Draft Manifesto (part 2)

I can’t stress #11 enough.  I picked DeRosa up off the waiver wire last year and he saved me on more than one occasion.  You really can’t beat having a fairly productive guy on the bench that can play multiple positions.

Agreed.  Last year, I did my first rotisserie league, and did not have any DeRosa’s.  Definitely cost me the difference between second and third place, as by the end of the season I had topped out on pitcher innings and was an average of 5 or 6 games below max for each field position.  My math could have been better, but I also could have had a flexible bench player the whole season, which would have made me less reliant on my (faulty) math.  I was so used to head-to-head, where it’s often best just to use every available spot for pitchers and maximize K and W.

Also, I would note that if you are in a keeper league, I think you can pick starters earlier, as long as you focus on getting a good core group built as you suggest, for while any individual pitcher could go up and down, if you have a good core set of starters, those should all balance out, like risk in a stock portfolio. 

I had a snake draft, last pick of the first round so most of the good hitters were gone, so I decided to build on pitching, selecting Johan, Lincecum, Dice-K with my first three picks, then selected Javier Vasquez, Scott Baker, Andy Sonnanstine, Sean Marshall, and Jonathan Sanchez later, plus selected Clay Buchholz and Adam Miller with the minor league draft.  We had a 9 man rotation.

Here’s the link to Part 1:

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/fantasy/index.php/P15

I don’t know what it is exactly that you think Vasquez finally put altogether last season, but he looks like the same pitcher he was for the previous 4 seasons to me. That means ~200IP with 190-200K and a 1.27-8 WHIP for fantasy purposes. Decent, but not spectacular if can’t get his ERA in the low end range of 4. And let’s not forget that he turns 35 this year, there isn’t going to be any dramatic improvements forthcoming in his abilities.

Thumble, you’re right.  For some reason, I saw Chone’s projection of him for next year (ERA of 3.35 or so, K/9 over 9.0) and assumed he had a better year last year than he actually did.

The difference is his (new) home league and park.  I expect a very good season out of him in the NL.  I think ballpark-wise, he’s better off in the NL East than he was in the NL Central as well.

I think I tend to overvalue WHIP a little bit, because it’s more predictable (or stable, I should say) than ERA.  Check out my piece here: http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/fantasy/article/category-influence/

Excluding SV and SB, which are a little biased, WHIP is in the middle of the stats as far as the extent to which being strong at it actually translates to consistent category wins in a head-to-head league.  So in that sense, I would neither say it’s important or unimportant, but just average.

As for what I do, I tend to actually just use projections of H and BB to come up with a projected WHIP.  So I assume that Chones, Marcels, and Zips have a good sense of a player’s likely walk and hit rate, and just calculate WHIP from there.  While FIP factors out some luck, as you mention - there are a few different ways to get a good FIP, and not all of them involve a good WHIP.

thumble9,
In regard to Vazquez, definitely check out my article here: http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/fantasy/article/introducing-quality-of-opponent-adjustments-and-caps-for-pitchers/

As you can probably tell, I’m pretty big on him this year.  While at 35 his skills won’t be improving, luck will hopefully catch up with him (and not the kind of luck people normally refer to with Vazquez).