SubscribeA long-standing rule of thumb for fantasy baseball auctions is that a team should optimally spend 70% of their money on hitters and the remaining 30% on pitchers.
Actually, it’s not always described as a 70/30 split. Some people think it’s closer to 67/33, some say 65/35. But I think everyone recognizes the line is somewhere around there.
Let’s examine this rule with regard to the Price Guide:
When the Price Guide assigns dollar values, it does so without respect to whether a player is a hitter or a pitcher. There is no set allocation between hitters and pitchers. All it does is look at the player’s value as a percentage of the total amount of value among all drafted players, and assigns that player the same percentage of the total draft dollars. It doesn’t matter if that player is a hitter or a pitcher.
So, using a method that doesn’t differentiate between hitters and pitchers, what does the split end up being? Fortunately, when the Price Guide displays its dollar values, it also displays how the money was distributed between hitters and pitchers. Based on the 2008 final stats, it will come up with these splits for standard rotisserie leagues:
Mixed rotisserie: 70/30
AL-only rotisserie: 72/28
NL-only rotisserie: 72/28
That looks to me like it passes the smell test. And remember, we arrived at those numbers without considering any of the other explanations for the 70/30 split (pitcher riskiness or anything else). We just distributed the dollars evenly to all players, and the numbers fall perfectly in line with what fantasy players expect.
ESPN and Yahoo
Now notice how the split ends up for 2008 Yahoo and ESPN default leagues:
The Price Guide recommends spending more on pitchers in these leagues. Why is that? The main factor is that these leagues draft fewer hitters than a traditional rotisserie league. Whereas the traditional league drafts 1.56 hitters for every pitcher (14/9), Yahoo takes only 1.29 hitters per pitcher and ESPN 1.22. If there are relatively fewer hitters taken, it makes sense that more money should be spent on pitchers.
So keep this in mind if your fantasy auction is more like an ESPN or Yahoo league: It’s OK to allocate more money to pitchers than usual. The Price Guide should point you towards the optimal amount.
Projections
The numbers above are all based on the final stats for 2008. But for 2009, we’re more interested in what the split is for the projections. Let’s see what these splits look like with the CHONE projections:
Mixed rotisserie: 66/34
AL-only rotisserie: 65/35
NL-only rotisserie: 68/32
Yahoo: 61/39
ESPN: 60/40
Across the board, the Price Guide suggests allocating more money to pitchers. About 4% of draft dollars shifts from hitting to pitching on average.
Now this, I think, is a little surprising. Pitchers are supposed to be unpredictable, which traditionally means that you should spend less on them. But the projections factor in the risk associated with pitchers, and the Price Guide suggests that you should spend even more on them.
Here’s what I think is happening: Pitchers as a whole are less predictable, and the unpredictability leads to the pitchers being projected more conservatively than hitters.
But that is not true for all pitchers. There are a few who have consistently shown themselves to be very good. As we become less confident in their peers, these pitchers become more valuable, because we are more certain of what they can give us.
So using projections, the Price Guide recommends that you take about 4% of what hitters will earn, and instead allocate it to the top-tier pitchers. That’s not a big shift–only about $9 per team. And it isn’t spread across all pitchers, just the top 15 or so (Santana, Sabathia, Peavy, Haren, Kazmir, etc.).
Notice that the average rotisserie league split from the Price Guide is now 66/34, which is still in the ballpark of 70/30. Just keep in mind that the split for your league can vary from that quite a bit. If you are interested in what the split is for your league, just try it out on the Price Guide.
Related posts:
This ties in nicely to the other post on inflation. The Price Guide reccomends that I have a 61/49 split, but I go 70/30. I’ll explain.
I’ll liken it to when I go to the grocery store to buy some Bran Flakes. I have to choose between the $4 name brand and $2 store brand. To me, they both taste the same, so the choice is pretty obvious. You would be amazed at how many poeple out there will say, “It’s only $2, what’s the difference?” Well, if I eat 50 boxes of ceral a year, that 100 after tax dollars. Of course I don’t have an extra $100 in my pocket at the end of the year. I take that $100 and use it to buy premium items that I want, like steak instead of hamburger.
So it is in fantasy baseball. You don’t want to spend money on something you can get for free. In my league, to be a #3 starter you have to provide at least $8 worth of value. But I would never spend $8 on an $8 pitcher. Why? Because 11 of the top 37 starting pitchers in 2008 came off of the wiaver wire. This is not an unusual situation. So why pay $8 for a #3 starter? On top of that, starting pitching values vary so wildly from week to week, it’s not all that uncommon to have a top 15 starter ($20) available on the wiaver wire!
So what I do is calculate the $values in a similar manner to the Price Guide, which comes out at exactly 61/39. Then, I take every starting pitcher worth $10 or less and move them down to $1. Then I take that money and spend it on elite offense. Thus, I can be “inefficient” and overpay for top flight hitting talent and still put together a very good pitching staff. The final tally usually ends up having an extra 9-10% shifted from pitching to hitting.
rwperu34 grocery store analogy, where he buys generic makes sense in standard leagues because as he says there are always waiver wire pitching values during the year. I think that is the main reason the standard fantasy advice is to focus more on hitting.
But in deep leagues (AL/NL only, or 16-20 team leagues) you can’t do that. The waiver wire is harder to work. In those cases, you may want to consider a contrary strategy, actually bumping pitchers up by a buck because they are undervalued. Why undervalued? Owners read/listen to the overwhelming fantasy advice to avoid pitchers which is valid on a standard mixed league, even though they are in a deep league where it might not apply as much.
O.k my league is small (8 teams) we have:
1 C
1 1b
1 2b
1 3b
1 MI
1 CI
4 OF
1 UTIL
6 P
7 Bench
What happens is basically everyone loads the bench with pitchers the average team has about 12 pitchers, basically all their bench. WHen i plug it in for the price calculator do i put pitchers in at 6 or 12…whenever i put it in at 6 it automatically puts the split at 49/51 in favour of pitching. MY league follows a traditional 70/30 split even with excess pitchers so my values are messed, How can I manually force it to do a 70/30 or 60/40 split. Or should i just not count the bench?
@Confused: A typical league has 14 hitters out of 23 players — roughly 50% more hitters than pitchers. So it’s not surprising that two-thirds of the money is spent on hitters.
In your league, you have hitters to pitchers in about a 1:1 ratio… It seems like a 50/50 split makes sense in that case.
There’s currently no way to force a certain split, although I’m sure you could adjust the values with a spreadsheet and some free time on your hands… Why do you think you need to spend money like the rest of your league does?
Because with those values in my league I won’t get any hitters, even upper middle one’s my lineup will be terrible. All the bench pitchers go for only a dollar so could i just plug in 6 pitchers and then change the negative 1’s to one until i have 12×8 pitchers and take that amount of money used to do that off of hitters.
Sure, there are lots of ways you can manipulate the values, and that way sounds like as good as any.
However, I would still base my values on what the Price Guide indicates. That might mean you’ll miss out on the hitters. But with no hitters on anyone’s bench, you should be able to react more quickly off of the waiver wire. (The people who paid more for hitters will be more hesitant to drop them than you are.) You should be able to find some talent with less than 100 hitters drafted.
You might not drive up the prices for pitchers as much as they are needed, but you can make people spend a little bit more. I think people will notice, especially if you dominate the pitching categories this year. If you get, say, 35 points in pitching and maybe 20 in hitting, you should be near the top of your league.
It’s just that those 6 bench pitchers all go for around $1 so if i actually put in the machine that i need 12 those pitchers i can get for a dollar are counted as maybe even $10, and that money all comes out of the hitters.