As typically happens in mid-March, it's later than I thought. I've spent too much time writing about players and covering ground that a lot of other blogs and web sites cover (and probably cover better), and not covering the kind of Rotisserie-specific topics that make this blog what it is.
Yes, this is the beginning of my annual pep talk to you serious, hardcore, one-league only, auction-format, 12 or 13-team league Roto buffs. Mixed league players are certainly welcome to keep on reading, but I'm going to spend the rest of this month dispensing advice to players who play in the deep leagues and formats that I know and love...and have played in for 23 years and counting.
Anyway, I'm going to start with projections vs. bids. This seems like a very simple concept to me, but so many people get tripped up over this that it apparently isn't as simple as I think it is.
Here is a simple- yet elegant - two-sentence summary.
A projection gives you a rough idea a player might earn. A bid is what you are willing to pay.
Many Roto players stumble over this concept. They want a projection to be 100% accurate in determining what to pay for a player and want to pay what the projection is worth.
However, this doesn't work for a lot of reasons. Here's an example from last year.
Baseball Prospectus' 2009 PECOTA projection for Pat Burrell last year was 26 HR, 81 RBI, 1 SB, 77 runs and a .236 BA in 588 plate appearances. If Burrell had only had the common decency to put up those numbers (yes, I bought him in one of my leagues last year), he would have earned $13. Instead, Burrell only earned $6. The pessimist would rail against PECOTA's projection and call it lousy. The optimist would point out that PECOTA's relatively dour outlook on a fairly consistent .250 hitter with 30ish HR power was ahead of the curve.
Burrell's average salary in the three expert leagues - CBS, LABR, and Tout Wars - was $19 in 2009. CBS pushed up the average with their $23 price for Burrell, but LABR ($17) and Tout ($16) weren't exactly shy about Burrell. Obviously, not every tout was going in with a $13 price tag on Burrell. However, every tout could have seen what PECOTA saw about Burrell: a 32-year-old hitter with old man skills moving to the toughest division in baseball.
The Patton projection on Burrell last year was 27/84/0/70/.246 in 525 AB, which also would have been good for $13 in earnings. Yet the bids on Burrell in the software were $16 for Patton (4x4) and $20 for Mike Fenger (5x5). Why were the tout leagues so (relatively) optimistic on Burrell? I don't know for sure, but I can make some educated guesses.
Burrell was not an unknown commodity; he was a proven veteran signed to a secure two-year deal for one of the best franchises in baseball. He had played in 144 games or more the past four years and was moving to the DH spot, where he wouldn't have to suffer the wear and tear of playing the outfield. He might regress at the age of 32 but then again he might not; 32 isn't 35, and many players continue to be productive in their early to mid-30s.
I suspect the owners that bought him in the tout leagues figured that a $13 season was a worst case or near-worst case scenario. If they paid $16-17 and he only earned $13, they would live with that. Owning a player with a $10-12 floor at $16 or $17 isn't optimal, obviously, but it's better than paying $16 for a rookie who might have a more glittering projection with a floor of $0 if he crashed and burned in April and get sent down.
Like Matt Wieters. PECOTA's projection - 31/102/4/105/.311 in 649 plate appearances - would have been good for a $28 season in 2009. Even if you had been prescient enough to shave down Wieters' season to 382 plate appearances, his resulting 18/60/2/62/.311 line would have been good for a $16 season. Wieters "only" put up a $9 season in 2009.
CBS and LABR bid $13 apiece, while Tout Wars stopped at $9. While their projections may have been somewhat more pessimistic than PECOTA's, I suspect that their reticence had less to do with any projection system and more with some base assumptions that were the opposite of Burrell's base assumptions. Wieters could have been great. He also could have hit .200 in AAA in April and spent most of the years in the minors. Then when he made the majors he had to not only learn to hit big league pitching, but also learn how to catch a new pitching staff. Maybe Wieters was capable of hitting 31 HR over a full season in his rookie year, but all of the touts put their bids well below the robust PECOTA projection.
So there you have it. A bid limit is designed to take some of the non-mechanical elements into account and adjust accordingly. We're not simply paying for what we think a player might do, we're also paying for where we think that player's ceiling and floor rest, with our bids generally coming in somewhere in the middle.
4 comments:
I'm in my twentieth year playing in a 13 team 5x5 NL only league. Your focus on deep league-specific roto leagues is appreciated! I look forward to reading your posts over the next few weeks.
I think the difference in prices on Wieters last year had to do with the timing of drafts: CBS in February, LABR in early March, Tout Wars in late March. By the time Tout drafted it was a fact that Wieters was heading to Triple-A. He was sent down March 26th (Tout Wars AL draft was the 27th).
It's possible. It does seem that the Orioles plan all along was to send Wieters down; Andy MacPhail told the press on 2/13 that the plan was to send Wieters to AAA. My assumption is that the CBS/LABR bidders were not anticipating a full season from Wieters either; if they were, I think Wieters may have shot up to $20.
Since Nate Silver left for political bookmaking PECOTA lags well behind CHONE and ZIPS. While no projection is going to be 100% accurate, and for playing time Fanlytics is best, I still like bidding based upon projections. You probably won't ever have irrational exuberance on guys like Burrell who are bound to decline. While there are some risks of Stage 2 syndrome, the key is to look at younger players using the eye that TangoTiger wrote about and Neyer re-reported. The Tom Seaver rule. No rookie is going to exceed Seaver's established level of play.
I use ZIPS and CHONE for rates and my own playing time projecitons - minus wins for relievers- which I zero out.
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