SubscribeI 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.
Related posts:
This is a joke. ESPN is loaded with Red Sox homers, and they’re obviously looking for any system that would rank a Sox player #1. I would love to be in a money league with this tool and snatch Pujols with the #4 pick!
I agree they are a bunch of homers but I don’t think this system is about finding a way rank a Red Sox #1… I think Mass actually believes this crap he writes… And then (as Mays said recently) he throws in some arbitrary numbers to make it look like it makes a little more sense.
I know the “pros” at ESPN are pretty much all a bunch of yahoos but Mass’ dunce cap stands tallest of them all.
this article is ridiculous. he gets this list by seeing how good a player is when you remove each category, and then averaging them together or something. so what you get is this: is michael bourn, e.g, any good if the following category…
is the only one that counts / doesn’t count?
R: no / yes
HR: no / yes
RBI: no / yes
SB: yes / no
AVG: no / yes
so while the rest of us see he only helps you in 20% of your categories, Mass’s reverse-math says in 80% of make-believe leagues without certain categories, he’s still good at one thing.
it’s all apples to oranges, anyway; you can’t compare SB to HR on the same scale. i love how he does anyway, but just throws out BA for the same reason… not to mention ignores the fact that it’s much easier to find a SB specialist late in the draft or in free agency than someone with R, RBI and HR. what a dunce.
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.
^^ this is a crucial point. as a first timer i did my own rankings off marcel and accounted for stat scarcity last year. SHOULD have capped it at top 250 players, or up to an estimate of where the waiver wire would be. and what i got was a win heavy, steal heavy team that stayed in first until it got decimated by injuries. and i didnt have much power.
Yeah, we had a laugh about this post too. ESPN does a service to every fantasy baseball player whose leaguemates believe their faulty logic….
Amusing follow-up… Mass picked Ellsbury second overall in the ESPN AL-Only mock, and they provide the projected standings:
http://sports.espn.go.com/fantasy/baseball/flb/story?page=mlbdk2k10alonlymock1
He wins steals by 23 over the second-place guy, but ends up ranked last overall. Good job, mathematical genius.