Order Now The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 is now in development and will ship in mid November! This year's book will feature articles by THT's staff as well as Bill James, Rob Neyer, Tom Tango and Craig Wright. If you use this link to purchase the Annual, you will be in the first group to receive it and you'll be supporting THT.  Derek Ambrosino
John Burnson Derek Carty Marco Fujimoto Eriq Gardner Matt Hagen Jonathan Halket Rob McQuown Troy Patterson Mike Silver Paul Singman Michael Street And here's the full roster. Got a question for our fantasy baseball experts? Email us:
Heater MagazineAdd 10 MPH to your fantasy team — see for yourself
HEATER MAGAZINE Winner, 2008 CBS Sportsline Fantasy League of Experts  Plus our Statistical Definitions Most Recent Comments
Top 10 prospects for 2010: Toronto Blue Jays and Kansas City Royals (8)
Top 10 prospects for 2010: Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers (4) Waiver Wire Offseason: NL (2) Acey-deucey (1) Waiver Wire Offseason: NL (12) Monthly Archives
November, 2009
October, 2009 September, 2009 August, 2009 July, 2009 June, 2009 May, 2009 April, 2009 March, 2009 February, 2009 January, 2009 December, 2008 November, 2008 October, 2008 September, 2008 August, 2008 July, 2008 June, 2008 May, 2008 April, 2008 March, 2008 February, 2008 January, 2008 December, 2007 November, 2007 October, 2007 September, 2007 August, 2007 July, 2007 June, 2007 May, 2007 Gear up for baseball season with Chicago White Sox tickets and New York Yankees tickets. LA Angels tickets, Houston Astros tickets, and Atlanta Braves tickets are hot sellers! You can get Boston Red Sox tickets, San Diego Padres tickets or Chicago Cubs tickets for your favorite baseball fan. Coast to Coast Tickets has the best MLB tickets like Minnesota Twins tickets, LA Dodgers tickets, Milwaukee Brewers tickets, New York Met tickets and St. Louis Cardinals tickets. Find premium Chicago Cubs tickets and other Chicago tickets at JustGreatTickets.com. Chicago Cubs Tickets Chicago Tickets  All content on this site (including text, graphs, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
Most Recent Posts
Friday, December 19, 2008Should fantasy leagues mimic real-life baseball?Posted by Derek Carty at 1:02amThere was a comment on Jonathan Halket's "Points vs rotisserie" article that reminded me of a question I always seem to get from readers around this time of year. I was going to post a comment to Jonathan's article, but it seemed a little too far removed from the discussion, so I'm giving it its own post. The e-mails I get usually go something like this: I'm the commissioner of a roto league and would like to make it more representative of real baseball (or use stats that are more reflective of true talent). What categories would you recommend using to achieve this goal? My answer always comes back, "why?" Why would we, as fantasy owners, want to replace, say, ERA with LIPS ERA as a category? Isn't the whole purpose of using a stat like LIPS ERA to gain an advantage over the competition? While there are many more followers of sabermetrics than there were even a few years ago, it is still easy to find owners who know nothing about these more advanced statistics and simply go by hunches or surface numbers from past years. The whole point of LIPS is to estimate ERA while eliminating the luck factor, something our competitors can't do by looking at ERA itself. We gain a relative advantage by looking at stats like LIPS when our competitors don't know to look at them. If we make these stats their own category, though, then our simple-minded competition also will be looking at them because that's what they do. They focus solely on the categories that matter and little on the underlying numbers. How do you predict ERA? With LIPS ERA. How do you predict LIPS ERA? With LIPS ERA (essentially). Looking at the underlying numbers is what gives us our advantage; if we make those underlying numbers the actual categories, that advantage disappears. What do you think about this? Derek Carty is a 22-year old fantasy baseball analyst residing in New Jersey. In addition to writing for THTF, his work has appeared at Rotoworld (NBC), Sports Illustrated, FOX Sports, and Heater Magazine. In his two years competing in expert leagues, he has won 2 titles with 4 four top three finishes, including a LABR NL title in 2009, making him the youngest person to ever win a major expert league title. Derek is a proud graduate of the MLB Scouting Bureau's Scout Development Program and is a firm believer in the importance of combining stats and scouting. He welcomes questions via e-mail.
Page 2 of 2 < 1 2
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.
Next Post: Early look at the ninth inning>> <<Previous Post: Fantasy fallout: Kerry Wood to close for Indians |
I have been trying to come up with a “more realistic” system for awhile now. As for keeping score, I have looked into WPA. However, WPA can vary extremely from season to season. (A-Rod, e.g. over the past 2 years goes from 6.85 to 0.47—I am sure you could start a scrub who can beat 0.47. Maybe +WPA?)
Personally, I do like the idea of 1 stat that can be used for both pitchers and hitters—similar to WPA. Why not Runs Created and Pitching Runs Created?
However, I think to get “more realistic”, there are so many more issues to consider. In real baseball, you can start a 1B in LF. How about keeping fielding stats, too, that can be a small addendum to the RC? Penalizing for playing people out of position?
Other issues: the “benching” of a starter for just a game or 2; the replacement of an injured player with anotehr quality player; worrying about a bullpen rather than just closers; teams that don’t pay attention after July.
I think trying to make fantasy baseball “perfect” is an exercise in frustration.
Much like other types of fantasies.