SubscribeI have mentioned that I think Standings Gain Points (SGPs) are a pretty good method of determining player values for fantasy. However, I don’t use them for the Price Guide based on some shortcomings I have found. This week I’m pointing out some of the quibbles that I have with the SGP methodology:
If you have looked at any of the projection systems that the Price Guide uses, you may have noticed that they look a little conservative. Marcel projects Ryan Howard to lead the league with 119 RBI? No pitcher is expected to finish with more than 16 wins?
These things are not indicative of problems with the projection systems and are, in fact, positive features. While it’s very likely that someone will get close to 20 wins, it is impossible to predict who it will be. I’d bet that someone tops 130 RBI, but I don’t have a clue who it will be. When you are predicting something as unpredictable as baseball stats, the smart route is to be conservative. (Tango explains this fully here.)
So it’s clear that our projections are operating on a different scale than the real life stats. On the projections scale, a player projected for 100 RBIs is elite. In real life, he’s just “pretty good.”
What happens when you mix-and-match the projected scale with the real life scale? Standings Gain Points attempts to find out. On one hand, it’s looking at the stats from last year (the “real life scale”) to determine the relative value of each category. It then takes those values and applies them to a completely different scale — the regressed scale from the projections.
Consider saves, a highly variable stat: Players on fantasy teams will always finish with more saves than what was projected for players before the year. When SGPs look at last year’s stats, they might see about six saves separating each team (McGee came up with 6.2 – 6.3 in his book) and determine that 6 saves are worth 1 SGP.
Remember, however, that the projections don’t project that many saves! And on a scale with fewer saves, the saves that are available become more valuable.
This is a nuance that is missed by SGP, but is caught by the Price Guide. Notice that when the Price Guide determines the value of each save, it is using the scale determined by the projections themselves. Which means it is willing to value saves from the reliable closers more highly than SGP does.
Related posts:
Great article your price guide just gets better and better. A great feature you could think about adding would be to not only let people edit individual stats one at a time but let them upload an excel file or something of their own set of projections to be used. It sounds hard to do but i’d be pretty cool.
Either way great job, also you should have a forum of some sorts, instead of me asking annoying questions under whatever article I feel like lol:P.
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.
This is an old thread so I don’t know if this will get pinged to you, but…
in the thread that you linked to in your other thread:
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/the_worth_of_sb_hr_and_all_other_categories_in_fantasy_baseball/
In post #60, tangotiger addresses this same issue and comes up with the opposite conclusion. What do you think?