I agree with your general point, though: You are more likely to find a SP worth starting on the waiver wire than at other positions. I think that’s more due to pitcher unpredictability, though.

You start more players at hitting positions than at pitching positions. By this I mean, my league starts 5 OF per team, 10 teams. That’s 50 out of the 90 starting OF on a given day in the league. We have nine pitcher slots, and assuming you’re using a 6/3 SP/RP split, 60 of 150 starting pitchers are being used (obviously not on a given day, but that many starting spots are in use).
That means that the top ~55% of the starting OF are in starting spots while only the top 40% of SP are in starting spots. In this case, assuming that the distribution of talent in the two positions is similar, I would rather have a top OF and then waiver-wire an SP from that ~15% gap than have a top SP and waiver-wire an OF from below that top ~55%. If you look at other positions (at least the way my league is set up), you find similar things.
We have a CI and an MI slot as well as two UTIL slots on offense. Assuming that half the league uses a 2B at its MI spot and half uses an SS there, MI=.5(2B)+.5(SS) (it doesn’t, but it’s the simplest way to model it). Similarly, CI=.5(1B) + .5(3B). Then each UTIL=.1(C)+.1(1B)+.1(2B)+.1(SS)+.1(3B)+.5(OF) just going off of position distributions and assuming that those distributions are the same at the UTIL slot (which they aren’t, but again a simple model).
Counting the two UTIL slots, this would work out that 17 of the 30 starting 1B, 2B, SS, and 3B are started at a given time (~57%), while 60 of the 90 starting OF are started at a given time (~67%). Also, 12 of 30 C are started (40%). Again, going on the assumption that each team starts 3 RP and that there are no closers on the wire, each team starts 6 SP, which is 40% of starters.
Overall, my point is that a higher percentage of the total MLB starters at each position (except catcher) is started than at SP, which would seem to me to show that, again assuming even distribution of talent, the waiver options for SP are better than the hitting waiver options, making the top-end hitter more valuable in the endgame. An example is obviously that you could pick up the median pitcher off the wire (50th percentile) but you could not pick up the median player at any other position except catcher. Again, bench spots would factor into this as well because more players will be rostered, but this would be my theory as to why the top hitters are more valuable than the top pitchers.

The iterative method for determining the averages is interesting. The only thing that it does is modify the SDs, or rather determine the proper SDs to use.

I’ve toyed with using league-wide SDs, SDs of fantasy standings, and SDs of top performers and top expected performers.

I’m not sure that I’m a fan of using the SDs of projected stats. This is probably why you see top pitchers projected highly. The SD on projected wins is usually fairly low since wins are are hard to project. Usually much lower than the SD in actual wins. This makes a marginal win worth a lot more to the price guide, making the top win pitchers worth probably more than they should be.

What I’ve done in the past is to use the SD for the actual previous year’s results, and this seems to help with the issue of overvaluing pitchers.

http://www.lastplayerpicked.com/examining-the-7030-split/

And you are right, a traditional league (14 hitters, 9 pitchers) ends up at about 66/34, and an ESPN league (11 hitters, 9 pitchers) ends up at about 60/40 (as you would expect with fewer hitters drafted.)

I don’t think forcing it to 70/30 would make a huge impact; it would raise the price of the top hitters a dollar or two but not enough to really change the rankings.

If you force it to a 70/30 split, that might provide slightly more sane values.

But really, it’s about pitching stats being hard to forecast and the “top” pitchers being consistently good and the others having a lot more noise in their numbers.

The bigger issue is the wild variance in pitcher value from week to week. A pitcher who is worth $0 is worth $20+ when he has two starts. A $10 pitcher with one start is only worth starting when he has a favorable matchup. With hitting, you’ll only generate ~$5 if you can get seven games and favorable park and platoon matchups.

For example, in my league last year, I finished second in pitching by two points. The guy who beat me had $60 more in value on his roster at the end of the year. It’s not like his pitchers outproduced mine by that much either. If I ran our final stats from the statndings and turned that into nine pitchers, his value should have been ~$10 better. That would be right in line with a two point win. The reason for the discrepancy was, he went out and bought pitchers while I maximized value through the waiver wire.

I wonder what things would look like if you raised replacement by 1.50 points for hitters and 2.50 for pitchers?

I agree that most pitchers are more prone to performance variation… However, that seems like it would drive up the value of the few consistent performers (like Santana) by lowering the baseline.

I know I’ve seen studies on pitcher injuries, but I honestly don’t remember if the data backed up the claim that pitchers are more likely to be injured. Anyone have a link?