Note: I’m done with posting on the virus crisis. All I can do at this point is express my anger, and that is not going to accomplish anything. I have some posts that I wrote a month ago that I’ve been saving up. Here is one of them.
I do a post on this every year. Some thoughts on this year:
1. In real baseball, I wish they would make the ball bigger, say by 1/2 inch in diameter, and also a little softer. I want to see more balls in play and fewer of the other three outcomes–strikeouts, walks, and home runs. I’ve said this before. Nobody is listening.
2. In real baseball, the concentration of home run hitters is down. That is, the percentage of home runs accounted for by the top 10 home run hitters was less last year than what it used to be. I haven’t actually done the calculation, but it has to be true. It seems to me that the top 10 home run hitters together have in the past produced close to the same number of home runs as was the case last year, but the overall totals shot up.
3. In real baseball, the concentration of innings pitched by top pitchers is down. My impression is that years ago the top four starters on a good team would account for over 750 innings. Last year, my guess is that the Nationals starters accounted for more innings than those of any other team, in part because their bullpen was so bad that they were afraid to pull their starters. Even so, the Nats’ top four accounted for just under 750 innings. So my guess is that on no team last year did the top four starters account for over 750 innings.
I just looked up some data. Last year, Justin Verlander was tops in innings pitched with 223. The twentieth place pitcher hurled 187. In 2009, Verlander was also the leader, with 240. Twentieth was 211.
In 1969, first was 325 and twentieth was 250. Maybe my ideas of innings pitched are skewed toward that era.
4. In fantasy baseball, the categories which I tended to pursue least were stolen bases, batting average, wins, and saves. My view was that an individual pitcher’s wins or saves and an individual batter’s average have high variance. And stolen bases tend to be negatively correlated with the home run and RBI category, so that the typical base stealer has a big opportunity cost, especially in home runs.
Think in terms of negative values. If “par” is 30 home runs, then a player with 10 home runs has a lot of negative value, which may be more important than the positive value that the player contributes in other categories.
In 2019, six of the top eleven base stealers also hit 20 home runs, so they did not have the sort of negative value that I associate with base stealers. The other top base stealers still have a lot of negative value that would make me avoid them.
But on the other end of the spectrum, when you compare power hitters, the main differentiating factor may be steals rather than home runs. Suppose that “par” in stolen bases is 7 and “par” in home runs as 30. It is plausible that a player with 35 home runs and 0 steals is going to hurt you, just as it is plausible that a player with 10 home runs and 40 steals is going to hurt you.
Rules matter, as usual. If your league has six hitting categories, then the value of stolen bases is diluted. Also, if you play in a 12-owner mixed league with 10 starting hitters (I call this a shallow league), avoiding negative values is very important. If your league has 15 owners and each starts 15 hitters (a deeper league), then getting positive values is harder, so that negative values are not as significant.
5. With the decline in concentration in innings pitched, I think it is very difficult to capture both the ratio categories (WHIP and ERA) and strikeouts. To get a lot of strikeouts, you need a lot of pitchers, and some of them are likely to have ugly ratios. I suspect that this favors two strategies for winning pitching points. Either choose to draft a lot of starters with potential and get lucky; or draft very little starting pitching and fill your roster with relievers, aiming for points in saves and in the ratio categories. If more than a couple of owners in your league go for the “all-reliever” strategy, the run on relievers should be quite amusing.
Rules matter. If your league has a high floor on required innings pitched, you can’t go with all-reliever.
6. In general, if you are playing to win, you want to minimize downside with your top three or four draft choices (or expensive players in an auction) and maximize upside with the bottom half of your roster. Somewhere in between, there comes a point where there is not much difference between the expected performance of a mid-round (or mid-price) player and the potential of a last-round (cheap) player. Rules matter. If the draft is so deep that there won’t be much left to choose from once the season starts, it’s a different story.
But the decline in concentration in slugging and starting pitching may help those of us who prefer not to use this “stars and scrubs” approach to drafts/auctions. If the concentration rate is as low as I think it is, then the late middle rounds of a draft, or the comparable prices in an auction, may include players who are better than even the potential of the players available near the end of the draft.
I want to see more balls in play and fewer of the other three outcomes–strikeouts, walks, and home runs.
Amen! Modern baseball is boring, largely because there isn’t much “base” in it any more. It’s “plate” with an occasional “wall”.
Much of the present season is lost, and if the NBA or the NHL decides to hold its playoffs in the summer, there could be major loses of TV viewers. Baseball may go to a permanently much lower plateau in interest and caring (and money!). I can’t help thinking of the exchange from Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said, “Gradually and then suddenly.”
1) The relationship of the innings pitched and home run totals are probably inversely related and the big fall with innings pitched happened in 1980 – 2000 when 4 things happened:
1) Salaries started skyrocketing. So teams became a lot more careful of their Kershaw usage versus their Koufax usage.
2) 1970s into 1980s had the big stolen base revolution. After 1920, stolen bases dropped A LOT with league leader getting 30 – 40 a year. This made a lot of pitchers use their legs less and less full windups. (Go back and watch Nolan Ryan in early 1970s pitch some time and remember they used to steal bases blindly against him.)
3) A lot sliders and other pitches versus a lot of Bob Gibson or Robin Roberts high fastballs.
4) With more home runs hitters that means less easier outs. Pitchers could throw good stuff at Belanger and Mendoza. A lot this diminished after 1920 but it was still out there until post 1993.
We are instituting a minimums inning requirement this year in the league I run due to teams going with the all-relievers strategy (and other owners complaining about it).
As for stolen bases, I think it partly depends on how plugged-in your leaguemates are. If you’re in a competitive, high-stakes league, then stolen bases may well be overvalued. But if you’re in a more casual league, owners may be biased toward the players they’re more familiar with, which tend to be the home run hitters rather than the guys who get steals.
Observations from a long-time fantasy baseball participant:
-A hitter with more walks than strike-outs is special. While walks drawn don’t count in many leagues, this is a distinction of a very good hitter
-Pay attention splits versus bottom tier starting pitchers — if a right handed batter in the free agent pool (or on your bench) rakes against left handed starters, and a mid-to-bottom tier LHP is starting a game against that hitter, then as long as said hitter is an everyday starter, plug ’em in. Ditto for left-handed batters and RHPs
-Lot of less than stellar pitchers are sent-in for mop-up duty during double headers
-Starting pitchers that recently became starters (like late the year before or early in the season) but that also have a 65% or higher quality start percentage should be snapped-up before they’re discovered; they’re more likely to earn wins. They’re also good carrots to dangle in a trade if they can maintain it (especially if you think they’re doing it with smoke and mirrors)
-Many high quality middle relievers can be extremely valuable by providing solid ratios and occasional vulture wins. Roster enough of them and you can likely recreate one fantastic starting pitcher and mitigate a down year from a usually reliable starter or from an average starter you’re rostering from a high winning percentage team. They also tend to become the team’s closer
-Either get one of the productive catchers or punt and instead run a catcher-by-committee if your’re not bound by transaction limit. Productive catchers can make a difference. But you can piece together a steady stream of passable results by playing daily match-ups and by understanding how teams’ managers are plugging catchers into the line-up
-When struggling to make a decision between two hitters that play the same position, don’t discount their typical spot in the batting order