Otherwise, as you anticipated, the IP would have been way too low.

I know the PG doesn’t understand minimums. I meant changing the SP/RP/P numbers until you get to around 1200 innings. But I guess you were already there!

The Price Guide has no awareness of IP minimums.

I’m curious as to if the differences would be lessened further if there was an innings minimum imposed on the price guide, say 1200 IP? That’s what my league uses, anyway…

@Molson: I almost mentioned Mauer, because he was the only hitter where there was a greater than $4 difference. For the players you mentioned:

Player: $RA, $PG

Mauer: $27, $22
Pedroia: $22, $20
Polanco: $8, $6
Guzman: $3, $2

So SGPs were actually consistently a bit higher on BA specialists than what the Price Guide thought. So I think your theory for pitching sounds good, but I don’t know if the batting data confirms it.

The Price Guide does things differently. It doesn’t assume a certain number of IP so the way that it values ERA and WHIP is based on whether or not a pitcher is better or worse than average and weights that by the number of IP that pitcher is projected for. In other words, a good way to construct your pitching staff is to get a high quality ace or two, an elite closer or two, and then a bunch of low ERA/WHIP, high K rate middle relievers with win vulture potential and get by with the minimum number of IP you can. This is what the price guide recommends. You can also throw a bunch of innings and rack up the counting stats and hope you get an above average ERA/WHIP, which you have a good chance of doing if you can pick favorable matchups to go with an ace and a closer or two. Since ERA/WHIP is often clustered very close in final standings, this is an approach that a lot of people do since it allows you to try to maximize your counting stats while hoping you get slightly better than average in ERA/WHIP.

If you were in a league with no (or limited) transactions, the price guide style is clearly superior. In a real situation, the price guide style will likely leave you struggling in W, K, and SVs and you have to sacrifice some ERA/WHIP to compete in the counting stats.

To test this theory, I would bet that a hitter with low counting stats and a high average is affected in the same way. Take a look at Joe Mauer, Dustin Pedroia, Placido Polanco, and Christian Guzman in both systems and see if there’s a greater than average dollar difference there.

I believe that they come up with a higher pitching split because projections aren’t knowledgeable about the increased injury and luck risk inherent with pitchers. While projections can give you a number that it thinks a player will reach on average, it is unable to account for the fact that there is greater variance in pitching projections than there are in hitting projections (due to BABIP, LOB%, HR/FB, defense, bullpen, etc). I believe this is also part of why actual drafters “undervalue” catchers as well, as opposed to their projected statistics; catchers have a great injury risk and therefore their projections have greater variance.

In order to reduce the risk of picking a dud who gets injured, people will simply pay less for catchers and pitchers. Even though a few lucky souls will end up with a steal if their catcher or pitcher stays healthy all season. People are simply risk averse in will pay less for riskier players even though on average they will perform up to their projections. However you only have one team and one season so you don’t want to be that guy who ends up in last (because all of your risky players got injured/unlucky) even though you might end up in first (because all of your risky players stayed healthy/lucky). I guess where you take these risky players will ultimately depend on your risk preference. Do you invest in stocks or us bonds?

I believe Tim said that he doesn’t actually choose the split, the values just come out however they do. Is this another flaw of SGP or is this telling us what pitchers’ true value is, which is much higher than we pay for during the auction? For the method I use, I actually choose the split and go with 67/33 because my league always spends about that and most other leagues do too.

This is great! I find your conclusion especially fascinating, that the Price Guide shows what you should do, but SGPs reflect what people actually do.

This is a great insight in constructing a pitching staff. I appreciate your willingness to test this out!