The Hardball Times -- Derek Carty

Farewell, THT

Derek Carty — 2011-05-30T06:00:15+00:00

I can't believe it's been four years already, THTF readers. I can still vividly remember the rush of excitement when I received my first e-mail from THT, asking me to start a fantasy section for them. I had been writing at a small, independent blog at the time and couldn't believe that I had received such an e-mail after just two months. THT was my favorite site at the time, and I was ecstatic that I'd now have the opportunity to be such a big part of it.

Over the past four years, THT Fantasy has grown from a one-man operation to a full-blown site with a full staff of writers and the readership to match. And that, right there, is the reason I'm so grateful to THT for giving me that opportunity four years ago: the readers. I am so thankful to THT for giving me the opportunity to write for such an amazing, intelligent audience. I love that you guys ask questions and challenge us writers, and I'm glad that I could be there to help when you've e-mailed or IMed me with questions.

It saddens me to be leaving THT because it was the site that gave me my start, that first gave me the opportunity to write for a large audience. I have many fond memories at THT, and I will miss it dearly. I want to express my utmost thanks to Dave Studeman and David Gassko, the two men responsible for bringing me to THT in the first place. I also want to thank my incredible staff of writers who have helped make THT such a great place for fantasy analysis. And finally, again, I want to thank the readers, because without you, THT Fantasy doesn't exist — and neither does Derek Carty, the fantasy writer.

If you're looking for me, you can now find my work at Baseball Prospectus. I'll also continue to write at FanDuel and CardRunners. This past week, I began a series at CR looking at the value and reliability of closers, which I think should be very interesting. The first article in the series looks at how likely a closer is to keep his job the entire season. Additionally, you can keep track of everything I'm doing at DerekCarty.com or follow me on Facebook or Twitter.

Before I leave, I'd like to say thank you once more to the wonderful crew at The Hardball Times and to the amazing readers. I've absolutely loved my time here, and I will cherish these memories forever.

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Compete against Derek Carty for cash (again)

Derek Carty — 2011-04-20T13:45:15+00:00

As you know by know, I've been writing at FanDuel and participating in their daily fantasy baseball leagues this season. On Opening Day, FanDuel ran a promotion for THT readers that allowed you guys to compete against me for cash. This Sunday, you'll have the chance to do so again. And once again, entrance is 100% free!

We'll be competing in a FanDuel MLB Salary Cap 35k contest where you have $35k to spend on any nine players you want at the following positions:
P, C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, LF, CF, RF

The scoring system is points based:
Hitters: 1B = 1pt, 2B = 2pts, 3B = pts, HR = 4pts, RBI = 1pt, R = 1pt, BB = 1pt, SB = 2pts, Out = -.25pt
Pitchers: W = 7pts, ER = -1pt, SO=1pt, IP = 1pt

Prizes are structured as such:

1st	$100
2nd	$75
3rd	$30
4th	$20
5th	$15
6th	$10
Additionally, anyone who beats me, whether they finish in the top six or not, will receive $5.

If you still haven't taken the plunge into daily leagues, I'd highly recommend them. I've just started playing this year, but they're a lot of fun. This would be a great chance to get your feet wet, completely free, and with the added bonus of getting to compete against me and win cash! And if you need extra incentive, you will be helping THT make a little money just by playing. All you have to do is click here, sign up (takes less than a minute), and pick your team!

If you're not a member of FanDuel yet, if you sign up for the site with this link you'll get $10 deposited into your account for free.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.

Velocity, strikeouts, and Colby Lewis’ rough start

Derek Carty — 2011-04-12T14:00:15+00:00

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.

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There’s nothing magic about age 27

Derek Carty — 2011-04-04T09:11:15+00:00

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.

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Common players on my 2011 fantasy teams

Derek Carty — 2011-04-01T07:11:15+00:00

With draft season over and my final draft recap posted yesterday, I thought I'd resume my yearly tradition of reviewing my rosters and seeing which players ended up on more than one of my teams. With 24 players making the list this year, I've far eclipsed the totals from previous years (of course, I'm also in one extra league this year).

The strategy of having common players

Having so much overlap between teams can be a good thing or a bad thing. As Chris Liss of Rotowire noted a couple days ago when he engaged in the same exercise, "I'll win because I picked the right guys, or I won't. If you have six leagues, and you roster all different players, you almost can't help lucking into a win just because you have an investment in every possible scenario. And at the same time, there's almost no way all your teams will do well. But this year, I have a chance if five or six players pan out."

I'm comfortable with this scenario because I have confidence in my judgment on players. In years that it works (like two years ago), I'll end up doing well in most of my leagues. In years that it doesn't work as well (like last year), I won't excel in any of my leagues, especially if the reason these players underperform is because they get injured (I'm looking at you, Nelson Cruz). A couple of injuries to a couple of key cogs could torpedo several of my teams.

Caveats

As I mentioned last year, just because a player is on here doesn't mean he was a "have to have" guy for me or that I was targeting him specifically. Take this list for what it's worth: Simply that these players, for one reason or another, wound up on my fantasy team multiple times. Some guys I targeted specifically (like Napoli, Lewis, Uribe, Scott, Valverde and Pierre) while others merely happened to end up on my team through no real preconceived plan (like Votto, Byrd, Nolasco, Betancourt and to an extent Stanton). Then there are others that I thought would be on more of my teams but, for whatever reason, aren't (Jay Bruce, Tim Stauffer, Tsuyoshi Nishioka, Adam Dunn, Vladimir Guerrero, Seth Smith, and Ryan Raburn, among others).

Finally, note that there is some bias here in that there wasn't an equal chance of me selecting every player. I play in two mixed leagues (Tout Wars and Yahoo! Friends & Family), two NL-only leagues (LABR and FSIC), but only one AL-only league (Cardrunners). If it seems like there are more NL players on this list, there probably are. I had four opportunities to select NL players compared to three chances for AL players.

The rosters

If you want to recap each of my drafts, here are the links to all five articles I penned about them:
Cardrunners AL
LABR NL
Tout Wars Mixed
Yahoo! Friends & Family Mixed
FSIC NL

The players

Hitters — 3 teams
Mike Napoli: TOUT, CR, YAHOO!
Juan Uribe: TOUT, LABR, FSIC
Ryan Theriot: TOUT, LABR, YAHOO!

Pitchers—three teams
Colby Lewis: TOUT, CR, YAHOO!
Frank Francisco: TOUT, CR, YAHOO!

Hitters—two teams
Joey Votto: YAHOO!, FSIC
Jose Bautista: TOUT, YAHOO!
Juan Pierre: TOUT, YAHOO!
Mark Reynolds: CR, YAHOO!
Aaron Hill: TOUT, CR
Adam Lind: TOUT, CR
Mike Stanton: TOUT, LABR
Luke Scott: TOUT, CR
Dan Johnson: TOUT, CR
Marlon Byrd: LABR, FSIC

Pitchers—two teams
Ted Lilly: TOUT, FSIC
Ricky Nolasco: TOUT, YAHOO!
Phil Coke: TOUT, CR
Joel Hanrahan: TOUT, LABR
Jonathan Broxton: LABR, FSIC
Jose Valverde: TOUT, YAHOO!
Sergio Romo: LABR, YAHOO!
Rafael Betancourt: YAHOO!, FSIC
Alex Sanabia: LABR, FSIC

Concluding thoughts

What do you think? Are these players you'd want to bet your season on? And if you have any questions (maybe about a specific player on the list), as always, feel free to comment.

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2011 FSIC NL: Team Carty/Pritchett

Derek Carty — 2011-03-31T09:10:15+00:00

On Sunday, draft season came to an end for me as I completed my fifth and final fantasy baseball draft of the year, the Fantasy Sports Invitational Challenge (FSIC) NL. It's a 12-team, 5x5, NL-only league with 22-man rosters (one catcher). It uses a snake draft format to select rosters. The past two seasons I've partnered with Paul Singman for this league, and we finished in second in 2009. This year, however, my partner will be new THTF writer Ben Pritchett. Here's our roster.

FSIC NL roster

+-----+---------------------+-------+
| POS | PLAYER              | ROUND |
+-----+---------------------+-------+
| C   | Wilson Ramos        | R25   |
| 1B  | Joey Votto          | R1    |
| 2B  | Juan Uribe          | R9    |
| 3B  | Jose Lopez          | R16   |
| SS  | Stephen Drew        | R4    |
| CI  | Brandon Belt        | R14   |
| MI  | Jonathan Herrera    | R21   |
| OF  | Shane Victorino     | R2    |
| OF  | Jay Bruce           | R3    |
| OF  | Michael Bourn       | R5    |
| OF  | Marlon Byrd         | R9    |
| OF  | Mike Morse          | R10   |
| UT  | Jay Gibbons         | R19   |
+-----+---------------------+-------+
| SP  | Zack Greinke        | R6    |
| SP  | Ted Lilly           | R8    |
| SP  | Tim Stauffer        | R12   |
| SP  | Clayton Richard     | R13   |
| SP  | Brandon Beachy      | R15   |
| SP  | Kyle McClellan      | R17   |
| CL  | Jonathan Broxton    | R7    |
| CL  | Sean Burnett        | R18   |
| RP  | Rafael Betancourt   | R23   |
+-----+---------------------+-------+
| BN  | Andrew Cashner (SP) | R20   |
| BN  | Mike Leake (SP)     | R22   |
| BN  | Alex Sanabia (SP)   | R26   |
| BN  | Yonder Alonso (1B)  | R24   |
| BN  | Dee Gordon (SS)     | R27   |
+-----+---------------------+-------+

Thoughts

Overall, I think we drafted a very good team. I do think we have a couple holes, like UT now that Gibbons is headed to the DL and Tony Gwynn Jr. is starting in LF. Lopez and Herrera are also both question marks in terms of how much playing time they'll get. Ramos and Belt should start for the majority of the year, but just how large a majority is still in question.

Greinke will be out for most of April, but I think we ended up with a lot of quality pitchers late to help out until he comes back. Sean Burnett is only sharing save opportunities for the time being, but we drafted him late enough where he could be a real bargain.

Aside from all that, though, we're looking quite rosy . In all honesty, I think we landed some very good players early to anchor our team in Votto, Victorino, and Bruce, and some very good supporting players with the likes of Morse, Uribe, and Stauffer, among others. I think we have enough security wrapped up in certain players, and I think we picked our spots well in terms of taking risks to complement those players.

We'd love to hear your thoughts, so let us know what you think of our team in the comments.

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Predicting reliever wins

Derek Carty — 2011-03-28T09:32:15+00:00

There may be no more frustrating task in fantasy baseball than trying to predict how many wins a pitcher will accumulate. Fantasy writers constantly talk about how fickle wins are and how chasing wins is a fool's errand. This may be true, but I found myself wanting to know more about predicting wins when I joined the Yahoo! Friends & Family expert league this year. Not just any wins, mind you, but the trickiest of all: reliever wins. I wanted to know which relievers had the greatest chance of vulturing wins. Could we have predicted Tyler Clippard's 11 reliever wins last year, or were they a complete fluke?

Predicting reliever wins

In an effort to see which relievers were more likely to win games than others, I put together a data set with a 14 stats that I thought might be relevant. I then ran a correlation test between each variable and the number of wins a reliever accumulated in a given year. I also ran them against the number of wins per game played for each reliever because for those in daily leagues where you can simply pick up a new reliever every day, a reliever's seasonal total doesn't matter—only whether he might get one that day.

Here are the variables I choose:

Appearances minus games started (G)
Innings pitched (IP)
Innings pitched per appearance (IP_G)
Pitcher handedness (HAND_T)
Earned run average (ERA)
Run average (RA)
xFIP
Innings pitched per game by team's starters (SP_IP)
Runs allowed per game by team's starters (SP_RA)
Runs scored by team's offense (TEAM_RUNS)
Team run differential (RUN DIFF)
Saves (SV)
Average leverage index when pitcher enters the game (gmLI)
Number of relief pitchers with a gmLI higher than the pitcher's gmLI minus 0.1 (HIGHER_gmLI)

Using all relievers since 2004, we get more than 2,700 pitcher seasons to work with. Here are the results:

+-----+------+------+------+-------------+
|     | IP   | G    | gmLI | HIGHER_gmLI |
+-----+------+------+------+-------------+
| W   | 0.75 | 0.73 | 0.47 |       -0.43 |
| W/G | 0.31 | 0.27 | 0.31 |       -0.23 |
+-----+------+------+------+-------------+

+-----+-------+-------+-------+--------+------+
|     | xFIP  | ERA   | RA    | HAND_T | SV   |
+-----+-------+-------+-------+--------+------+
| W   | -0.29 | -0.22 | -0.13 |   0.08 | 0.26 |
| W/G | -0.18 | -0.16 | -0.10 |   0.09 | 0.07 |
+-----+-------+-------+-------+--------+------+

+-----+----------+-------+-------+-----------+-------+
|     | RUN_DIFF | IP_G  | SP_RA | TEAM_RUNS | SP_IP |
+-----+----------+-------+-------+-----------+-------+
| W   |     0.05 | -0.07 | -0.06 |      0.04 |  0.03 |
| W/G |     0.04 |  0.03 | -0.03 |      0.02 |  0.01 |
+-----+----------+-------+-------+-----------+-------+

What we see is that the most important factor is the number of innings a guy throws. Even when we're looking at W/G, if a guy is trusted to throw a lot of innings in general, he's going to be trusted to win games.

Just as important in terms of W/G is gmLI. This makes complete sense as a high gmLI means that the game is close, late, or in question. If a pitcher is trusted in these situations, he's going to be in position to pick up the win frequently. Similarly, if a team has more than one reliever who is trusted in these types of situations (think San Diego with Luke Gregerson and Mike Adams), each one's win total will be cut into by the other. After that, we see that how the reliever actually performs is most important, with (surprisingly) xFIP beating out RA and ERA.

At this point, our results start bordering on irrelevant with r-squared of 0.01 or below and high p-values. Then a pitcher's handedness comes into play (right-handed is better), followed by whether he's a closer, and then the rest of our stats that don't mean very much. Of note is that the reliever's starting pitchers and his team's offense have almost no bearing on whether he picks up a win. So when deciding between Rafael Soriano and Tyler Clippard, it's not going to matter much that one plays for the Bronx Bombers and the other plays for the lowly Nats.

Strategic implications for Yahoo! Friends & Family

The whole point of this exercise in the first place was to aid my team in the Yahoo! Friends & Family expert league, so I might as well explain why that was the case. In Yahoo! F&F, there is a 1,250 innings cap. This means that, essentially, if your team reaches that maximum, every pitcher's W/IP effectively contributes the same amount towards total wins.

That is, what you essentially must do is maximize your W/IP. Because if everyone reaches 1,250 IP and can't accumulate any more, everyone's win total is going to be equal to 1,250 x team W/IP. So if Cliff Lee posts an 0.75 W/IP (15 wins in 200 IP) and you're able to put together a collection of four relievers who post an 0.8 W/IP (4 W in 50 IP each), they are effectively worth the same.

Given this, you can see how important it is to target the relievers who are in the best position to pick up wins.

2010 xW/G% Leaders

If I create a regression equation using the most important variables, I can come up with a formula that will give us a reliever's expected wins per game played. Based on that formula, here are 2010's top 20 relievers in terms of expected wins per game.

+------------+---------+-------+--------+
| LAST       | FIRST   | W/G   | xW/G   |
+------------+---------+-------+--------+
| Bard       | Daniel  |  1.4% |  10.7% |
| Belisle    | Matt    |  9.2% |   9.8% |
| Gregerson  | Luke    |  5.0% |   9.8% |
| Clippard   | Tyler   | 14.1% |   9.7% |
| Adams      | Mike    |  5.7% |   9.6% |
| Berken     | Jason   |  7.3% |   9.0% |
| Betancourt | Rafael  |  6.9% |   9.0% |
| League     | Brandon | 12.9% |   9.0% |
| Masset     | Nick    |  4.9% |   9.0% |
| Guerrier   | Matt    |  6.8% |   8.9% |
| Romo       | Sergio  |  7.3% |   8.9% |
| Camp       | Shawn   |  5.7% |   8.9% |
| Moylan     | Peter   |  7.0% |   8.8% |
| Loe        | Kameron |  5.7% |   8.7% |
| Jepsen     | Kevin   |  2.9% |   8.7% |
| O'Day      | Darren  |  8.3% |   8.7% |
| Crain      | Jesse   |  1.4% |   8.6% |
| Benoit     | Joaquin |  1.6% |   8.6% |
| Hensley    | Clay    |  4.4% |   8.6% |
| Perry      | Ryan    |  5.0% |   8.6% |
+------------+---------+-------+--------+

Naturally, this will change for 2011, but it will give you a decent idea of which relievers are worth targeting. Some potential changes to the list include Jason Berken, who will surely drop with Koji Uehara and Mike Gonzalez back in the mix in Baltimore. Rafael Betancourt could drop a little with the addition of Matt Lindstrom (but should still stay very strong). Kameron Loe will drop with the addition of Takashi Saito. Joaquin Benoit could improve going to Detroit (and Ryan Perry could drop). Nick Massett could drop with Aroldis Chapman now in the majors.

Also of note is that it is possible for two relievers from the same team to rank highly as long as both are highly skilled, pitch a lot of innings, and pitch very high leverage innings, as evidenced Gregerson and Adams both making the top five.

Concluding thoughts

If anyone has questions or would like thoughts on a specific reliever you're considering, feel free to comment or e-mail me. I've also joined Facebook, so now you can add me as a friend and catch up with me there too!

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2011 Tout Wars mixed: Team Carty

Derek Carty — 2011-03-24T09:14:15+00:00

Last weekend, I traveled to MLBAM's offices in New York to participate in Tout Wars. This is my second year in the Tout Wars mixed league, and I think I came away with a pretty good team. The setup is a 15-team, 5x5, roto-based mixed league with a $260 budget.

Tout Wars Mixed Roster

+-----+--------------------+-------+
| Pos | Player             | Price |
+-----+--------------------+-------+
| C   | Mike Napoli        | $20   |
| C   | Ryan Doumit        | $2    |
| 1B  | Luke Scott         | $3    |
| 2B  | Aaron Hill         | $13   |
| 3B  | Jose Bautista      | $27   |
| SS  | Tsuyoshi Nishioka  | $9    |
| CI  | Juan Uribe         | $9    |
| MI  | Ryan Theriot       | $9    |
| OF  | Mike Stanton       | $20   |
| OF  | Juan Pierre        | $16   |
| OF  | Vladimir Guerrero  | $16   |
| OF  | Adam Lind          | $13   |
| OF  | Bobby Abreu        | $10   |
| UT  | Denard Span        | $11   |
+-----+--------------------+-------+
| SP  | Colby Lewis        | $9    |
| SP  | Ted Lilly          | $9    |
| SP  | James Shields      | $7    |
| SP  | John Danks         | $6    |
| SP  | Ricky Nolasco      | $5    |
| CL  | Joe Nathan         | $11   |
| CL  | Jose Valverde      | $10   |
| CL  | Joel Hanrahan      | $13   |
| CL  | Frank Francisco    | $4    |
+-----+--------------------+-------+
| BN  | J.D. Drew          | --    |
| BN  | Phil Coke          | --    |
| BN  | Chris Capuano      | --    |
| BN  | Justin Duchscherer | --    |
+-----+--------------------+-------+

Thoughts

I think I did a pretty good job accomplishing what I wanted. I found last year that the top stars all went for a lot of money. Yes, they're supposed to, but I feel like most cost $10 more than fair value. And since I don't like paying fair value to begin with —I try to fill 80-90% of roster with players I consider bargains —these kinds of players just weren't appealing to me.

Sure, you can get away with a stars and scrubs approach in a mixed league (Andy Behrens basically did stars and scrubs last year when he won the league), but I don't think it's necessary in order to win and think it's actually sub-optimal.

I did end up leaving $9 on the table and, in retrospect, could have gotten another hitter in the $20s or a better second catcher. It's always hard to judge an auction like this, though, especially when you see so much inflation early. You don't want to overpsend too much in the early going, but you also don't want to end up having money left over.

Facing inflation, my plan was to wait a while before buying too many players and eventually buying the guys I did get at big bargains, and I ended up doing that. Some came at much bigger bargains than expected, though, which left me with extra cash.

Juan Pierre, for example, went for $16 when other speedsters like Ichiro Suzuki ($25), Jacoby Ellsbury ($25), and Rajai Davis ($20) went for a lot more. I also saved on my closers, who I thought would be in the $12-$13 range, and on Colby Lewis and Ted Lilly, who I thought would be around $15 and $12. And my final pick, Frank Francisco, went for $4 when most closers went for double digits (even Brandon Lyon went for $13 just 20 minutes prior).

Concluding thoughts

That wraps things up for now. Let me know what you think of my team in the comments. Tomorrow, be on the lookout for an article comparing my team to Paul Singman's team in the Yahoo! Friends & Family expert league, and be sure to vote for who's team you think is better (hint: mine).

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Compete against Derek Carty for cash

Derek Carty — 2011-03-17T12:55:15+00:00

As you know, I'll be playing daily fantasy baseball leagues this season and writing about them at FanDuel. Now, you'll have the chance to compete against me in my first ever daily league on April 1 for the chance to win cash. And the best part is, entrance is 100% free!

We'll be competing in a FanDuel MLB Salary Cap 35k contest where you have $35k to spend on any nine players you want at the following positions:
P, C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, LF, CF, RF

The scoring system is points based:
Hitters: 1B = 1pt, 2B = 2pts, 3B = pts, HR = 4pts, RBI = 1pt, R = 1pt, BB = 1pt, SB = 2pts, Out = -.25pt
Pitchers: W = 7pts, ER = -1pt, SO=1pt, IP = 1pt

Prizes are structured as such:

1st	$100
2nd	$75
3rd	$30
4th	$20
5th	$15
6th	$10

Additionally, anyone who beats me, whether they finish in the top six or not, will receive $5.

So if you're like me and have always wanted to try a daily league, now's your chance to do so, completely free, and with the added bonus of getting to compete against me and win cash! And if you need extra incentive, you will be helping THT make a little money just by playing. All you have to do is click here, sign up (takes less than a minute), and pick your team!

I'm very excited to be playing in daily leagues this year, and I hope some of you will join me!

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2011 LABR NL - Team Carty

Derek Carty — 2011-03-09T09:31:15+00:00

This past weekend, I flew to Arizona to participate in the 18th annual League of Alternate Baseball Reality (LABR), the longest running expert league in existence. If you recall, I won this league two years ago, becoming the youngest champion in history, and am looking for another title in 2011. My draft didn't go as smoothly as I'd hoped, but I still think I should be a contender. Take a look at my roster and see what you think. Keep in mind that this is a 13-team, 5x5, NL-only league with a $260 budget.

LABR NL roster

Hitters

Pos       Player              Price
C         Chris Iannetta      $10
C         Chris Snyder        $6
1B        Brett Wallace        $8
2B        Clint Barmes        $6
3B        Juan Uribe          $15
SS        Ryan Theriot        $14
CI        Miguel Cairo        $1
MI        Skip Schumaker      $9
OF        Mike Stanton        $27
OF        Seth Smith          $16
OF        Carlos Gomez        $16
OF        Marlon Byrd         $14
OF        Gerardo Parra       $5
UT        Juan Miranda        $4

Pitchers

Pos       Player                 Price
SP        Tim Lincecum           $27
SP        Clayton Kershaw        $25
SP        Chad Billingsley       $19
CL        Jonathan Broxton       $14
CL        Joel Hanrahan          $15
RP        Mike Adams             $3
RP        Sergio Romo            $3
RP        Nick Masset            $1
RP        Matt Belisle           $1
SP        Vicente Padilla (DL)   $1
BN        Wade LeBlanc           --
BN        Alex Sanabia      --
BN        Jason Marquis          --
BN        Aaron Cook             --
BN        Chien-Ming Wang        --
BN        Ramon Ramirez          --

View the full results of the auction here.

Concluding thoughts

This was my second expert draft of the year (Cardrunners AL was the first), and I'll be participating in three more in the coming weeks. Let me know what you think of my roster in the comments.

DerekCarty.com

Also, for those who haven't heard yet, I'll be resuming writing a (more or less) weekly article here at THT shortly, but I'll also be doing some work for a few other places this season. Because of this, I've introduced my own website, DerekCarty.com, so that you can keep track of everything I'll be doing, learn more about me, and see some of my most prominent work compiled in one place (I'd highly recommend reading through some of it if you're new to THTF). It won't have much in the way of original content, but it will link to all of my work around the web, radio interviews I do, and I will be posting my expert league rosters there one day before I put them up here at THT. Be sure to check out the blog section to keep track of everything I'm doing.

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