...my league seems to be more like the BABG league, in that it pays more for the top and who it expects to be the top starting pitchers. BABG paid a lot more for the King (Felix Hernandez) than the "experts" and my league did as well. Same with the other budding aces ([Justin] Verlander and [Zack] Greinke) and second tier starters like (Gavin) Floyd and (Scott) Baker as well.The "BABG league" is my non-expert American League, and is entering its 22nd season in 2010.
Without looking at the numbers, I'd agree that we pay more for the best starters in BABG than they do in the expert leagues.
Inflation by Tiers, BABG 2007-2009
| # | Raw | Sal | Proj. Inf | $ |
| 2009: 1-10 | $220 | $297 | 35.0% | $229 |
| 2009: 11-20 | $71 | $89 | 25.4% | $37 |
| 2009: 21-30 | $37 | $41 | 10.8% | $44 |
| 2009: 31-40 | $24 | $17 | -41.2% | $60 |
| 2009: 41-50 | $10 | $20 | 100.0% | $17 |
| 2009: 51-58 | $8 | $8 | 0.0% | $12 |
| 2008: 1-10 | $238 | $303 | 27.3% | $290 |
| 2008: 11-20 | $79 | $88 | 11.4% | $99 |
| 2008: 21-30 | $52 | $55 | 5.8% | $53 |
| 2008: 31-40 | $32 | $34 | 6.3% | $115 |
| 2008: 41-50 | $20 | $20 | 0.0% | $2 |
| 2008: 51-60 | $13 | $25 | 92.3% | $10 |
| 2008: 61-65 | $5 | $5 | 0.0% | $14 |
| 2007: 1-10 | $204 | $283 | 38.7% | $190 |
| 2007: 11-20 | $88 | $126 | 43.2% | $56 |
| 2007: 21-30 | $31 | $55 | 77.4% | -$12 |
| 2007: 31-40 | $24 | $25 | 4.2% | $71 |
| 2007: 41-50 | $11 | $11 | 0.0% | -$3 |
| 2007: 51-63 | $15 | $13 | -15.4% | $26 |
I've included three years worth of data, with pitchers in groups of 10, from most expensive to least expensive. The secondary sort is when the player was nominated in the auction. The raw column is my projected bid price, the salary what the players cost in BABG, and the $ column what the players actually earned in 4x4 in the years represented.
In 2008 and 2009, you can see that the 10 perceived best pitchers cost a lot more than just about anyone else in the auction. There was a "run" on $1 pitchers in 2009 and a similar run on $1-2 pitchers in 2008, but my league decided to pay big bucks for top pitching and pay relatively less for almost everyone else.
Perhaps this was a reaction to 2007. While the 10 most expensive pitchers were certainly expensive, owners didn't stop spending. Instead of scaling back, owners paid even more inflated prices for the 11-20 bracket and the 21-30 bracket.
Looking at the $ column, it's easy to see why BABG pays for the big boys. Not only do they consistently deliver, but no other bracket comes close. There are certainly some nice surprises every season in one of the lower brackets, but in sum total no other group comes close.
I suspect, though, that one of the reasons that the top pitchers are so successful is that there few are selected, many are frozen. The average number of freezes in BABG is about 10-11 per team just about every year, with about four pitchers among their number. The good unpredictable pitchers at the bottom of the pile become the extremely high quality freezes the following year.
In start over leagues, every pitcher is available, so owners are far more likely to spread the risk. At least, that's what I think is happening in the expert leagues. I'll dig deeper and take a closer look in my next post.
2 comments:
In my 5x5 AL keeper league last year many of the best pitchers available went for considerably more than I valued them. Only two went around par. Papelbon was the only top tier closer available and surprisingly he went for par also. What options are available in this type of situation? Thanks, Mike.
The other comment I would make is that it is difficult to make a sweeping generalization while identifying specific pitchers in a keeper league. Floyd was a big risk. Verlander was coming off of long term contract. Felix had burned a couple of owners in the year previous. We're really comparing apples to oranges when talking about keeper leagues and non-keeper leagues. The generalized trends without regard to specific pitchers gets us to apples and pears, but we need to keep the different dynamics in mind.
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