Adding At Bats

Back in May, I addressed a question about adding bottom of the barrel free agents in one-league Roto leagues versus simply leaving a dead spot. Eugene Freedman thought it was generally best to add those peons to your squad.

My theory is always to add at bats as long as the batting average or OBP depending on what you play isn't taking a huge beating. In the AL Redmond is a good backup for batting average, as an example, so dropping him for a bad average and ABs isn't always the right move. But, I believe that Runs and RBI are highly correlated to playing time and PT is only shown by ABs in our game.

I generally agree with Eugene, and I hope that I didn't give the impression that you should avoid making replacements. In most of my leagues, I try to do this as much as possible.

One salient point that Eugene makes is that in 5x5 there are two counting categories that every player has a valid opportunity to move the chains in every time he plays - runs and RBI. Since I've mostly played 4x4 in my non-expert leagues, I don't use runs. In this case, I have to directly decide whether or not a player will help me more in RBI or hurt me more in BA.

In the American League this year, there are 34 players on pace in 4x4 to lose $1 or more ($0.50 cents or more, technically speaking). Since batting average is the only category in which you can "lose" money, this means that each one of these players lost so much money in batting average that it wiped out all of his contributions in the other three categories.

In many cases, these are simply players who did nothing over 20 and fewer AB and then disappeared entirely. It isn't so much that these hitters hurt a typical 4x4 team's BA but rather that they didn't do jack anywhere else.

The exceptions, however, make us cringe.

Ronny Cedeno was on pace to earn ($2) before he was traded to the Pirates. He was on pace to lose $9.43 in BA. In other words, he was on pace to earn $6.96 in HR, RBI and SB and yet still lost money for his owners.

Matt Tolbert is another example of how batting average kills. His 1/12/5 line without his batting average is on pace to earn his owners $5.21. However, he's going to lose his owners $5.88 in BA; like Cedeno, Tolbert is less than worthless.

It's important to note that I'm highlighting the exceptions here and not the rules. Nevertheless, the exceptions exist. If you're in a tight BA race - or don't have a BA stud to absorb a potentially bad BA buy, you should be a little more cautious before adding players like Tolbert and Cedeno to your squad.