THT Fantasy Focus

Posted by Derek Carty at 3:11am (6) Comments

Introducing the 2011 THT Readers League

In light of the positive reception (and insanely inflated prices) for the Hardball Times Fantasy League, composed of 11 experts and one fan, I thought it might be interesting to see how a league of 14 THT readers (selected on a first-come, first-served basis) might unravel.

Perhaps the league should have mirrored the THT Fantasy League and had 12 (rather than 14) participants so that player-price comparisons would have been easier. Or, the league might have been 11 fans versus one of us THT guys, but hindsight is 20/20. I know that, with six competitive (five cash) leagues to my name this year, I am personally tapped out of leagues, and many of my fellow THT-ers expressed similar sentiments. Additionally, I felt a 14-team league would be more challenging and fun for the type of person the league was intended to attract: the competitive and adventurous type. Perhaps next year, if the year one experiment goes well, I'll make the THT Reader League a better mirror of the THT Fantasy League.

The THT Readers League is not, or it least it was not intended as, a money league. However, an interesting idea was proposed by one participant: The winner of the league this year should get an invite into the THT Fantasy League next year. Perhaps so; in any case, fan input as to league dynamics for next year would be greatly appreciated in the comments.

Before getting into the roster details, let's get into the league parameters. Each of the 14 teams has one each of catcher, first baseman, second baseman, shortstop, third baseman, corner infielder and middle infielder, four outfielders, two utility men, three starting pitchers, two relief pitchers, four other pitchers and five bench slots, plus two disabled list spots. There is a 162 games-played limit and a 1,500 innings pitched limit.

Many of the league's participants were auction virgins and surprised by the duration of the auction. I have previously cautioned about properly budgeting time for auction drafts (they tend to last between four and six hours, depending on how deep the rosters are, how many players are in the league, and whether you are drafting on ESPN (max bids kill the time clock and bid times can be adjusted) or Yahoo (you must wait the full draft period per nomination, irrespective of a unbeatable bid)), but have little mercy for anyone not in an Ottoneu league (it took us three different days, spending 3.5 hours per session, to complete the draft). Still, it's humorous to receive comments from THT Reader League participants such as this one: "whoever set up our reader's auction league is clinically insane. 14 teams, 27 roster spots. 3 hours in, we're 50% done." For the record, I set up the league.

Knowing the parameters, that leaves only the rosters:

Name: Jacob Rothberg (Commissioner)
Team Name: Bautista Bombs!!!
Number of years playing fantasy: 11 or 12
Number of fantasy leagues for 2011: 12
Amount of cash left on table: $6
Best $1 pick: I'd go with Bedard. I think a $2 Polanco might provide value.

Roster
C: Geovany Soto ($13)
1B: Ryan Howard ($35)
2B: Brian Roberts ($9)
SS: Hanley Ramírez ($46)
3B: Chase Headley ($4)
CI: Adam Dunn ($32)
MI: Plácido Polanco ($2)
OF: Ichiro Suzuki ($24)
OF: Vernon Wells ($9)
OF: Travis Snider ($5)
OF: Austin Jackson ($4)
UTIL: Scott Rolen ($1)
UTIL: Jim Thome ($1)
SP: Chad Billingsley ($13)
SP: Brett Anderson ($8)
SP: Josh Beckett ($9)
RP: Francisco Rodríguez ($11)
RP: Matt Capps ($2)
P: Phil Hughes ($4)
P: Hiroki Kuroda ($5)
P: Aroldis Chapman ( $5)
P: C.J. Wilson ($4)
BN: Logan Morrison ($2)
BN: Edinson Vólquez ($3)
BN: Edwin Jackson ($1)
BN: Erik Bedard ($1)
BN: Bud Norris ($1)
__________________________________________

Name: Ben Greenbowe
Team Name: The Whale
Number of years playing fantasy: 10
Number of fantasy leagues for 2011: 5
Amount of cash left on table: $1
Best $1 pick: John Buck (only $1 pick)

Roster
C: Miguel Montero ($7)
1B: Billy Butler ($21)
2B: Chase Utley ($19)
SS: Rafael Furcal ($10)
3B: Pablo Sandoval ($15)
CI: Casey McGehee ($12)
MI: Gordon Beckham ($8)
OF: Josh Hamilton ($37)
OF: Colby Rasmus ($17)
OF: Delmon Young ($13)
OF: Ryan Raburn ($8)
UTIL: Derek Lee ($3)
UTIL: Mike Aviles ($3)
SP: Gio Gonzales ($11)
SP: Max Scherzer ($15)
SP: Ian Kennedy ($2)
RP: Brian Wilson ($14)
RP: Heath Bell ($14)
P: Carlos Zambrano ($3)
P: Tim Stauffer ($2)
P: Gavin Floyd ($2)
P: Joe Nathan ($8)
BN: Danny Espinosa ($4)
BN: Juan Rivera ($3)
BN: Alcedes Escobar ($1)
BN: John Buck ($1)
BN: Joel Hannarahan ($6)
__________________________________________

Name: Malone1020
Team Name: The Usual Prospects
Number of years playing fantasy: 8
Number of fantasy leagues for 2011: 5
Amount of cash left on table: $0
Best $1 pick: Gotta be Bedard. Rolen was a close second, but with Safeco Field armed with those outfields, Bedard has the upside to produce top-30 value. Considering they’re both huge health risks at this point, Bedard has the higher productivity ceiling.

Roster
C: Buster Posey ($22)
1B: Justin Morneau ($24)
2B: Dustin Pedroia ($29)
SS: Stephen Drew ($14)
3B: Michael Young ($16)
CI: Paul Konerko ($14)
MI: Kelly Johnson ($15)
OF: Adam Lind ($13)
OF: Adam Jones ($9)
OF: Michael Brantley ($1)
OF: Domonic Brown ($1)
UTIL: Ian Stewart ($7)
UTIL: Ryan Ludwick ($1)
SP: Cliff Lee ($38)
SP: Ubaldo Jimenez ($23)
SP: Mat Latos ($19)
RP: Brad Lidge ($3)
RP: Brian Fuentes ($1)
P: Luke Gregerson ($2)
P: Jordan Walden ($1)
P: Wilton Lopez ($1)
P: Kevin Slowey ($1)
BN: Kyle Drabek ($1)
BN: Rick Porcello ($1)
BN: Julio Borbon ($1)
BN: Mike Minor ($1)
BN: Brandon Belt ($1)
__________________________________________

Name: Tom P
Team Name: The Clowns
Number of years playing fantasy: 6
Number of fantasy leagues for 2011:5
Amount of cash left on table: $0
Best $1 pick: A.J. Burnett. Rebound plus Rothschild effect could be a nice boost

Roster
C: Brian McCann ($20)
1B: Mark Teixeira ($34)
2B: Ben Zobrist ($14)
SS: Alexei Ramirez ($21)
3B: David Freese ($4)
CI: Jake Fox ($1)
MI: Yunel Escobar ($10)
OF: Drew Stubbs ($23)
OF: Nick Swisher ($16)
OF: Brett Gardner ($14)
OF: Curtis Granderson ($14)
UTIL: Chris Young ($19)
UTIL: Matt Joyce ($1)
SP: Tim Lincecum ($35)
SP: Francisco Liriano ($19)
SP: Jaime Garcia ($3)
RP: Sergio Romo ($1)
RP: Bobby Jenks ($1)
P: A.J. Burnett ($1)
P: Ivan Nova ($1)
P: Edward Mujica ($1)
P: Mike Pelfrey ($1)
BN: Jose Lopez ($1)
BN: Andruw Jones ($1)
BN: Daric Barton ($1)
BN: Seth Smith ($2)
BN: John Jaso ($1)
__________________________________________

Name: Kevin Watson
Team Name: E for Effort
Number of years playing fantasy: 11 or so (although I was in a league in 1990 when I drafted Cecil Fielder coming back from Japan. But I also drafted Jeff Ballard as my No. 1 pitcher)
Number of fantasy leagues for 2011: 4
Amount of cash left on table: $0
Best $1 pick: A.J. Pierzynski, I guess. I made a point of having enough money to not make many $1 buys. Half the managers were unable to bid in the last seven or eight rounds because they didn't have enough in reserve.

Roster
C: A.J. Pierzynski ($1)
1B: Kila Ka'aihue ($4)
2B: Howie Kendrick($7)
SS: Tsuyoshi Nishioka($5)
3B: David Wright ($41)
CI: Juan Uribe ($3)
MI: Miguel Tejada($2)
OF: Matt Holliday ($36)
OF: Jason Heyward ($24)
OF: Corey Hart ($16)
OF: Angel Pagan ($9)
UTIL: Michael Cuddyer ($5)
UTIL: Marlon Byrd ($1)
SP: Zach Greinke ($21)
SP: Clayton Kershaw ($27)
SP: Shaun Marcum ($14)
RP: Joakim Soria ($14)
RP: Huston Street ($7)
P: Jeremy Hellickson ($6)
P: Madison Bumgarner ($4)
P: Javier Vazquez ($3)
P: Jorge de la Rosa ($2)
BN: J.C. Arencibia ($2)
BN: Chris Coghlan ($1)
BN: Garrett Jones ($1)
BN: Hong-Chih Kuo ($2)
BN: Koji Uehara($2)
__________________________________________

Name: Nick Matuschak
Team Name: Cabrera Cab Service
Number of years playing fantasy: 7
Number of fantasy leagues for 2011: 2
Amount of cash left on table: $0
Best $1 pick: Derek Holland, but my best value pick would be Denard Span for $2

Roster
C: Kurt Suzuki ($2)
1B: Prince Fielder ($38)
2B: Chone Figgins ($8)
SS: Troy Tulowitzki ($45)
3B: Edwin Encarnacion ($3)
CI: Aubrey Huff ($8)
MI: Reid Brignac ($1)
OF: Andrew McCutchen ($27)
OF: Andre Ethier ($25)
OF: Vladimir Guerrero ($12)
OF: Dexter Fowler ($4)
UTIL: Denard Span ($2)
UTIL: Freddie Freeman ($3)
SP: Justin Verlander ($22)
SP: Roy Oswalt ($17)
SP: Clay Buchholz ($11)
RP: Leo Nunez ($3)
RP: Brandon Lyon ($3)
P: Jhoulys Chacin ($6)
P: Matt Garza ($2)
P: John Danks ($4)
P: Kevin Gregg ($4)
BN: J.J. Hardy ($3)
BN: Wade Davis ($2)
BN: Magglio Ordonez ($2)
BN: Gaby Sanchez ($2)
BN: Derek Holland ($1)
__________________________________________

Name: The Braves Fan
Team Name: Slamma Jamma
Number of years playing fantasy:8
Number of fantasy leagues for 2011: 4
Amount of cash left on table: $0
Best $1 pick: I've got plenty of nice $2 picks. Best $1 pick may be Josh Willingham since he'll bat cleanup for a revamped A's lineup (that's if he manages to stay healthy). Maybe Kyle Farnsworth if he keeps the closer job.

Roster
C: Carlos Ruiz ($1)
1B: Joey Votto ($41)
2B: Ian Kinsler ($26)
SS: Starlin Castro ($16)
3B: Jose Bautista ($27)
CI: Kevin Youkilis ($35)
MI: Ian Desmond ($7)
OF: Mike Stanton ($24)
OF: Coco Crisp ($7)
OF: Michael Morse ($5)
OF: Manny Ramirez ($6)
UTIL: Chipper Jones ($4)
UTIL: Josh Willingham ($1)
SP: Yovani Gallardo ($18)
SP: Jered Weaver ($21)
SP: Ervin Santana ($3)
RP: Rafael Soriano ($2)
RP: Daniel Bard ($2)
P: Brett Myers ($2)
P: Derek Lowe ($1)
P: Kyle Farnsworth ($1)
P: Ryan Madson ($2)
BN: Travis Wood ($2)
BN: Jake Peavy ($2)
BN: Carl Pavano ($2)
BN: Johan Santana ($1)
BN: Freddy Sanchez ($1)
__________________________________________

Name: Tom
Team Name: The Second Mouse
Number of years playing fantasy: 8 (baseball: 4)
Number of fantasy leagues for 2011: 3
Amount of cash left on table: $0
Best $1 pick: No one stands out but Ibanez is reliable

Roster
C: Carlos Santana ($20)
1B: Albert Pujols ($50)
2B: Neil Walker ($10)
SS: Asdrubal Cabrera ($6)
3B: Danny Valencia ($1)
CI: Kendrys Morales ($17)
MI: Jhonny Peralta ($2)
OF: Nelson Cruz ($29)
OF: Nick Markakis ($15)
OF: Torii Hunter ($7)
OF: Juan Pierre ($7)
UTIL: David Ortiz ($7)
UTIL: Will Venable ($2)
SP: Roy Halladay ($38)
SP: Dan Haren ($18)
SP: Ricky Nolasco ($7)
RP: Francisco Cordero ($5)
RP: Fernando Rodney ($3)
P: Scott Baker ($5)
P: James Shield ($4)
P: John Lackey ($1)
P: Brandon League ($2)
BN: Raul Ibanez ($1)
BN: Aaron Harang ($1)
BN: Jon Rauch ($1)
BN: Mike Adams ($1)
BN: Rafael Betancourt ($1)
__________________________________________

Name: DK
Team Name: Ninja Assassin Cano
Number of years playing fantasy: 4
Number of fantasy leagues for 2011: 4
Amount of cash left on table: $0
Best $1 pick: Nothing special but for roto purposes I like a $1 Jesus Montero. If he gets called up around August due to injury or Martin trade, he could provide decent catcher stats for half a year.

Roster
C: Ryan Doumit ($1)
1B: Carlos Lee ($8)
2B: Robinson Cano ($39)
SS: Jimmy Rollins ($18)
3B: Evan Longoria ($36)
CI: Ryan Zimmerman ($32)
MI: Derek Jeter ($17)
OF: Bobby Abreu ($8)
OF: Jose Tabata ($7)
OF: Michael Bourn ($4)
OF: Jason Bay ($6)
UTIL: Rickie Weeks ($21)
UTIL: Carlos Pena ($6)
SP: Wandy Rodriguez ($10)
SP: Anibal Sanchez ($1)
SP: Bronson Arroyo ($1)
RP: Carlos Marmol ($18)
RP: Jose Valverde ($9)
P: J.J. Putz ($9)
P: Jason Motte ($1)
P: Tyler Clippard ($1)
P: Sean Marshall ($1)
BN: Yadier Molina ($1)
BN: Grady Sizemore ($2)
BN: Mike Moustakas ($1)
BN: Jesus Montero ($1)
BN: Kyle McClellan ($1)
__________________________________________

Name: Billy Rehren
Team Name: Scrub's Team
Number of years playing fantasy: 11
Number of fantasy leagues for 2011 : 7
Amount of cash left on table: $0
Best $1 pick: I'm gonna go with Loney to have a really good year and contribute in multiple categories. Possibly Beachy since the commish is predicting him to be ROY. Smoak as well since he should be traded soon.)

Roster
C: Matt Wieters ($9)
1B: Mike Napoli ($13)
2B: Martin Prado ($15)
SS: Elvis Andrus ($13)
3B: Pedro Alvarez ($13)
CI: Sean Rodriguez ($3)
MI: Erick Aybar ($1)
OF: Carl Crawford ($41)
OF: Hunter Pence ($22)
OF: Jacoby Ellsbury ($16)
OF: Carlos Quentin ($12)
UTIL: Hideki Matsui ($1)
UTIL: James Loney ($1)
SP: John Johnson ($25)
SP: David Price ($20)
SP: Matt Cain ($14)
RP: Neftali Feliz ($13)
RP: Matt Thornton ($13)
P: Jonny Venters ($4)
P: Brian Matusz ($4)
P: R.A. Dickey ($1)
P: Kenley Jansen ($1)
BN: Jair Jurrjens ($1)
BN: Clayton Richard ($1)
BN: Brandon Beachy ($1)
BN: Justin Smoak ($1)
BN: Franklin Gutierrez ($1)
__________________________________________

Name: The Teester
Team Name: Roto Rage
Number of years playing fantasy: 11
Number of fantasy leagues for 2011: 2
Amount of cash left on table: $0
Best $1 pick: Mitch Moreland/David DeJesus. Moreland sounds trendier and sleeper-ish, but I actually like DeJesus to modestly outperform his dollar value since we're in a 14-team league.

Roster
C: Jorge Posada ($5)
1B: Adrian Gonzalez ($45)
2B: Aaron Hill ($11)
SS: Marco Scutaro ($1)
3B: Alex Rodriguez ($43)
CI: Adam LaRoche ($3)
MI: Jed Lowrie ($3)
OF: Shin-Soo Choo ($32)
OF: Shane Victorino ($17)
OF: Carlos Beltran ($5)
OF: Rajai Davis ($5)
UTIL: Mitch Moreland ($1)
UTIL: David DeJesus ($1)
SP: CC Sabathia ($29)
SP: Chris Carpenter ($13)
SP: Ricky Romero ($7)
RP: John Axford ($10)
RP: Chris Perez ($8)
P: Trevor Cahill ($4)
P: Colby Lewis ($6)
P: Jordan Zimmermann ($4)
P: Jonathon Niese ($1)
BN: David Aardsma ($2)
BN: Peter Bourjos ($1)
BN: Cliff Pennington ($1)
BN: Desmond Jennings ($1)
BN: Dan Johnson ($1)
__________________________________________

Name: Jason
Team Name : Thunder Down Under
Number of years playing fantasy: 8
Number of fantasy leagues for 2011: 3
Amount of cash left on table: $0
Best $1 pick: Chris Sale. You can choose from 16 and none are bargains...due to time zone differences, Autodraft was my guide for most of the auction, and it blew my budget in the first six picks (and $4 on McLouth??)

Roster
C: Jarrod Saltalamacchia ($1)
1B: Lance Berkman ($1)
2B: Brandon Phillips ($23)
SS: Jason Bartlett ($1)
3B: Adrián Béltre ($23)
CI: Chris Johnson ($1)
MI: Ryan Theriot ($1)
OF: Carlos González ($42)
OF: Ryan Braun ($45)
OF: Matt Kemp ($38)
OF: Jay Bruce ($22)
UTIL: Johnny Damon ($1)
UTIL: Matt LaPorta ($1)
SP: Ryan Dempster ($8)
SP: Brandon Morrow ($11)
SP: Brett Cecil ($1)
RP: Jonathan Papelbon ($13)
RP: Mariano Rivera ($15)
P: Chris Sale ($1)
P: Clay Hensley ($1)
P: Mark Buehrle ($1)
P: Phil Coke ($1)
BN: Todd Helton ($1)
BN: Mark Trumbo ($1)
BN: Nate McLouth ($4)
BN: Kerry Wood ($1)
BN: Barry Zito ($1)
__________________________________________

Name: Dan Smith
Team Name: Prizefighter
Number of years playing fantasy: 3
Number of fantasy leagues for 2011: 5
Amount of cash left on table: $0
Best $1 pick: James McDonald I had to leave the draft early, so i was auto-drafted after my 14th pick

Roster
C: Joe Mauer ($32)
1B: Victor Martinez ($23)
2B: Dan Uggla ($27)
SS: Jose Reyes ($29)
3B: Mark Reynolds ($19)
CI: Ike Davis ($4)
MI: Eric Young Jr. ($1)
OF: Alex Rios ($19)
OF: Jayson Werth ($25)
OF: B.J. Upton ($17)
OF: David Murphy ($1)
UTIL: Nyger Morgan ($1)
UTIL: Cameron Maybin ($1)
SP: Jonathan Sanchez ($10)
SP: Daniel Hudson ($15)
SP: Tim Hudson ($6)
RP: Jonathan Broxton ($9)
RP: Andrew Bailey ($6)
P: James McDonald ($1)
P: J.A. Happ ($1)
P: Drew Storen ($5)
P: Evan Meek ($1)
BN: Ben Francisco ($3)
BN: Johnny Cueto ($1)
BN: Lorenzo Cain ($1)
BN: Scott Downs ($1)
BN: Dustin Ackley($1)
__________________________________________

Name : Matt W.
Team Name : New Beef Order
Number of years playing fantasy: 19
Number of fantasy leagues for 2011: 3
Amount of cash left on table: $0
Best $1 pick : My best was Jose Contreras. If Lidge's injury lingers, Contreras could be a great $1 closer. Best from all $1 picks in my opinion? I'll go with Derek Holland or Lance Berkman.

Roster
C: Chris Iannetta ($2)
1B: Miguel Cabrera ($46)
2B: Ty Wigginton ($2)
SS: Omar Infante ($1)
3B: Aramis Ramirez ($16)
CI: Luke Scott ($6)
MI: Alex Gonzalez ($1)
OF: Andres Torres ($4)
OF: Justin Upton ($30)
OF: Jason Kubel ($2)
OF: J.D. Drew ($2)
UTIL: Alfonso Soriano ($4)
UTIL: Tyler Colvin ($2)
SP: Felix Hernandez ($35)
SP: Jon Lester ($29)
SP: Cole Hamels ($22)
RP: Ryan Franklin ($5)
RP: Craig Kimbrel ($7)
P: Joaquin Benoit ($1)
P: Jake McGee ($4)
P: Jose Contreras ($1)
P: Alexi Ogando ($1)
BN: Alex Gordon ($2)
BN: Michael Pineda ($2)
BN: Tommy Hanson ($20)
BN: Ted Lilly ($12)
BN: David Hernandez ($1)
__________________________________________

Who do you think has the best roster and why? Who were the best/worst picks?

Some of my favorite picks and prices included:
$46 Hanley Ramirez (a pricey essential in my book, especially when Tulowitzki goes for $1 less), $4 Phil Hughes, $5 Hiroki Kuroda, $1 Bedard, $15 Sandoval (bounce back year, baby!), $3 Aviles, $2 Ian Kennedy, $4 Espinosa, $2 Gregerson, $1 Drabek, $1 Jake Fox (good cheap gamble), $6 Hellickson, $4 Bumgardner, $3 Encarnacion, $3 Leo Nunez, $5 Mike Morse, $2 Daniel Bard, $1 Mike Adams, $7 Torii Hunter, $36 Evan Longoria (usually goes for $42+), $8 Bobby Abreu (underrated 20/20 capable No. 3 hitting outfielder), $1 Mike Moustakas, $3 Sean Rodriguez, $11 Aaron Hill, $1 Phil Coke, $1 Mark Trumbo, $4 Mclouth (yes, I like him this year), $1 Omar Infante (Swiss Army Knife!), $6 Colby Lewis (a "classic THT pick"), and, the steal of the draft, $2 Michael Pineda.

Sound off in the comment section below.

Posted by Jeffrey Gross at 3:21am (8) Comments

Monday, April 04, 2011

There’s nothing magic about age 27

There are some fantasy baseball analysts who consider age 27 to be a magic number for players. Eric Mack at Sports Illustrated gives his reasoning for the theory:

History shows 27 is the age many players outperform their draft position because a man's physical peak comes around then and years of preparation allow them to blossom statistically.

It may sound good in theory, but I'm not convinced that history actually shows this to be true. For me, it seems a little simplistic, so I decided to run some numbers and see whether or not it's true, and if so, to what extent.

The study

My study looks at all players since 1953 (the beginning of the modern baseball era) with at least 400 plate appearances or 130 innings pitched in one season. I then compare each player's numbers in that season to the year after, grouping by age.

I place no restrictions on the number of plate appearances in the following season because this would introduce a lot of survivor bias. That is, if a player fails to break out and posts poor numbers, it's likely that his playing time will be reduced.

If we set a plate appearance cutoff, these players would be ignored since they wouldn't reach the cutoff, which we don't want. Sure, we'll get some injuries and some part-time player weirdness mixed in, but I don't think that's as important as capturing these legitimate non-breakouts.

After I had my player pool, I decided to define a breakout as a player outperforming his previous year's production by at least 20 percent. I decided to use four categories: wOBA to measure raw offensive production plus the three main fantasy skill categories for hitters (home runs, batting average and steals). All stats are rate stats, with the rates being HR/(AB-K), H/AB, and SB/AB. For pitchers, I used ERA, WHIP, and strikeouts per nine innings (K/9).

The results

Here is what we get for all ages that had at least 100 player seasons. The numbers list tell us the percentage of players that exceeded their previous year's production in that category by at least 20%.

+-----+--------+------+-----+-----+-----+
| Age | Sample | wOBA | HR  | BA  | SB  |
+-----+--------+------+-----+-----+-----+
| 22  |    114 |   9% | 39% |  3% | 27% |
| 23  |    256 |   7% | 36% |  7% | 36% |
| 24  |    461 |   5% | 31% |  6% | 35% |
| 25  |    653 |   6% | 36% |  6% | 31% |
| 26  |    854 |   4% | 33% |  5% | 32% |
| 27  |    932 |   2% | 32% |  3% | 28% |
| 28  |    949 |   3% | 29% |  4% | 30% |
| 29  |    902 |   4% | 31% |  5% | 27% |
| 30  |    845 |   3% | 29% |  4% | 25% |
| 31  |    761 |   3% | 29% |  3% | 26% |
| 32  |    660 |   3% | 28% |  4% | 26% |
| 33  |    534 |   2% | 27% |  2% | 23% |
| 34  |    429 |   2% | 29% |  2% | 29% |
| 35  |    331 |   2% | 23% |  3% | 27% |
| 36  |    249 |   2% | 24% |  2% | 24% |
| 37  |    173 |   1% | 21% |  1% | 17% |
| 38  |    110 |   2% | 22% |  1% | 28% |
+-----+--------+------+-----+-----+-----+

Essentially, what we see is that the "age 27" theory holds little water. Most of the breakouts happen at younger ages (though part of that may be smaller sample sizes), and 27 is essentially like any other mid-20s age in terms of breakout potential. Once you get into the 30s, the likelihood of a breakout starts going down.

If I change the criteria to either 10% above the previous year or 30% above the previous year, the results are very similar, with age 27 not meaning very much.

But what about pitchers?

+-----+--------+-----+------+-----+
| Age | Sample | ERA | WHIP | K/9 |
+-----+--------+-----+------+-----+
| 22  |    102 | 37% |  18% | 14% |
| 23  |    208 | 28% |  14% | 21% |
| 24  |    352 | 32% |  15% | 17% |
| 25  |    457 | 34% |  12% | 17% |
| 26  |    552 | 31% |  14% | 13% |
| 27  |    578 | 32% |  13% | 15% |
| 28  |    550 | 31% |  14% | 15% |
| 29  |    495 | 36% |  15% | 12% |
| 30  |    458 | 34% |  13% | 15% |
| 31  |    369 | 36% |  14% | 10% |
| 32  |    313 | 33% |  17% | 13% |
| 33  |    263 | 36% |  15% | 14% |
| 34  |    209 | 36% |  15% | 19% |
| 35  |    163 | 36% |  15% | 12% |
| 36  |    127 | 32% |  16% | 13% |
| 37  |    100 | 39% |  19% | 12% |
+-----+--------+-----+------+-----+

Nope, same story. Pitchers don't tend to break out more often at age 27, either.

Initial, ill-fated idea for the study

Originally, I intended to run this study using projections (namely Jeff Sackman's infinitely useful historical Marcels), comparing a player's actual performance to his preseason projection. When I ran the tests, however, I got some strange results.

I found that hitters in their 30s were the "most likely to break out," which seems incredibly counter-intuitive. My best guess as to why is that there's likely some survivor bias going on that Marcels —being a bare-bones approach to forecasting —isn't accounting for.

You see, if a hitter lasts into his mid-30s as a major league player, he's likely of a different breed than a hitter who fizzles out before then. If a player in his 30s plays poorly, he's less likely to receive another chance than a player who performs poorly in his 20s and still has "potential."

As an example of this, since 2000, hitters over 30 have posted a 3.9% HR/(AB-K), while hitters under 30 have posted a 2.8% rate (that's a difference of about five homers over a full season). Marcels doesn't recognize this, though, and regresses all player stats to the major league average.

But these over-30 hitters aren't major league average; they're better than that. Because they're actually better than what their projections say, they outperform the projections, giving the illusion of a "breakout."

So, while using projections for this kind of test would have been ideal, Marcels doesn't seem suited to the task, and no other projection system goes back far enough to give us a large enough sample. If you were curious, though, when compared to other "20s" ages, the age 27 didn't turn out to be anything special using this Marcels approach.

Concluding thoughts

This is far from a definitive study, but it is one piece of data to consider and certainly doesn't help the "27 is a magic number" theory. If you have any questions or suggestions, as always, feel free to let me know.

Posted by Derek Carty at 5:11am (13) Comments

Should I make this trade?

With the real season underway, it is time for fantasy advice to turn from the ever-popular topic of the draft to in-season strategic moves. One question I see posed to fantasy gurus all the time is, "Should I make this trade?"

Frankly, and with the exception of challenge trades, you are in a much better position to decide that than even the most expert of experts. You know your team, your opponent's rosters, how both you and they will behave during the season, and various other insider advantages.

As such, today we will focus on a simple thought process to help decide whether a trade proposal is right for you. This guide is designed for simple roto leagues, although the same methods can be adjusted to any league format.

First and foremost, if you are in a serious league, I highly recommend conducting trade negotiations via email or chat rather than the propose and counter-offer tools offered by the main fantasy sites. In my personal experience, this speeds up negotiations by allowing both parties to propose offers before running the numbers.

Step one

The first step to making a trade is a basic smell test: Is this offer enough? Alternately stated, can I get more for this/these player(s)? We all know people who stop at this step, the kind of fantasy players who will take virtually any offer that smells fair to them. Don't be that guy!

This step is independent of actual statistical analysis and focuses on how you believe others in your league will assign name value to a player. For example, I am in a 5x5 OPS league. Under such conditions, Ichiro is actually expected to be slightly worse than Rajai Davis, yet it's very likely that name value could result in an owner getting twice the return for Ichiro. Obviously, the more "expert" the league, the less this comes in to play.

Step two

The second step is a very basic analysis using your personal replacement level. It is quite likely everyone reading this article already employs some form of analysis similar to this. The easiest way to explain this is to illustrate it with an example.

Let's say you own Adrian Gonzalez at first base, Casey McGehee at third base, and Adam LaRoche is on your bench. Now let's say somebody offers you Evan Longoria for Gonzalez. This trade offer passes the smell test, since both players were taken at similar picks and costs in most drafts. Next is to test if this helps your team. We can do this with a basic equation:

(Longoria - McGehee) + (LaRoche - Gonzalez) = X

If X > 0, the offer may benefit your team.
If X = 0, the offer appears neutral.
If X < 0, the offer may harm your team.

In practice, you would run that equation for each stat your league considers. Using Oliver projections and a standard 5x5 format, the results of that are -1 run, -3 home runs, -6 RBI, +8 stolen bases, and -.035 batting average (not weighted by expected at-bats). Those results are inconclusive because the third step is to evaluate how the expected changes affect your roto totals.

However, before we move along to step three, there is one important thing to note. Leaning on a single expected stats line is the most simplistic means to using this form of analysis. Some of you may prefer to add sophistication to the model by introducing confidence intervals. I like to set a range of stats that I expect the player to achieve with 50 percent confidence*.

For example, Oliver expects Longoria to score 85 runs. I might think there is a 50 percent chance he will score 75-95 runs. The distribution does not need to be evenly spread around the median, either. Longoria is projected for eight steals, but the range I would set is seven to 12.

*There are other methods to employ a range of expected values that are more statistically robust, but I find this gets the job done for my personal needs. Feel free to leave your own more robust methods in the comments.

Step three

Let's move along to step three now, evaluating your roto categories. In our previous example with Longoria and Gonzalez, we expected to gain eight steals while losing a run, three home runs, six RBI and about 35 points of batting average (remember that average is a rate stat, so this does not reflect the actual team-wide loss in the statistic). It is possible to dream up scenarios where taking a trade with these outcomes is a positive, negative, or neutral decision.

For example, if a team is strong on paper in runs, home runs, and RBI but lacking in steals, chasing Longoria's upside on the basepaths may be useful. If a team already has Jacoby Ellsbury and Jose Reyes, the other categories are probably more important.

Like with step two, there are various layers of sophistication that can be added. You can consider anywhere between the simplistic perspective of, "I need more stolen bases but have enough home runs" to the time-consuming method of projecting out every owner's expected stats totals. Things can be made impossibly complex by adding confidence intervals like in step two. Personally, the leagues I play in aren't for high enough stakes to go far beyond a simplistic approach.

Step four

This brings me to step four, a step that in my experience is criminally underused: Evaluating what your trade does for your opponent. Basically, we are just rinsing and repeating with steps two and three from your opponent's perspective. Sometimes this analysis is unnecessary. Perhaps you are in second place and your trading partner is hopelessly behind in eleventh. It can even be beneficial to help buried teams if it could take points away from your principal opponents. Just try not to get yourself caught in the cross fire.

At this early point in the fantasy season, even teams that are bad on paper could turn into contenders, so it is probably best to do your due diligence. Returning to our previous example, let's say the owner trading Longoria also has David Wright while his best first baseman is Lyle Overbay (yes, unlikely). In such a circumstance, you would be giving your competitor a huge boost in four categories, something you probably want to avoid doing.

Circumstances like these are fairly common too, if less exaggerated. I always charge a significant premium when "helping" an opponent, usually by asking for 120 percent of my sunniest expectation for a player.

As an example, my sunny projection for Ben Zobrist this year is 95/22/95/25/.285. I would ask a desperate trading partner to pay for something more like a 110/27/110/30/.305 player. This almost always prompts them to walk away, but unless you have your own dire need, this is not a bad thing. If one of your main competitors wants to trade with you, take advantage of the opportunity to make yourself better at their expense.

In practice, the gains your opponent realize from a trade are likely to be significantly smaller than Gonzalez over Overbay. However, it is still important to remember the ultimate goal of the season, winning. Try not to help an opponent beat you when making a trade. If a trade helps your team but also helps a main competitor even more, you should probably reject the offer.

Concluding thoughts

The purpose of this brief guide is to discuss some methods for identifying when, and when not, to make a trade. One assumption of this guide that is not necessarily true is the ability to form a fairly concise expectation about a player's final roto stat line. Clearly this will not always be the case.

Furthermore, this is certainly not the be-all, end-all to trading strategy. In fact, you should insert your own techniques, proclivities, and idiosyncrasies into your personal trading strategy. After all, in fantasy baseball, the wisdom of the crowds can have a huge effect on the behavior of owners. If you are thinking outside the box, you may be able to leverage an unexpected advantage. Nevertheless, it is helpful to have a general process in place to help determine when a trade makes sense.

As always, please feel free to share your thoughts, questions, or strategies in the comments. Hell, feel free to ask for trade advice, too. Just be advised that you are better positioned to know the correct answer.

Posted by Brad Johnson at 5:12am (11) Comments

Fluke Watch: first update of the regular season - Papelbon, Myers and Kershaw

As the season goes on, this column is going to be used to look at pitchers who are having unusually good (or poor) seasons and to see if things have changed. But we've only had three games so far for most teams, so we can't really get a good read on such right now. In addition, there are quite a few problems right now with some of the PITCHf/x data at the moment that are really strange.

So in this post, lets take a look at some of the pitchers we've looked at over the offseason, shall we?

Clayton Kershaw

Kershaw had a pretty impressive debut for the Dodgers on opening night. He also, as noted by the commentators in the game, seemed to be throwing a "harder slider." Dave Allen took a look at this at fangraphs and, indeed, you could see a few of these pitches (I counted six or seven), which were thrown to right-handed batters.

However, it seems quite possible that at least a few of these pitches are in fact a DIFFERENT PITCH ENTIRELY from Kershaw's slider—potentially a cutter—as they seem to have less "drop" and "tail" in addition to being faster. In fact, one or two of them are closer to the fastball in movement than the slider (one of them is basically right in the middle of the fastball cluster). This could simply be a fluke, and it is quite possible that this is just a harder slider that has less time to break.

Of course, Kershaw did use the pitch only sparingly (seven out of 96 tracked pitches), but this bears watching for future starts. A new pitch could change the results of Kershaw for better or for worse.

Brett Myers

Brett Myers pitched on Friday to mixed results. On one hand, he didn't show any strikeout-recording ability: he struck out none and only got a single swinging strike. On the other hand, he kept ball mainly on the ground. Still, it's really not what you wanted to see if you thought his results from last year were sustainable, albeit in a clearly tiny sample size.

Pitch-wise, all of his pitches appeared to be down about two MPH from last year, but this would seem to be an illusion caused by a slow gun at the stadium, as Halladay's pitches were this much slower, as well. The other characteristics of his pitches seem more or less the same as last year.

More importantly, Myers has, to some extent, continued his trend from last year of relying upon his sinker/two-seam fastball more often instead of the four-seam pitch. Against left-handed batters this was clearly true, as the two-seam pitch was his dominant pitch. Against righties, oddly enough, the four-seamer appears dominant.

What does this mean? Well, remember, the two-seam fastball was essentially completely superior to the four-seam variety last year, and his switch to it was seemingly a big boon to his results. Thus, by keeping this change, Myers should be able to perform at a higher level than he did in Philly.

BUT, remember, the trend doesn't appear in this one start with right-handed batters. I'm not going to read too much into this just yet, but it bears watching: If Myers decides to use the two-seamer mainly against LHB and the four-seamer against RHB, this could result in some interesting splits. This is once again something to keep an eye on as the season goes on, and we'll do that.

Jonathan Papelbon

Last year, Jonathan Papelbon made a massive change in his pitch usage in August. He started to decrease his fastball usage drastically in favor mainly of his splitter, but also a little bit in favor of his slider. The end result was a ton of strikeout, but an increase in walks. Also, he had some bad luck on balls in play.

The question thus became for fantasy players: Which Papelbon would he be next season? The question wasn't helped when Papelbon made a comment during spring training stating that he was going to increase his slider usage.

Now we only have one inning of major league PITCHf/x on Papelbon. But it was a crazy inning: three K, one IBB, and three hits, all in 27 pitches (four going to the intentional walk)! Yikes. So what did he throw to get this line?

Well, it seems that, to some extent, Papelbon is continuing his trend from last year. He threw 13 of 23 non-IBB pitches as fastballs (56.5 percent), a similar rate to Aug. and Sept., 2010. But instead of throwing the splitter more heavily, Papelbon threw more sliders than usual (six of the other 10 pitches). This is an odd move: Papelbon's splitter was far better than his slider last year.

Obviously, this bears more watching, but if the trend continues, you can expect more walks from Papelbon, just like in Aug./Sept. of last year. However, if he continues to favor the slider over the splitter, he might not get the Marmol-like K rate he needs in order for this to be a viable pitching strategy.

In other words, this is potentially very worrisome.

Conclusion

Once again, these are all tiny sample sizes and deserve out attention in the future. We'll continue to check in with these pitchers as the season goes on. If you'd like to do so yourself, try using texasleaguers.com, but please be careful: For some of these pitchers (Myers, particularly), the pitch classifications are not very good. For Papelbon, however, they seem spot on so far.

Posted by Josh Smolow at 5:13am (0) Comments

Tuesday, April 05, 2011

Preparing for week two

Not knowing what to write this week, I’ve decided to take a look at how my team fared in week one, and outline a bit of my decision processes as I prepare for week two.

We are half a week into the season and my NFBC squad Dynamic Inertia has struggled mightily out of the gate. Roughly, over a full week the targets that you want to acquire in this league are as follows:

Hitting: .280 average, 42 runs, 11 home rwns, 40 RBI and 6.5 steals

Pitching: 4.5 wins, 48 Ks, 3.5 saves, 3.65 ERA and 1.25 WHIP

Through the first weekend of games, the only players on our squad who really carried their weight were Russell Martin and Nick Hundley. Waiting until after the 20th round to snag both of our catchers clearly paid off as they combined to hit .455 with a homer, seven RBI and a steal.

Danny Espinosa, Ryan Raburn and Elvis Andrus all brought their bats with them to start the season. Ryan Howard came out of the gate slugging as well, but his home run is the only other one that we would hit.
Carl Crawford, Michael Young, Justin Morneau, Brad Hawpe and Vladimir Guerrero combined to do a gigantic pile of nothing throughout the opening weekend. It is because of their ineptitude that we are currently behind the pace we need to achieve our target totals.

Here’s how we stand through week one:

Average: .287, solid start above the number that we are shooting for

Runs: 15. This number is way on the low side, already putting us six runs off the pace.

Homers: Two. Yuck. Power is the toughest category to make up on offense, and we’re three home runs off the pace to start the season. Hopefully this corrects quickly and we don’t dig ourselves into a gigantic hole here.

RBI: 23, While the home runs were down, our runs batted in are actually slightly above pace.

Stolen bases: One. One stolen base, and it’s from our catcher,l Martin. Crawford, Andrus and Venable need to start getting on base.

On the pitching side, we only had 25.2 innings pitched for the week. Justin Verlander, Chris Carpenter and Matt Garza pitched decently, but none of them could earn a victory. Ryan Franklin blew a save chance Opening Day, and Drew Storen looks like he may be playing second fiddle to Sean Burnett.

On the bright side, Joel Hanrahan did rack up two saves, and seemed to gain in his job security as Evan Meek struggled in the early going.

Wins: Zero. I know it’s only a few days into the season, but this is an area that already concerns me greatly. We’re slightly over two wins off the pace already, and if this doesn’t correct some in the next week, I’m going to need to start looking at the waiver wire to add double starters to make up ground here.

Ks: 30. A solid start in strikeouts, aided by Garza’s 12. Six above the mark heading into week two.

Saves: Two, right on target here. Picking up Contreras in the 27th round should start to pay off in the coming weeks, and we should build up a decent cushion in this category.

ERA: 3.50, not spectacular, but ahead of where we want to be.

WHIP: 1.16, another solid start. Many people don’t pay nearly enough attention to their pitching ratios, but they are the hardest categories to manage over the course of the season. If you let them get away from you, it’s extremely difficult to make them up.

Scouting the free agent market prior to Sunday’s FAAB deadline, we identified a few players who may be able to help our team. On the offensive side of things, we thought we could stand an upgrade at fifth outfielder while waiting for Corey Hart to recover from his injury. I didn’t want to play Brad Hawpe because the Padres play only five games this week, and three of them are against lefties. The best option on the wire was Jon Jay, whom we acquired with a bid of $22 unopposed. The decision now is to play Jay or Rick Ankiel this coming week, and I think we’re leaning toward Ankiel.

On the pitching side, Mike Leake is a player that I had a good deal of interest in for the right price. He’s a double starter this week with two decent matchups. However our bid of $19 fell short by $2. Our decision on the pitching side this week came down to starting J.A. Happ for his double starts, or Michael Pineda or Andrew Cashner for one. Again, my fear of already being behind in wins has led to us going with Happ in the hopes of making up the ground that we lost in week one.

I know it seems like a simple idea to track how your team is doing against the targets that you need to compete for your league title, but you would be surprised how many people don’t bother doing so. Being able to recognize where your team may have weaknesses early in the season gives you enough time to correct the problem without letting it potentially derail your season.

I hope week two brings power and wins, or else we’re going to be seriously scouring the wire in week three!

Comments, questions and insight always welcome, and best of luck to all of you in week two.

Posted by Dave Shovein at 1:32am (7) Comments

Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Keep it on the DL

I interrupt this usually esoteric discussion of relatively advanced fantasy baseball strategy to issue a very simple, practical reminder. Make use of your DL spots.

I always find it surprising how many otherwise savvy fantasy players neglect to expand their rosters by utilizing the disabled list. Your DL spots are roster spots. Quite simply, they represent the capability to claim control of potentially valuable assets.

I’m often a proponent of drafting players who are on the DL late in drafts. The price of such a move is usually quite cheap, as all you are sacrificing is the difference between one of your last picks – a player likely close to replacement value – for your pick of replacement player. For those in leagues that do not use FAAB, once the season begins, the price of obtaining a player on the DL goes from cheap to free.

Many owners may already be dropping and adding, tweaking their rosters and chasing this year’s frogs turned princes. Well, before you drop Luke Gregerson to pick up Jordan Walden (if this comes as a surprise to you, make sure you stay in tune with Paul Singman on Closer Watch), scour the waiver wire for lottery tickets. Is Johan Santana, Jake Peavy, Brandon Webb, or Chase Utley floating amongst the free agents? How about Grady Sizemore, Johnny Cueto, Domonic Brown, or Brad Lidge?

When you drop your next player, before picking up his replacement, pick up the best DL-ed player and stash him on your DL. Then proceed to pick up your dropped player’s active replacement. Are you in a keeper league where Stephen Strasburg is not owned? Pick him up, maybe you won’t need the room on your DL and will be able to hold him all year so that you control him as a potential keeper.

Many of these players will not ultimately pay dividends, but some will, and they’re free. If one of your regular players gets hurt and his DL stint is projected to be brief, then drop one of your stashed assets and make room for the player most likely to help you the most and in the nearest future.

Rostering disabled players is really about making the most out of your roster spots and keeping potentially valuable assets away from others. Sometimes an injured player will become valuable simply for healing. It is quite likely that if Chase Utley or Johan Santana return this season, they will hit peak value on the day they debut. You may not be optimistic about their prospects for performing to their established levels, but somebody in your league will be. Injured players are potential assets, potential depth, and potential trade chips, and, I repeat, they’re usually extremely cheap or free.

If your league allowed you to hold the rights to a few minor league players, you wouldn’t forfeit that privilege, would you? Even though it isn’t particularly probable that any single one of those players will come up and make a huge impact on your team, you’d be a fool to not to sign up for your lottery tickets.

Personally, I don’t play the actual lottery. Even with the potential payout, the odds are just too steep for me to find it sensible. Many people do find it a worthwhile gamble though and I don’t really blame them either. This means, if you have the DL space, it may even be worth throwing a few bucks at an injured player in a league with FAAB. But, one thing I do know, is that if somebody gave me a free lotto ticket, I’d thank him/her, put it in my pocket, and the check the numbers the next day.

Posted by Derek Ambrosino at 5:02am (11) Comments

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Preparing for week 3

We are only a week and a half into the young season. Roughly only 5 percent of the MLB schedule has been played. Obviously you can’t take what people have done thus far and extrapolate it to accurately depict how they’ll finish the season. Nelson Cruz isn’t going to hit 95 home runs. Albert Pujols isn’t going to hit under .200. And most likely, Jered Weaver isn’t going to win 30 games.

In no way do I advocate dumping key players that you drafted for the sole reason that they have gotten off to a slow start. The last couple of spots on your roster may be ok to replace, provided that there are legitimate options on the waiver wire that are “buy and hold” candidates and would upgrade your team. Now, while you shouldn’t change your whole strategy based on what individual players have done, what about your team as a whole?

Today, I pose an important and interesting question to those of you out there in fantasy land.

Currently, my team in the NFBC main event has a total of two wins through a week-and-a-half. Two. That’s one fewer than the aforementioned Jered Weaver has himself.

To compete in the NFBC, you want to finish in the top 20 percent in every category. This would make my target in wins somewhere between 100 and 105 for the season. Broken down into weekly goals, that’s about four-and-a-half wins per week. Thus far, only having two wins puts us four-and-a-half off the pace already. The question is, how early should you look to correct this problem by adding double starters?

In a 15-team mixed league such as this one, the waiver wire is painfully thin. For example, when looking at potential double starters to pick up for this week there were only five options available. Jesse Litsch, Chris Volstad, Nelson Figueroa, Livan Hernandez and Mitch Talbot. That’s obviously a bunch that doesn’t inspire tremendous confidence.

The major risk that you run when imploring this strategy is destroying your ratios. In theory, picking up a lesser pitcher just because they pitch twice during a given week, will give more of your team’s innings to lower quality hurlers. If they go out and get bombed in two starts, not only are you in a deeper hole for wins, but your ratios can get away from you in a hurry.

On the flip side, if you don’t look to add these double starters you risk falling further behind in wins to the point where it’s near impossible to come back. It’s the managers that can delicately balance when to pull of this move that are generally at the top of your league’s standings.

My co-manager is entirely against this strategy and thinks that we should wait it out a couple of weeks to see if the win problem corrects itself with the pitchers we have on the roster. I think, that if we don’t start now we run the risk of falling into a never-ending hole. Plus, if we start adding them now and the problem corrects itself, it’s not something that we are forced to do the rest of the season. We may even strike gold and find a pitcher that’s worth holding onto for the long term.

Here’s the pitchers that we have on our roster and our decision of what we decided to roll with in week two. We start nine total pitchers.

Justin Verlander and Chris Carpenter are must starts, and they both go twice this week.

Matt Garza was drafted to be our third starter, and though he has struggled in his first two starts, his strikeout numbers have still been solid. He’s in.

We currently have three closers who have jobs that need to be starting: Joel Hanrahan, Jose Contreras and Ryan Franklin. That takes up six of our nine pitching spots.

Mariner phenom Michael Pineda goes twice this week, home against Toronto and @ Kansas City. He’s No. 7.

The battle for the final two spots comes down to Scott Baker (@ Tampa Bay), JA Happ (vs San Diego), James McDonald (@ Cincy), Chris Volstad (@ Atlanta, @ Philadelphia) and Drew Storen.

Though Storen pitched very well last week, he’s still not the closer for the time being, and we just can’t afford to play a fourth reliever when wins are our biggest concern.

McDonald struggled last week and has a tough match-up at the Reds, so he’s out as well.

Chris Volstad is the double starter that we acquired this week for $11 through FAAB. We had a $33 bid in on Jesse Litsch but lost out by $5. Though he has two relatively tough match-ups on the road, the potential to make up ground in wins outweighs the risk in my mind. Volstad is in.

The final spot came down to Scott Baker and JA Happ. Baker has struggled a bit through his first two starts, but we drafted him to be our No. 4. Tampa Bay has really struggled, and it seems likely that he has a much better chance of winning than Happ and the Astros do. Happ was awful in his season debut, but brilliant on Sunday earning our team’s second win. This call really was a toss up, but we ended up settling on Scott Baker.

On the offensive side of things, we had a very boring week. Other than average, we hit or came in just a tad below our weekly targets. Six home runs on Saturday (Including two each from Carlos Beltran and Russell Martin) were instrumental in achieving those. We know that eventually Carl Crawford will come around. We hope that Will Venable will do the same, though that is much more uncertain.

I look forward to hearing any feedback that you guys may have on this issue! Maybe I'm an idiot for throwing Volstad in an effort to chase wins already and owe my co-managers an apology? Or perhaps I'm right in my line of thinking and need to continue this course until the deficit is made up. We'll know soon enough!

Posted by Dave Shovein at 1:06am (3) Comments

The Verdict: Don’t overreact after one week

The best way to depict the length of the baseball season has always been the phrase “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.” Over the course of a 162 game schedule, it is virtually impossible to make final judgments about a team after a handful of games. For example, the Boston Red Sox were 1-7 to start the season while the Baltimore Orioles were 6-2. Given their respective rosters, it is fairly safe to say that most baseball experts and the general public would not predict the Orioles to finish the season five games ahead of the Red Sox. The same type of analysis and reaction applies to fantasy baseball as well. After just one week (or two depending on the specific format of your league), it is way too early to gloat or panic.

The reaction most people might have after getting off to a bad start in a fantasy baseball league is to make a drastic maneuver. Whether it is trading away a superstar or overbidding on the highest rated free agent, a knee-jerk reaction is not uncommon. But those who can remain calm and not do something impulsive will be better off in the long run. Barring a catastrophic injury to a key player, getting off to a slow start in a fantasy baseball league is nothing to get overly concerned with. It just means that you have a little catching up to do from the start, but nothing that is insurmountable (yet).

It doesn’t matter whether your league is roto or H2H points, getting off to a slow start is frustrating. Even if you think you drafted well, watching your players put up goose eggs will drive anyone crazy. But remember, it is a marathon and not a sprint. The numbers that you projected for your players are for the entire season, not just the first week. Chances are that the players you drafted and are relying will indeed achieve those numbers throughout the course of the season because that is the nature of the law of averages. In the words of Yoda, “patient, you must be.”

You can expect aggressive fantasy baseball players whose teams start off strong to come and prey on those who may be vulnerable from starting off slow. Do not allow yourself to fall into that trap and let someone else convince you that your team sucks. Don’t let someone else convince you that your players are overrated and not living up to expectation. Don’t let someone else convince you that his players who overachieved so early are worth more than your players. This is where willpower, patience and common sense must take over. Do not start second-guessing yourself just because someone else is telling you to. You must remain confident and only deal from a position of strength. When discussing trades, you never want to seem desperate or negotiate from a position of weakness. Don’t let someone else dictate the terms of a trade and use his own subjective and jaded evaluation of your players.

Baseball is a game centered on numbers and statistics. Most times, those numbers are pretty accurate in determining and predicting how a player will perform. Every now and then there is an aberration such as David Wright in 2009 or Jose Bautista in 2010. Generally speaking, you know what you are getting when you draft a team. That is why you must remain calm and not overreact if your team starts out slow. If after several weeks your players still are not living up to expectations and you are slipping in the standings, then you may need to re-evaluate things. But after one week, cooler heads must prevail. The Boston Red Sox should not be panicking just yet, and neither should you.

Posted by Michael Stein at 1:07am (0) Comments

Velocity, strikeouts, and Colby Lewis’ rough start

Colby Lewis is off to a rough start in 2011. Should his fantasy owners be worried? (Icon/SMI)

Yesterday, reader Andrew posted a comment to my personal site asking about Colby Lewis.

I drafted Lewis on three of my teams this year (Tout Wars, Cardrunners, and Yahoo! Friends & Family), in addition to two teams last year. I also made a bet with Eric Kesselman (co-commissioner of the Cardrunners expert league) that Lewis would be worth at least $18.5 in a 12-team, AL-only format this season. Needless to say, I was pretty high on Lewis coming into the year.

Through two starts this season, however, his fastball velocity is down. Andrew pointed out a Mike Podhorzer article at FanGraphs that listed the pitchers who have suffered a decrease in velocity to start 2011. Lewis' average velocity is 87.9 mph this season, down 2.2 mph from 2010. That's not something to be taken lightly.

The radar gun and sample size

Some concerns were raised in the comments of Mike's post about the accuracy of the radar guns this year, and although the stadiums Lewis has pitched in weren't mentioned, that's always a possibility. It also should be noted that the velocity readings Mike noted are from Baseball Info Solutions. The PITCHf/x guns are a little more favorable for Lewis, who loses only 1.7 mph based on them.

Furthermore, Lewis hasn't used his fastball as much this year, and therefore has only thrown a total of about 70 (according to PITCHf/x) or about 90 (according to BIS). When you consider that he threw over 1,800 last year, we're not looking at very many.

Velocity's impact on strikeouts

Before going any further, we must first figure out how important velocity is for striking out batters. Dave Cameron ran a study at FanGraphs a couple of years back that looked at the correlation between a pitcher's fastball velocity and his strikeouts per nine innings. I've basically done the same thing here and reached similar conclusions. Looking at all pitchers since 2002 with at least 125 innings pitched, I found a 0.21 r-squared, which means that fastball velocity explains 21 percent of the variation in a pitcher's K/9.

This is highly significant, but not damning for a pitcher. This means that nearly 80 percent of a pitcher's strikeout rate comes from something other than his velocity. (Caveat: the pitcher may not necessarily control all 80 percent.)

Application to Lewis

That's very good news, but we get even better news when we look at the regression equation derived from the above study. If we apply it to Lewis' 2010 stats, based solely on fastball velocity, we'd expect Lewis to post a K/9 of 6.5. That's much lower than his actual figure of 8.8*. Based on Lewis's decreased 2011 velocity, his expected K/9 would be 6.0.

This can be seen as a positive thing for two reasons:

Lewis' "expected" K/9 was much lower than his actual K/9 last year despite him likely deserving his actual K/9. This likely means that Lewis is able to do things other than merely having a fast fastball to strike batters out. It's possible that a pitcher like this can lose a tick off his fastball and still be successful.
Lewis' "expected" K/9 dropped only half a point anyway. That's hardly going to destroy his numbers.

*You could argue that it's one year and Lewis didn't deserve the 8.8 K/9 last year, but I'd argue against you based on his stuff and his terrific MLEs in Japan the two seasons before. THT's Oliver system projected an 8.4 K/9 for Lewis this season, and ZiPS is even more bullish at 9.0.

Historical velocity dips

I decided to run one more study to examine other pitchers who lost some velocity in April and see how often their velocity returned over the rest of the season. Using PITCHf/x, I looked at all pitchers since 2007 (the year it was introduced) who had lost at least 1.5 mph off their four-seam fastball between the previous season and April. I then looked at their velocity for May through October and compared the three.

To qualify, a pitcher needed to throw at least 1,000 fastballs in the previous season, 100 in April, and 600 in May through October, which gives us a sample of 23 pitchers.

+---------+-----------+---------+
| Y-1 MPH | APRIL MPH | M-O MPH |
+---------+-----------+---------+
|    91.2 |      89.3 |    90.2 |
+---------+-----------+---------+

While our sample size is less than ideal, this tells us that, on average, pitchers who lost at least 1.5 mph on their fastballs in April regained 52 percent of their velocity over the rest of the season.

For Lewis, that would mean that his fastball velocity would rise to 89.2, an overall drop of just 0.8 mph from 2010. If we plug this into our "expected K/9" equation, Lewis's expected K/9 would be 6.3 with an 89.2 MPH fastball. That equates to just a three percent drop in strikeouts for Lewis based on his velocity loss.

If we look at the results a slightly different way, we see that 87 percent of the pitchers in our study improve their April fastball velocities in the following months. Just four percent end up reaching their previous velocity level, but 22 percent get within 0.5 mph.

Prognosis for Lewis

Summing everything up, things don't look terrible for Lewis. He has a few things going for him:

The PITCHf/x gun sees only a 1.7 mph drop on his fastball.
Lewis has thrown a relatively small sample of fastballs so far this year.
Lewis uses a lot more than his fastball velocity to strike batters out.
Since 2007, pitchers in this situation end up regaining 52 percent of their lost velocity.
For Lewis, regaining 52 percent of his lost velocity would result in just a three percent total reduction in strikeouts the rest of the way.
Even if Lewis doesn't regain any of his velocity, his expected K/9 would still drop by only half a point.

Concluding thoughts

Maybe I'm trying to put a positive spin on things because I have such a vested interest in Lewis' success this year, but I don't think it's time to hit the panic button yet. We're just two starts into the season, and a lot can still happen. If a Lewis owner is panicking, it might be wise to acquire Lewis cheaply. If you're the Lewis owner, I don't think we have much of a choice but to wait and see what happens. I have a feeling we'll be fine, though.

Posted by Derek Carty at 10:00am (11) Comments

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Friday, April 01, 2011

The strategy of having common players

Caveats

The rosters

The players

Concluding thoughts

Monday, April 04, 2011

The study

The results

Initial, ill-fated idea for the study

Concluding thoughts

Step one

Step two

Step three

Step four

Concluding thoughts

Conclusion

Tuesday, April 05, 2011

Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

The radar gun and sample size

Velocity's impact on strikeouts

Application to Lewis

Historical velocity dips

Prognosis for Lewis

Concluding thoughts