’re left with the following 18 pitchers with K/BB >= 2, K/9 >= 6, HR/9 <= 1, and IP >= 100 in 2009:

Very Good and Probably Not Cheap
Josh Johnson
Jair Jurrjens
Wandy Rodriguez
Clayton Kershaw
Tommy Hanson

Known Commodities Off a Down Year
Roy Oswalt
Chad Billingsley
Jake Peavy
John Lackey

True LIMA Pitchers
Gavin Floyd
Ryan Dempster
Kevin Correia
Hiroki Kuroda
Jeff Niemann

Colorado Rockies
Ubaldo Jimenez
Jorge De La Rosa
Jose Contreras
Jason Hammel

(That’s right, the Colorado Rockies get their own tier of LIMA pitchers. Despite solid peripheral stats, the projections uniformly hate them all, presumably because of their home ballpark. Of course, the projections already missed once on De La Rosa last year, so take that how you will.)

We’ll break down those categories one at a time throughout the coming week.

Replacing AVG with OBP

3 Comments

February 5th, 2010 by Mays

Categories: Fantasy Basics

Yesterday, I asked if there were any rule changes that would make for a more realistic fantasy game without compromising fun.

For example, many leagues have tried adding extra categories — holds, errors, etc. — in an attempt to create a more realistic game. I’d argue that part of what makes fantasy fun is its simplicity, and going to 6×6 or 7×7 creates a more complicated game. Plus, going beyond 4×4 or 5×5 has a chance to completely alter the game’s balance.

I have one easy proposal for fantasy leagues, one simple change that makes the game more realistic, but does not change the balance of the categories or the ease of gameplay: Replace AVG with OBP.

In real baseball, walks are valuable. It doesn’t matter how a player gets on base, whether he gets a or a walk or is hit by pitch or reaches on an error. A walk is essentially worth the same as a single, but fantasy in its current forms completely misses the value of walks.

Since on-base percentage is functionally equivalent to batting average, I think the best thing to do is to replace BA with OBP. That lets the league keep the same balance of categories. But now your categories are just a little bit more better at matching values in real life.

Right now, I play in some some traditional leagues, but I also play in leagues that have made the switch to OBP. I can definitely say it’s the best change we have made. It’s small enough not to completely distort the game everyone is used to, but it also brings the fantasy game one step closer to the real thing.

Balancing Fun and Realism

6 Comments

February 4th, 2010 by Mays

Categories: Fantasy Basics

With any game — not just fantasy — there is a precarious balance between being fun and being realistic.

Think about sports video games: Most games have two settings — the actual game and an “arcade” style game. The arcade game is much simpler — the plays are standardized, the buttons are limited. If you’ve never played the game before, you are much more likely to have fun with the arcade style, just because it is more straightforward. The trade-off, of course, is that you sacrifice some realism from the main game to make it easier to play.

With fantasy sports, I think in general there is a tendency to want to make things more realistic. Leagues are always wanting to add more categories because there is some element of real baseball that is not being perfectly modeled by the fantasy game. We know that real teams roster middle-relievers and not just closers, so we add holds. We know we are leaving out defense…maybe adding errors will help?

Or maybe we just need one stat category: How about just using WAR for both hitters and pitchers? Using that one stat is probably a more realistic reflection of value than any combination of others.

The downside of those more realistic 9×9 and 10×10 leagues is that you lose the simplicity. And the downside of the uber-stat like WAR is that you lose the fun. Fantasy is about balancing realism and fun.

Fantasy baseball in its most common forms (4×4 and 5×5) is a pretty fun game. It also does a decent job of reflecting reality: Albert Pujols and Joe Mauer are valuable both in real life and in fantasy. Carlos Silva is worthless in both.

But I’m curious: Are there any rule changes that can improve realism without detracting from the simplicity of the current game? Are there any changes that would make fantasy baseball more fun without compromising its realism?

Can We Learn Anything from LIMA in 2009?

No Comments

February 3rd, 2010 by Mays

Categories: LIMA, Strategy

Yesterday, I went through the results of how last year’s LIMA pitchers did relative to expectations. (In case you aren’t familiar with it, LIMA is a strategy for drafting bargain starting pitchers with good strikeout, walk, and homeruns rates. Getting cheap — but potentially very good — pitching lets you focus most of your draft attention on loading up on hitting.)

On the whole, the LIMA pitchers did extremely well. Players like Felix Hernandez, Jon Lester, and Matt Cain took a huge step forward to become elite pitchers. Guys like Jonathan Sanchez and and Randy Wolf went from marginal to good. And, of course, a couple of guys (like Joba Chamberlain and Gil Meche) flopped completely.

So what did we learn from the whole thing? Here are a few lessons that I took from these results:

LIMA isn’t dead, yet.
As I’m re-reading my thoughts from last year, it’s clear that I was skeptical of the value of LIMA in the 21st century. LIMA originated in a world of 4×4 fantasy leagues, and today’s 5×5 dominated fantasy scene already appreciates high-strikeout pitchers. LIMA doesn’t know about BABIP or GB/FB rates that can also be indicators of future success. Projections are designed to consider strikeout, walk, and homerun rates and so the elements of LIMA should already be present in the dollar values.

But how do you explain two-thirds of LIMA pitchers outperforming their projections? Now, 12 out of 17 isn’t a great sample size, but that does seem to be a tangible effect. These pitchers went from a $4 average value in 2008 to an $11 value in 2009 (higher even than the $7 average projection).

A strategy that can identify a class of pitchers that will beat their projections by an average of $4 is a winning strategy. The overperformance of these starters certainly makes me inclined to continue bidding even past the projected dollar amount on similar pitchers in 2010.

Watch out for players on the border.
After a couple of years of striking out around 5 batters per nine, Paul Maholm edged into the LIMA qualifications for 2009 with a K/9 of just over 6 in the previous year. Of the players I looked at, he had the lowest strikeout rate and was in the bottom half for K/BB and HR/9.

In 2009, he promptly returned to his 5 K/9 ways. Hindsight tells us that Maholm was really the mediocre pitcher we saw in 2006-2008 and not the one who snuck into the LIMA qualifications in 2009. Apparently borderline LIMA players are not the best bets for success.

Of course, removing the bottom tier of LIMA qualifiers might have also dumped Wainwright (6.20 K/9) and Garza (6.23 K/9), both of whom improved in 2009, so this rule doesn’t work every time.

Watch out for players switching roles.
In 2008, Joba Chamberlain topped all of the LIMA categories, leading LIMA-inventor Ron Shandler to peg Joba as the #1 pitcher for 2009. The projections loved him as well, expecting him to double his value from the year before.

However, far from being the best fantasy pitcher of 2009, Chamberlain ended up in negative territory. What happened?

Most of the decline may have just been injuries or simple bad luck. But Joba’s failure also serves as a reminder that pitching relief is easier than starting and facing the same lineup multiple times a night. A RP who has LIMA skills may not be a LIMA starter.

We’ll keep those lessons in mind as we look at who fits the LIMA strategy for 2010.

Last Player Picked

LPP Features

Categories

Subscribe

Worth Reading

Archives