Post #985: In Which I (Generally) Agree with Rotoman

Rotoman says that there's a difference between a projection and a bid.

Neither Alex nor I base our prices on our projections. The projections are an educated guess, and they're helpful in characterizing what a player is expected to do, but pricing is really a matter of reading the market. Do you want the guy? And what is it going to take to get him?

If you always want him you make his bid price higher, if you want him some of the time you make his bid price par, and if you don't want him you give him a low bid price. This allows you to budget realistic prices for all players, and better manage your draft.

And I generally agree.

The second paragraph listed above dovetails entirely with my pricing philosophy in Roto, which I outlined to a large degree in this post way back in 2007. A projection tells you what you think a player might do, but several factors - usually tied to risk - will lead you to pay more or less than what the raw projection is telling you to pay.

In one of Alex Patton's books (the 1994 edition, for those of you who still have these wonderful tomes on your bookshelves at home), he wrote this nugget of wisdom under Ron Gant's profile.

The other forecasters looked at the three years preceding 1993 - years that show an alarming decline - and all four made the correct call: Gant's going to reverse this.

They generated stats that showed he would improve.

I guessed at a salary for Gant - paying more attention to the numbers (in his salary scan) 41, 37, 30 than any other numbers - and the salary generated the stats.

This comment has shaped the way I look at both bids and projections for many, many years. Truth be told, I generally don't care about projections all that much. They're entertaining to look at, and in the case of a few young players give me a sensible baseline to consider before setting a bid on a player. For the most part, though, I don't care much about projections.

(This also one reason why this blog's reach has never exceeded its grasp and posted player projections - or offered them for a price - in the 3+ years since I've hung out my shingle.)

Rotoman's final point in the first paragraph above is where the rubber meets the road as far as I'm concerned. Whether I believe Jose Reyes is going to bounce back all the way, some of the way, or not at all is a moot point. If I think - for the sake of argument - that Reyes is going to earn $30, that's not as important as how I feel about him.

This goes back to the point in Rotoman's second paragraph. If I think Reyes is going to earn $30 but feel like there's too much risk associated with him, I won't bid $30. However, I'll push him to a price where I can live with someone else owning Reyes. If I think Reyes is going to go well past his projection but don't want to get left holding the bag if I'm wrong, I'll set a stopping point in mind the other way: a price where I can live if another owner gets Reyes and winds up reaping the benefits.

Another way of looking at all this is that if you think a player is going to earn $45 and the conventional wisdom says $30, chances are that there's a reason that conventional wisdom isn't out on the same limb that you are.