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More Math from Mass

6 Comments
February 27th, 2010 by Mays
Categories: Fantasy Basics, Other Sites, Theory

I wish I could resist the lure of AJ Mass’s ESPN.com articles, but I cannot.

Mass answers the question I’ve always been wondering: “What happens if you rank fantasy hitters using bizarre, illogical criteria?” His top 10 fantasy hitters:

1 Jacoby Ellsbury
2 Carl Crawford
3 Michael Bourn
4 Albert Pujols
5 Matt Kemp
6 Mark Reynolds
7 Ryan Braun
8 Ian Kinsler
9 Hanley Ramirez
10 Chone Figgins

Now there’s something unusual about that list, but I can’t quite put my finger on it… Mass has already expressed his love for Ellsbury, so I guess it’s not too surprising that he puts Carl Crawford #2 and Michael Bourn #3.

How did this happen? The secret is in the faulty starting assumption:

What we’ve done is very simple. We’ve taken the league-wide totals from last season to create a statistical universe for our players to inhabit. We determined the expected statistical output of the average player, assuming even distribution among the lineup spots. From this, we were able to extrapolate the relative value of each hit, each run scored and so on. In other words, since there were more home runs than stolen bases in 2009, by a ratio in the neighborhood of 7-to-4, the value of each stolen base was about seven-fourths that of a home run, matching the relative frequency of the event.

I’m pretty sure you want to use the totals from a typical fantasy league, not all of MLB. Using the pool of fantasy starters will either get you to SGP or standard scores, either of which should yield a pretty realistic result.

Using the pool of all MLB hitters is just going to give you a mess.

Pairing Your First Two Picks

4 Comments
February 24th, 2010 by Mays
Categories: Other Sites, Strategy

Good stuff from Grey at Razzball.com on pairing your first round pick with a complementary second rounder:

Hanley Ramirez – Again, you want just about anyone but Tulo, Reyes or Rollins. Ideally, you want a big bat. I.e., not Carl Crawford. Someone that is going to get you 30+ homers. Howard and Fielder will be gone, but A-Gon, Morneau, Zimmerman or even Votto should be there. I’d consider J-Upside, but if I went that way I would definitely want another 30+ hitter sooner vs. later.

I really like the idea of thinking ahead for future picks, especially since so much energy is spent just thinking about the fantasy first round. I don’t think this is even inconsistent with the “take the best available” strategy. With a pairing strategy, you’re not locking yourself in on a certain player for the second round — you have to be flexible at the draft — but you are considering the kind of player you want. It’s hardly a reach to take Adrian Gonzalez over Carl Crawford with your second round pick.

Of course, it’s not strictly necessary to balance power-speed with your first picks. If you start off with Hanley and Crawford, you can fill in some power hitters in later rounds (say a Jason Kubel or Billy Butler). If you wind up with two power hitters early (maybe Prince Fielder and Adrian Gonzalez), you can always mix in some SB-threats later on. Your first two picks won’t put you so far ahead in any category that won’t need any other help in that stat.

But looking for a power-speed-pitching balance early does give you much greater flexibility later on. If I have some of each, I don’t have to reach for Michael Bourn a few rounds early to make sure I get stolen bases. I draft Bourn when he makes sense, and I never have to do anything desperate. Having both power and speed early in the draft gives you the freedom to just draft the best players later.

CHONE’s Best Bargains

No Comments
February 21st, 2010 by Mays
Categories: Other Sites, Sleepers

Andrew at Fantasy Ball Junkie points out what he finds to be the best fantasy bargains for 2010, according to the CHONE projections:

1. Eric Young
2. Russell Martin
3. David Ortiz
4. Julio Borbon
5. Jeff Francouer
6. Melky Cabrera
7. Delmon Young
8. BJ Upton
9. Magglio Ordonez
10. Jose Reyes

A couple of names (Eric Young Jr., Julio Borbon) also popped up on my SB sleeper list earlier this year. Many of the rest are guys who had a down year in 2009. Even though fantasy owners tend to focus solely on last year’s results, projections remind us that players tend to return to their established level of performance.

That could be good news for those willing to take a risk on Russell Martin, David Ortiz, B.J. Upton, or Jose Reyes.

AJ Argues for Ellsbury in the First Round

5 Comments
February 19th, 2010 by Mays
Categories: Fantasy Basics, Other Sites, Theory

AJ Mass at ESPN explains how Jacoby Ellsbury should be a first round pick this year.

Regarding those who might prefer Prince Fielder or Ryan Howard in the late first round, AJ says:

They might have mainstream public opinion on their side, but you would have mathematics. Allow me to explain why you just can’t let him get past you with, say, the seventh, eighth or ninth pick in the first round and leave open the possibility that he might not make it back to you. You need to take him with that first-round pick.

Well, who am I to argue with mathematics?

AJ’s idea is what he calls “Mass Effect,” a valuation system that makes Ellsbury the #1 overall player in fantasy last year. That’s right: Jacoby Ellsbury, Fantasy MVP.

Did I mention that it ranks Carl Crawford #2, Derek Jeter #5, and Ichiro Suzuki #7? Something doesn’t seem right here…

Well, AJ acknowledges that Mass Effect has “one flaw.” He explains how stolen bases become less valuable throughout the season due to diminishing returns. So to adjust for the changing value of stolen bases, he decides to knock off 50% of the value of each stolen base.

I’m sure he went through some of his extensive mathematics to come up with that 50% figure, since it drops Ellsbury from #1 overall to a much more realistic #10 overall.

Just to recap:

1. Come up with a player valuation system that doesn’t make sense.
2. Instead of recognizing that the system doesn’t make sense, fudge the numbers some so that they look better and yet still fail to reflect reality.
3. Call it “mathematics.”

I love it.

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.

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:

  1. Averaged Projections
  2. Fantistics
  3. The Sporting News
  4. Marcel
  5. Steamer
  6. ZiPS
  7. CHONE
  8. PECOTA
  9. 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.

Fantasy Baseball Draft Board from xlsSports

4 Comments
March 16th, 2009 by Mays
Categories: Other Sites

For those of you who are interested in using Price Guide dollar values in an upcoming draft, xlsSports has released a Fantasy Baseball Draft Board that does just that.

The Fantasy Baseball Draft Board is a spreadsheet for standard leagues (5×5 mixed) that allows you to track how each team is doing during a draft. It shows the projected standings for your league (based on the ZiPS projections or on the Price Guide’s composite projections) so that you can know what categories to target as the draft progresses.

And best of all, the Draft Board is completely free.

Comparing the Price Guide to SGPs

9 Comments
March 5th, 2009 by Mays
Categories: Other Sites, Theory

John left this comment on one of my recent posts about SGPs:

Mays, I’m sure you’ll see, if you haven’t already, that Tim at RotoAuthority has released his projections and dollar values based on the SGP method.

It seems like a good opportunity to test your methodology against SGPs. I for one, would be curious to see how they compare.

The dollar values John is referring to are here. And since he asked, let’s look at what happens when I run Tim’s projections through the Price Guide.

When I built fantasy dollar values with the Price Guide using the exact same league settings that Tim uses for SGP, I get pretty much what I expected: Very little difference.

By my count, for the 418 players Tim projects, the Price Guide’s values are within $2 on 290 of them. I count 354 players that are within $3 (85%). When the Price Guide builds values for the exact same fantasy league that SGPs were designed for, you should notice very little difference.

But where do the methodologies diverge? One of the biggest differences was Ubaldo Jimenez, projected for 4.49 ERA, 1.51 WHIP, 10 W, 155 K, 182 IP. Tim’s SGPs put him at $1; the Price Guide says -$7. The SGPs really like his win and strikeout totals, enough that they will overlook some pretty nasty ratios. For the Price Guide, the negatives in ERA and WHIP outweigh any positives in the counting stats. SGPs love the counting stats, but the Price Guide hates the rate stats.

The only other player that they are that far apart on is Ben Sheets, whom the Price Guide has at $6, and RotoAuthority puts at -$2 — another $8 difference. Accounting for surgery that will cause Sheets to miss at least half of the year, Tim projects a line of 3.60 ERA, 1.21 WHIP, 5 W, 60 K, 75 IP. This is the same situation as Jimenez, except in reverse! The Price Guide loves the good rate stats; SGPs hate the bad counting stats.

Basically, the Price Guide’s strategy is to not chase wins and strikeouts, because doing so costs you ERA and WHIP. It advocates drafting middle relievers like Hideki Okajima ($1 to RA’s -$3), Scot Shields ($2 to RA’s -$1), and Edwar Ramirez ($1 to RA’s -$2). It says that’s what people should do.

Standings Gain Points show you what people actually do. Namely, they will draft a starter with a 1.51 WHIP if it can get them a few extra K’s.

Keep in mind that all of this is talking about a league with the exact same settings as the SGP dollar values were built for. But what happens if you try to apply SGP values to an even slightly different league?

Another Look at the RotoTimes Player Rater

5 Comments
March 3rd, 2009 by Mays
Categories: Other Sites, Price Guide

You may remember that when I compared the Price Guide to some of the other player valuators, my impression was that RotoTimes’s Player Rater was the worst of the bunch. RotoTimes recently added some new features, like the ability to choose how much money to allocate for hitters and pitchers. I tried it out again to see if anything had changed or improved.

What I found is that the Player Rater still can’t compete with the Price Guide head-to-head. Using the same sorts of drafts as before, RotoTimes always finished below the Price Guide in the standings. It is hurt by its continued tendency to overrate fast OF — it ranks Ichiro as the 21st best hitter last year, ahead of guys like Matt Kemp and Nick Markakis. (The Price Guide has him as 41, for comparison.)

But the main problem I see with the RotoTimes Player Rater is that it has no clue as to what to use for the replacement level. That’s because you only tell it the number of hitters and pitchers that your league uses, instead of the number at each position. If you tell it 14 hitters, it will give you the same values if your league drafts 14 outfielders per team or if each team starts 14 shortstops. All it knows is that each team gets 14 hitters.

It doesn’t take a crazy 14-outfielder league to make it give weird results, though. When I get values for a 12-team fantasy league with 14 hitters per team, it shows 10 catchers with a postive dollar value. Ten catchers for twelve teams? That doesn’t even work for a one-catcher league, and it is terribly inaccurate for a two-catcher league.

Out of curiosity, I tried out a few more league settings and counted how many catchers the tool said to draft:

12 mixed: 10 catchers (.83 per team)
12 AL: 22 catchers (1.83 per team)
20 mixed: 27 catchers (1.35 per team)
20 NL: 56 catchers (2.8 per team)

So in some leagues, the Player Rater doesn’t even draft enough catchers to fill one per team. In other leagues, it decides that most teams need three catchers! I have no idea how they are coming up with their replacement levels, but I’m pretty sure it’s not right.

For the record, I still haven’t found any valuation system that can beat than the Price Guide.

Ryan Howard or Mark Teixeria?

8 Comments
February 26th, 2009 by Mays
Categories: Other Sites

Yahoo’s Roto Arcade made a characteristically pun-filled comparison of Ryan Howard and Mark Teixeria:

Undoubtedly, Teixeira will hit for a healthier average, but his power numbers, even in the Bronx Bombers’ loaded lineup, will pale in comparison. Howard will likely finish with 8-12 more homers and 15-30 more RBIs.

The Price Guide’s composite projection gives Howard a 12 HR advantage and an extra 14 RBI — pretty close to what Brad Evans guesses, although more optimistic about Teixeria’s RBI chances.

However, the Price Guide has Howard batting a surprisingly solid .272 this year. That’s quite an improvement from the .251 he batted last year, but remember that he did manage to hit .313 in his MVP-winning year. Assuming that Howard can hang with Teixeira in AVG, his advantages in HR and RBI put Howard about $4 ahead of Tex in a standard league or $7 up in a Yahoo-style league.

So which one do you pick? (Yahoo’s poll indicates a preference of 2:1 for Teixeira.)

The answer might be neither of them. In the same price range as Howard and Teixeira, we also find Lance Berkman and Prince Fielder. Personally, I don’t have any strong feelings about any of those four, and I’d probably take whichever player is looking like the best bargain on draft day.

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