Where Do Player Values Come From?

anonymous asks:

I notice several times you refer to a player producing $X of value. How do you go about calculating the dollar value of a specific 5x5 statline?

The dollar values I use are derived from Alex Patton's formulas for calculating player value. If you want a long, wonky explanation of how these values are derived, follow the link.

The shorter answer is that the Patton formulas use an "average" Rotisserie league's auctioned statistics to determine value. These values should equal the amount of money a league has to spend. If your league spends $3,120, the players you purchased will be worth $3,120. Free agents you pick up during the season accumulate value under the same formulas, but are not factored into calculating the initial formula.

In 4x4, hitters are worth 70% of the auction dollar pie and pitchers 30%. This is because 14 hitters contribute to three quantitative categories (HR, RBI, SB) while pitchers only contribute to two (wins, saves). This means that each Rotisserie team had 42 opportunities to add counting stats on offense but only 18 on pitching. 42/60 = 70%.

In 5x5, the money skews slightly toward the pitchers, since you're adding a counting category to each side of the equation, and you now have 56 opportunities on offense vs. 27 for pitching (56/83 = 67.5%).

Each counting category isn't equal in Patton $, though. For every $9 earned by the entire hitting pool, approximately $4 goes to RBI, $3 to HR, and $2 to SB. The rationale is that RBI is more competitive in a typical Roto league than HR, which - in turn - are more competitive than SB.

5x5 takes money from all of these categories to give runs value, but the idea is the same: each RBI and run is worth more than each HR, which is worth more than each SB.

The pitching formulas are more inelegant, in my opinion. Wins and saves get the same general value every year, since there are generally the same number of wins and saves in baseball year in and year out. Even though saves are far more scarce than wins, the wins category is typically more hotly contested and thus Patton assigns wins more value. Once again, strikeouts gets a good chunk of money, which is taken away from wins but especially from saves.

I haven't mentioned ERA, WHIP or batting average yet. These are qualitative categories. They earn $0. A hitter above the auctioned batting average earns positive money, while a hitter below this batting average loses money. The same applies for ERA/WHIP. Once again, in 5x5, BA, ERA, and WHIP don't earn (or lose) quite as much money.