Youve missed the most important point: Fantasy Baseball is a game. It is important for it to remain a fun, well functioning game. You should never sacrifice fun for realism.

Choosing certain options over others in the interest of fairness is admirable… BUT not everything needs to be made fair. It is okay for fantasy sports to be in part determined by luck. No matter what categories you choose luck will always be a factor.

LIPS ERA would be a stupid category, anyway, because it isn’t really a measurement-statistic, it’s a prediction-statistic.  It measures a few categories and combines them into an index that is supposed to predict ERA.  It would be like deciding the playoff picture by run differential.  Or using PECOTA projections instead of R, RBI, AVG, ETC.

That said, I don’t buy the argument that since not everyone knows about it, we shouldn’t play with it to give us a competitive advantage.  What if you’re playing in a good enough league that everyone knows about it, or at least the underlying principles?  Why not use VORP?  or FRAR?

I’ve always thought a league with only one category, WPA, would be pretty fun.  If anyone knows how to make that happen, shoot me an email.

Fantasy is a game. Keep it old school. It doesn’t get better than 5 X 5 Roto.

We can still use sabermetrics, though, to gain an edge on the competition.

I don’t like using lips era or a stat like that, but there are stats that could be used that would be more representative of value, if not as representative of talent.  The big one I think of is WPA.  You honestly wouldn’t need to use another stat, you are directly measuring how much the player added to your team in terms of wins.  Just for fun, you could add UZR and really have a realistic fantasy league. 
Obviously defensive statistics vary too much to use in fantasy leagues, and WPA also can vary a lot and maybe wouldn’t be as fun.  I still would like to try it just to see what it would be like.

Great comments guys.  I have to agree with most of them.  I think if someone is looking for a league to emulate real baseball, either a simulation or a points league is the way to go.  Or a roto league with something like WPA and UZR as categories (scaled appropriately), as lookatthosetwins said.

Overall, I think the questions I get asking about replacement categories aren’t so much looking to emulate real baseball as just looking to add a more sabermetric twist to their leagues.

As James said, though, some people do have leagues where everyone is familiar with advanced statistics.  There can still be disagreement in these type of leagues, however, about which stat to use to predict something like ERA.  Check out this article from a couple weeks ago to see what I mean.

Derek’s position irks me. I’ve played in a league with a commish who thought like that—“Hm, what kind of fancy rules can I make up that will give me an advantage because I know something?”—and it was horrible.

You can use any categories you like, whether LIPS ERA or Curtain Calls (fun), as long as the rules and scoring is clear and on the table.

Trying to win by gaming the system stinks for all.

I run a points league with actual run estimator values, so the number of points your lineup compiles is the number of runs they would have scored (and the number of points your pitching staff generates is the number of runs they saved over a baseline of twice the league average runs per team).  It works like a charm, and it’s cool to be able to determine actual won-lost records.

I made the comment on the other article that inspired this one.  While I appreciate your response to my question, I have to say your response is totally unpersuasive for me.  I’ve been playing with more or less the same group of guys since around ‘97 or so, sometimes points and sometimes roto.  However, I’m the only one of the group who is very into sabrmetrics.  And you’re right, this does give me an advantage.  Maybe its because I’m a teacher, but it just bugs me and makes me want to teach them so they’ll understand the game on a deeper level too.  And maybe because I’m competitive, it feels like a hollow victory when I place highly every year.  I know you don’t feel this way, but the logic and tone of your response could lead the reader to think you would be happy to play 8-year olds every season and win because it would give you another advantage.  Here is my hyper-competitive mindset:  Let me give my opponents every advantage, every favor, every marginal call (I coach high school sports too), and I’LL STILL BEAT THEM, and I’ll know I earned it and it wasn’t by accident.  The idea of clinging to my secret tools that allow me to more accurately project performance is not attractive.  I’m always bugging my buddies with links from different sites like BP or whatever, but for the most part they’re not interested in learning.  And when I tried to suggest a more complex scoring system people just found it way too complicated and didn’t want to change.  Oh well.  I’m stuck with them as they’re mostly family and old friends.

And finally, I guess I’ve always just found it annoying that a SB is traditionally worth the same as a double or whatever.  Some of the comments here seem to indicate that people don’t care how real it is and let’s just keep it a game and totally separate from the real game.  OK, then why not make your 10 categories totally arbitrary, like:  WP, pickoff attempts, CS, fielders choice, passed ball, balks, etc?  It’s just a game totally divorced from the real game, after all. 

To sum up, I want to (1) educate the other fantasy players out there as to the real value of baseball events.  And (2) I want to level the playing field within my league as much as possible to maximize competition.  And (3) I want the things that are valued in fantasy to generally mirror what is valuable in the real game.  I don’t want to be disappointed as an M’s fan when Ichiro walks because it didn’t get my fantasy team a hit.

Hey guys,
Everyone’s got a different opinion on scoring and how to run a league, which is one of the reasons why I made this post.  I was expecting to get people who disagree with me, and the kind of passion you guys seem to have is one of the great things about fantasy baseball.

I think to clarify my feelings, though, I am super competitive.  I used to be the kid in gym class diving for balls hit up the middle in softball, without wearing a glove.

I do disagree to a point, though, Pete about giving your opponent every advantage you can.  Fantasy baseball is largely a game of luck, as few people are willing to admit it, and narrowing the gap between you and your opponent only promotes more randomness and makes it more likely you’ll win (or lose) by accident.  If one of my opponents uses these kinds of stats (as many do), I don’t harbor any ill feelings or try to talk them out of it or anything, but I’m not going to go out of my way to educate them.  Many don’t want to, so it’s not worth the trouble.  I can definitely see where you’re coming from, but that’s just not for me.  I handle my own business and let my opponents handle theirs.  I certainly don’t try to discourage anyone, Ed, but I’m not going to go out of my way to educate them either.

As far as fantasy mirroring real baseball, that’s for each individual person to decide, and I have no problem with either side.  As I said in the other thread, I’d actually love to try a points league one year where stats are given their appropriate weights.  I think I’d conclude that I prefer roto, but it would definitely be interesting.

Ed, you’re right in that my point relies on the assumption that my opponents aren’t using sabermetric analysis, to a degree.  I’ve never played in a league that is entirely filled by sabermetric followers.  Maybe half or three-quarters, but never full.  I’m sure leagues like this are out there, in which case my point really isn’t relevant.  I think most have a few owners who aren’t into it though.  Even if a league was full of sabermetric followers, I would still prefer traditional roto, though, partially because of the point Mike makes and partially because even if you’re using advanced stats, there are different ones to look at.  To predict ERA, I prefer LIPS ERA.  A guy like Ron Shandler, however, prefers his xERA.  They have similar predictive value but can differ widely on certain players.  If you choose one as a category, it forces all owners to use that and that only and eliminates differing but equally (or near equally) valid views.

Keeping things as they are, at the core of my view, keeps things competitive.  It gives people lots of room to do as they please, to strategize, and to look at whatever stats they deem acceptable.  I understand that a lot of people see things differently, and that’s perfectly okay.

Ed & Derek, I agree too, as far as not using the predictive stats.  I’m fine with using the classic 10 categories.  But I’d like to see them weighted what they’re actually worth, is all.  It sounds like commenter Dan Rosenheck, above, is in a league that does exactly that.

And now to totally change the subject, how about scoring using win shares??  : - )