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Friday, March 25, 2011

2011 Yahoo F&F League - Teams Singman and Carty

Posted by Paul Singman at 1:33am

On Tuesday Derek and I traveled to our respective computers to participate in the Yahoo Friends and Family League draft. For me, it's my third year in the league and Derek is the newbie in the crowd, which consists of the seven main Yahoo experts, three Rotowire senior writers, one dynamic Razzball duo, and one Wall Street Journal contributor. Add Derek and me and you get the 14 members that comprise this mixed, rotisserie scoring league.

The past two years I've finished in the respectable but unsatisfying position of fourth, so I'm looking forward to finishing above that this year. Below you will find my and Derek's rosters and after you will see a poll where you can pick whose team you like more.

+---------------------------------++---------------------------------+
|           TEAM CARTY            ||           TEAM SINGMAN          |
+-----+-------------------+-------++-----+-------------------+-------+
| Pos | Player            | Round || Pos | Player            | Round |
+-----+-------------------+-------++-----+-------------------+-------+
| C   | Mike Napoli       |   8   || C   | Joe Mauer         |   4   |
| 1B  | Joey Votto        |   1   || 1B  | Luke Scott        |  18   |
| 2B  | Chase Utley       |   6   || 2B  | Ryan Raburn       |   9   |
| 3B  | Jose Bautista     |   3   || 3B  | David Wright      |   1   |
| SS  | Ryan Theriot      |  17   || SS  | Jose Reyes        |   2   |
| CI  | Mark Reynolds     |   5   || CI  | Gaby Sanchez      |  14   |
| MI  | Omar Infante      |  19   || MI  | Elvis Andrus      |   7   |
| OF  | Matt Holliday     |   2   || OF  | Jason Heyward     |   3   |
| OF  | Ichiro Suzuki     |   4   || OF  | Nick Swisher      |  11   |
| OF  | Juan Pierre       |   9   || OF  | Travis Snider     |  13   |
| OF  | Denard Span       |  13   || OF  | Ben Francisco     |  21   |
| UT  | Edwin Encarnacion |  15   || UT  | Pablo Sandoval    |   6   |
| UT  | Dan Johnson       |  20   || UT  | Michael Morse     |  19   |
+-----+-------------------+-------++-----+-------------------+-------+
| P   | Max Scherzer      |   7   || P   | Yovani Gallardo   |   5   |
| P   | Colby Lewis       |  11   || P   | Gio Gonzalez      |   8   |
| P   | Ricky Nolasco     |  14   || P   | Jaime Garcia      |  16   |
| P   | Jake Peavy        |  16   || P   | James Shields     |  20   |
| P   | Jose Valverde     |  10   || P   | Mike Minor        |  23   |
| P   | Frank Francisco   |  12   || P   | Jonathan Broxton  |  10   |
| P   | Kevin Gregg       |  18   || P   | Ryan Franklin     |  12   |
| P   | Sergio Romo       |  21   || P   | Aroldis Chapman   |  15   |
| P   | Grant Balfour     |  22   || P   | Phil Coke         |  24   |
+-----+-------------------+-------++-----+-------------------+-------+
| BN  | Russel Branyan    |  25   || BN  | Danny Espinosa    |  17   |
| BN  | Johan Santana     |  23   || BN  | Chris Coghlan     |  22   |
| BN  | Rafael Betancourt |  24   || BN  | Lorenzo Cain      |  25   |
+-----+-------------------+-------++-----+-------------------+-------+

Derek had the seventh pick and took Joey Votto in the first and I had the 10th pick and landed David Wright. The link containing the full draft results can be found here, to give you some added perspective beyond just our teams.

Don't forget to vote in the poll and share your thoughts on why Derek's team is so bad in the comments.

Whose team is more likely to win?
Derek Carty
Paul Singman



Paul has been managing fantasy baseball teams for many seasons and writing for THT Fantasy over the past three years. He is currently a student at UPenn welcomes readers' thoughts at his email here or in the comments below.


Paul Singman said...

I realize the poll doesn’t show you the results after you vote so I’ll post them in a comment sometime Friday afternoon for those curious.

Posted 03/25  at  03:31 AM
Braves Fan said...

Paul,

Will you be picking up Brandon Beachy?

At this stage of the season (or pre-season), I think you have an edge over Derek in hitting. You’ve got a pretty balanced offense, while Derek’s categorical production is more consolidated. I think Utley will make or break Derek’s season. Pitching-wise, I think it’s pretty close.

Posted 03/25  at  04:32 AM
anon said...

Mauer at 31 is a steal.  Team Singman has some good value!

Posted 03/25  at  09:48 AM
Derek Ambrosino said...

I think you both did a nice job of building competitive pitching staffs without spending many of your high picks.

My short take is that Paul’s team is very solid and the better bet to place. Derek’s team assumed more risk (Utley, Santana, Peavy, Encarnacion, even Bautista to a degree). If some of those break right, Derek’s got a juggernaut on his hands.

On a side note, one of us (not me, it’s not my strength) should write an article that benchmarks Utley at various draft positions and various AB or Game totals. So, basically, how many games would Utley have to play, at his established level, to return value on being selected at pick 40? Pick 60? Pick 80? Pick 100? Etc. ...Might be easier to do this with dollar values.

Now, for a point that is a staple of my strategy that neither of you went for in this draft - (I’m going to oversimplify a bit)

In formats where the total number of MLB teams is almost exactly divisible by the number of teams in your league, I think it’s almost always worth it to jump a bit to the extra closer. It’s likely to give you such a strong comparative advantage.

If you assume, for the sake of argument, a normal distribution of closers, that means that in this league, 12 teams would have 2 closers and 2 other teams would have 3. I know all closers aren’t equal, but by sacrificing something somewhere else to take a thrid closer, you give yourself a 50% greater human resource capability of generating stats in a category than all but one other team in the league. 50% comparative advantage over 92% of teams.

Hypotherically, say you take closers in rounds 9 and 11. If there’s another closer on the board in round 12, 13, or 14 - doesn’t have to be a great pitcher, but asuming he has some job security - then it seems sound to assume that the comparative advantage of picking that 3rd closer would be greater than the difference you get from picking any other position in that round versus whoever is left to replace that player as the next best pick in the following round.

Two other points about this

You are to an even number ratio of teams to closers, the more comparative advantage you get from the extra closer. For example, in a 12 team league, following an even distro, you’d wind up with 6 teams with 2 closers and 6 teams with 3 - meaning you only get a comparative advantage over half the league. In the 14 team set-up, you get an advantage over almost the entire league. In a 10-team league, if you take a 4th closer, you force somebody to wind up with 2, and you should have an advantage over everybody. ...Surely, all distros are closers aren’t even, but if you have 4 closers in a 10 team league, chances are you have more closers than just about all of the league.

Secondly, the fewer closers to go around per each team, the greater the likelihood that you come out ahead simply by having extra closers. In the 14 team league, you could have 3 closers, none of which are spectacular, and fail to compile more saves than another team who has 2 elite closers, or one elite closer and one guy who just randomly winds up with a very high save total (happens to a few guys every year). But, say, you’re in AL- or NL-only league, or a 20-team mixed league, where the likely outcomes are winding up with 1 closer vs. 2. As long as your 2 closers keep their jobs, it’s really unlikely that a single closer out-saves your pair.

/This comment could actually be its own post, perhaps I will expand on it next week.

Posted 03/25  at  10:43 AM
Paul Singman said...

@Bravesfan - If I wasn’t beat to him I would have picked up Beachy, who I’m sure everyone knows beat Mike Minor for the fifth rotation spot. Beachy and Minor both project to be solid major leaguers so it’s unfortunate for me the Braves went with Beachy. I still expect Minor to be back up in the majors sometime in May, so I’m not just gonna drop him for nothing either at the moment.

I do think its interesting how “extreme” Derek’s hitters are. By extreme I mean he drafted true sluggers and speedsters. After his first two picks of Holliday and Votto, who are across the board contributors, in the next rounds he got sluggers Bautista and Reynolds, and then later the speed-combo of Ichiro and Pierre.

Im sure those are just the specific players he felt could help his team the most and not some general strategy he employs, though in Tout Mixed he bought similar players so maybe Derek does feel the elite-category players tend to be undervalued on draft day. Idk.

@Derek - Cool idea, I’ve never explicitly thought about drafting closers that way. Definitely worthy of its own post.

Posted 03/25  at  11:19 AM
Jeffrey Gross said...

Paul, I think you’re wrong. Kris Medlen’s on his way back.

Posted 03/25  at  04:15 PM
Paul Singman said...

As far as I’ve heard Medlen wouldn’t be back until late summer, and I would think if Minor does well in the minors, he’d be more likely to be put in the rotation and Medlen in the ‘pen than the other way around. I still think if someone gets hurt or if Beachy or Jurrjens are ineffective early on Minor would get the first shot at the rotation.

As for the polling, so far there have been 73 responses: 38 have voted for my team and 35 for Derek’s so its pretty much a 50-50 split.

Posted 03/25  at  04:58 PM
Lou D. said...

Wright and Reyes 1, 2? That’s a recipe for disaster and I’m a Mets fan.

Posted 03/26  at  08:25 PM
Paul Singman said...

@Lou D.—I understand the team might not perform spectacularly but I don’t think the Wright/Reyes duo will perform below your standard 1st and 2nd rounder.

Posted 03/27  at  03:29 AM
Rudy Gamble said...

FWIW, i’d vote for Paul’s team as 1) he said we’re ‘dynamic’ and 2) His team looks better using my projections.  Will be interesting to see if Derek’s MR strategy works….

Posted 03/28  at  04:39 PM
Chad said...

Given the time that Utley is likely to miss it seems like it would have been a good idea to use one of the bench spots on a MI instead of someone like Santana who is pretty well shot by injuries.  Also none of the expected power hitters better underperform or get hurt because nobody other than Holliday in that outfield is likely to hit more than 5 HR’s.  Having another OF that hits for a bit of power would have been a major improvement to this roster.  Don’t like Ichiro in the 4th at all given his decline in everything but average.  There are way too many ultra low BA guys on that roster to even worry about his impact in that category.  He’ll help but not nearly enough to warrant picking him there.  If he could still get big run totals maybe, but bad spot for him this year.

Posted 03/30  at  04:11 PM
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