Capitalizing on Your Market

Howard has a two-part question:

What's the total $ spent on 2B-men vs what you think they will earn?

Also, in these leagues which spend more on hitting than an average league, it would seem like if you spent a bit less on hitting (costing you, say, 5 points in the hitting categories), you'd more than make up for it on pitching (perhaps picking up 10 points in pitching). I've made up those numbers ... do you have any idea what they are (ie. assume a Stage 3 league where if you spent with a hitter/pitcher split that exactly matched the league then you'd finish with exactly middle-of-the-pack points)?

First the easy part.

I don't use dollar values but rather bids when I go into an auction. Of the 22 second basemen I profiled yesterday, I had an $268 worth of bid limits on them and the CBS bidders spent $302 on those hitters.

The second part of Howard's question is much harder to answer because there are a lot of variables that must be taken into account. Let's back up and examine Howard's premise in greater depth.

Traditionally in Roto, leagues spend $175 per team on offense and $85 per team on pitching. More importantly, many pricing systems use these numbers as a baseline to try and establish value across the available pool of players. If you're using this baseline as well, this means that in a 12-team league that you should have $2,100 worth of bids on the available hitters and $1,020 worth of bids on the available pitchers.

In many leagues, this is all you need to know. Season after season, your league will spend $2,100 on the hitters and $1,020 on the pitchers. It won't matter if one year the league spends $2,110/$1,010 or $2,090/$1,030; this isn't enough variability to make a true difference.

In the last 2-3 years, though, the expert leagues have started spending more and more money on hitting and less and less on pitching. Tout Wars, in particular, went nuts for hitting last year, spending over 70% of its league budget in both the N.L. and the A.L. on hitting. If your league is doing this, you can do what Howard is suggesting and possibly gain a tactical advantage. I can't comment on how many points you could gain or lose by doing this because each league is different. Here are ways I've capitalized in the past:

1.     Make sure you adjust to the new normal. If your league is spending $182 per team on hitters and you're budgeting $175 for your hitters, it's more likely you're going to spend $160 or so on your offense. The more money that gets spent on offense by the league, the less likely your prices are going to "work." I recommend ramping up your hitter budgets as well...even if you intend to spend less money on hitters.

2.     Try to specifically identify where the extra money is going. It's entirely possible that the extra money going toward hitters is being distributed evenly in your league. In my experience, that's not how this plays out. Leagues tend to either pay more for the top hitters (CBS), for power at the expense of speed (also CBS) or for the hitters in the second tier (Tout Wars). Knowing how your league is allocating its money should give you a better crack at maximizing your offense even if you're not paying the full ticket price.

3.     Have a stopping point in mind. Two years ago in the CBS Analyst league, I budgeted more for the top pitchers and wound up spending over $100 on my pitching staff before I had even bought a hitter. If I had simply stuck to my sheet values, I could have feasibly spent $140-160 on my pitching. While this would have most certainly netted me close to the maximum pitching points, I would have had next to no offense. It's OK to be contrarian, but if you spend $180 on your pitching staff it will be next to impossible to win.

One of the biggest problems with Howard's theory is that because of the variability of pitching spending extra money on your pitching staff is less likely to translate into extra points than spending extra money on your hitters. Hitting is generally more predictable than pitching...which is why we spend 65-70% of our money on this side of the game in the first place. Spending $100 on your pitching staff can work, but unless you're extremely savvy on the hitting side - either from a value perspective or from a categorial perspective - you're probably digging yourself into a hole that you won't be able to dig yourself out of if one of your pitchers blows up. If two blow up, bye bye season. The same can't be said for hitters. If two of your hitters crash and burn, you might still be able to recover under the right circumstances.