Step One: Eliminate the Bias from Your Fantasy Baseball Picks
Growing up, there was nothing finer for a kid than waking up every morning and turning to the back pages of the sports section to scan the box scores for the previous night's games. Numbers streamed down those four columns--ab, r, h, rbi--after every hitter's name much like the neon symbols rained down in the opening sequence of "The Matrix."
Like The Matrix, those box score numbers occupied an alternate reality for us baseball fans who took great pleasure in absorbing statistics and the endlessly fascinating configuration of numbers.
Nowadays, with the Internet and SportsCenter, box scores don't carry the weight they once did. But scanning lists of baseball stats is not a dead skill. For fantasy baseball, it's essential.
The first step in winning your fantasy baseball league is to create a solid draft list. To do that, you must create a bias-free player rankings sheet.
A bias-free player rankings sheet
Here's how: Take a stat sheet that lists the last three year's statistics, like the one that Yahoo distributes to its Fantasy Plus subscribers, or the ones that appear in various baseball magazines and books.
What I like to do is to take the sheets of Yahoo stats and fold the papers vertically so that I can only see the stats and not the names.
What you want to do is try and spot a player's trends. Are they moving up? Was last year's numbers a substantial increase over his three-year average?
You're also looking at the overall quality of last year's stats. Even if his home run and stolen base total don't add up to much (see Design a Very Simple Formula to Evaluate Players), is there something that stands out across the board that might make him a great fantasy value?
Lastly, when scanning these statistics, you want to make the process as objective as possible, separating the names from the statistics, if possible.
What to do with these stat sheets
For the hitters, what I do is scan the sheets and put a checkmark next to the stats of approximately the top 72 players. Then I'll divide them up into two groups. I'll give an "A" to the top 36, and a "B" to the next 36, and I'll keep dividing groups into halves until I come up with an ordered Top 72 list.
There is no exact science to this. This is an exercise in ranking players without being biased by the superstar names. The idea is to rank your players without looking at their names to see if there are any surprises, either at who made your list, or at how highly you ranked a lesser-known player. Doing this exercise might also yield some draft steals.
For instance, in 2006, this exercise showed huge potential for a player who hit 19 HR, 87 RBI, 14 SB, and .307 in 479 AB the year before. If given a full season, one could reason, this player could have a huge year. And yet he was not ranked in the Top 100 in most fantasy lists. That meant a big draft day bargain for whoever drafted Matt Holliday.
In 2007, this exercise confirmed the excellence of players often overlooked by media. Which shortstop's stats are these from 2006?
100 R, 19 HR, 85 RBI, 20 SB, .320 AVG, 543 AB
Miguel Tejada? Michael Young? Rafael Furcal? Troy Glaus? Bill Hall? Nope. Those stats belong to Carlos Guillen, who was usually drafted after all the shortstops just mentioned, but arguably had the most attractive stat sheet. And how did Guillen fare in 2007 compared to those guys? Statistically speaking, better than all of them.
Finally, let's do one more example using 2007's stats to show you how this works. Which outfielder would you most like to pick for next year?
| |
|
|
Hits/AB |
R
|
HR
|
RBI
|
SB
|
AVG
|
|
Player 1 |
|
185/612
|
122
|
23
|
74
|
26
|
.302
|
|
Player 2
|
|
191/637 |
97
|
23
|
112
|
18
|
.300
|
|
Player 3
|
|
153/554
|
93
|
33
|
112
|
23
|
.276
|
Player 1? Player 2? Player 3? A case could be made for any of them, although one of them is more famous than the others and will probably go much higher in the draft. This is not to say that these three players are equal, especially given Player 3's prolific past. But it does point out that you can fill your roster with some emerging superstars that have the potential to carry your team, but won't necessarily go in the first three rounds. As for who is who, Player 1 is Curtis Granderson, Player 2 is Nick Markakis, and Player 3 is Carlos Beltran.
Step Two: Design a Very Simple Formula to Evaluate Players » |