Yesterday, I reviewed THE BAT X’s runs scored favorites, as part of the 2023 projection showdown, pitting their projections against Steamer’s forecasts. Now let’s find out how Steamer’s runs scored favorites ended up performing.
One of the very best aspects of Ottoneu fantasy baseball is that you are involved all year round. As October hits, stats are no longer accumulating, points are no longer being totaled and performance measurements remain locked in the past. But arbitration begins and the business side of baseball is front and center. Would you believe that someone, somewhere, in an Ottoneu points league is rostering Ronald Acuña Jr. for only $26? It’s true. If he’s not a candidate for arbitration allocation in that league, I don’t know who is. This is a pure example of why arbitration matters. If the person rostering Acuña for only $26 doesn’t have that salary adjusted, they would go into the draft with Acuña and the additional dollars to auction another big name. Oh, the humanity!
You can find all kinds of interesting situations like the Acuña one by downloading average salary data right from your league page and in this post, I’ll take you through the details on how you can use it to generate insights and strategy specifically for your league.
Step 1: Download average salaries and make it specific to your scoring format
If you click on the “Players” tab at the top of your league page, the sub-menu has a link all the way to the right titled, “Average Salaries”. You can also click here. The drop-down menu in the top right corner of the page allows you to specify salaries based on your scoring format. Choose the option that matches your league and then click “Export as .csv”.
Step 2: Merge average salary data with your league’s roster data.
If you followed Step 1 above, then you have your “average salary data”. Now, back on the “Players” tab, simply click “FanGraphs Sortable Stats”. This will take you to a FanGraphs leaderboard. Make sure the drop-down menu reads “All Teams” so that you are being given salary information for your league-mates rosters. Lastly, merge the two data sets on “Name” and subset it to “Player Name”, “Average Salary”, “Last 10”, and “$”, which represents the actual salary the player is currently rostered for in your league. Here’s an example:
| Team | Name | Rostered $ | Avg Salary | Last 10 | Salary Diff |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | Carlos Correa | $19.00 | $29.12 | $21.40 | $10.12 |
| B | Nolan Arenado | $24.00 | $32.64 | $26.50 | $8.64 |
| C | Bryan Reynolds | $10.00 | $18.32 | $28.00 | $8.32 |
| D | Yordan Alvarez | $34.00 | $42.01 | $52.30 | $8.01 |
| E | Austin Riley | $23.00 | $29.80 | $40.70 | $6.80 |
| F | Manny Machado | $34.00 | $40.74 | $29.80 | $6.74 |
| E | Gunnar Henderson | $5.00 | $11.38 | $25.00 | $6.38 |
| D | Rafael Devers | $34.00 | $39.56 | $39.70 | $5.56 |
| D | Andrew Benintendi | $5.00 | $9.70 | $2.90 | $4.70 |
| E | Jarred Kelenic | $7.00 | $11.52 | $8.70 | $4.52 |
You’ll notice a few things in the table above. First, I’ve also included “Last 10” which gives an average of the most recent 10 completed auctions for that player. You’ll also notice that I calculated the difference between the player’s average salary and what they are actually rostered for. From here I can start to make some decisions. For example, I’m not worried at all about the roughly $4.00 difference between the average salary and the actual salary for Benintendi and Kelenic. If you look at Benintendi’s “Last 10” you’ll notice he’s trending down anyways. By 2024, he may be worth less than the $5.00 he’s actually being paid. Yordan Alvarez, however, needs some adjusting. He’s worth more than $34, just try and change my mind.
Step 3: Group your new data set by team to determine who has the most “surplus value”
You can eyeball this process by simply going to your league’s “Arbitration” page and looking at the comparison of “Curr Salary” versus “Proj Salary” by team. Remember that you must give each team in your league at least $1. Note that this process does not provide a true “surplus” value for each team because each team is also overpaying on players. However, you won’t know who is being cut for a number of weeks, and that probably shouldn’t factor into your allocation strategy. It’s important to take stock of who in your league seems to have all the riches. There are a few different ways to do this but I like to take a simplistic route and isolate the league to players who are rostered lower than the average salary. Then, I sum the difference (Avg Salary – Actual Salary) by team and end up with something like this:
| Team | Surplus |
|---|---|
| A | $15.18 |
| B | $27.26 |
| C | $5.86 |
| D | $21.44 |
| E | $17.70 |
| F | $53.08 |
| G | $30.07 |
| H | $15.87 |
| I | $28.74 |
| J | $35.39 |
| K | $28.46 |
| L | $6.25 |
Right away I can see that there are two teams who have a big discrepancy between what they are paying and what other teams are paying on average. That could be a difference between two or three players, or it could be that a team is rostering a handful of players for a few dollars less than average. Let’s take a look at team F to see what is going on:
| Name | Rostered Salary | Avg Salary | Salary Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yordan Alvarez | $34.00 | $42.01 | $8.01 |
| Rafael Devers | $34.00 | $39.56 | $5.56 |
| Andrew Benintendi | $5.00 | $9.70 | $4.70 |
| Lars Nootbaar | $5.00 | $9.30 | $4.30 |
| Max Muncy | $18.00 | $22.29 | $4.29 |
| Wil Myers | $3.00 | $6.40 | $3.40 |
| Bryson Stott | $3.00 | $6.40 | $3.40 |
| Wander Franco | $21.00 | $24.07 | $3.07 |
| Josh Naylor | $5.00 | $7.36 | $2.36 |
| Ceddanne Rafaela | $3.00 | $5.14 | $2.14 |
| Trevor Larnach | $3.00 | $4.86 | $1.86 |
| Masyn Winn | $3.00 | $4.77 | $1.77 |
| Kris Bryant | $18.00 | $19.71 | $1.71 |
| Nick Senzel | $3.00 | $4.65 | $1.65 |
| Mike Yastrzemski | $3.00 | $4.51 | $1.51 |
| Randal Grichuk | $3.00 | $4.47 | $1.47 |
| Brendan Rodgers | $5.00 | $5.73 | $0.73 |
| Brandon Lowe | $15.00 | $15.59 | $0.59 |
| Austin Nola | $3.00 | $3.40 | $0.40 |
| Seth Brown | $5.00 | $5.16 | $0.16 |
Team F looks a little less scary when you see that the value difference is spread out. Again, Yordan Alvarez needs to be adjusted. But, who else on this list should I allocate arbitration dollars to? Well, that’s the fun part. It’s not necessarily as easy as just tossing dollars on Yordan and Devers. Even if at the end of arbitration, Alvarez’s salary increases to $50, I’d probably still be inclined to keep him on my roster if I were the Team F manager. If that is the case, what does that actually do? Well, it limits the amount Team F will take into next year’s draft, but it doesn’t free up Alvarez for me to draft. That’s where the real strategy comes into play and over the next few weeks, our Ottoneu team will be writing more about arbitration strategy.
Today, we move on to reviewing the runs scored forecasts as part of the 2023 projection showdown pitting THE BAT X against Steamer in various fantasy categories. Just like RBI, runs scored is heavily driven by lineup spot. While the extra plate appearances for hitters atop the lineup doesn’t matter for this analysis because we’re keeping a constant 650 PAs, the guys at the top of the lineup benefit from better hitters behind them to drive them in. So they are likely to score a higher percentage of the time when they are on base versus hitters in the bottom half of the lineup. So let’s keep that in mind when reviewing the actual runs scored here as a change in lineup spot may be the cause of exceeding or missing the projections. We start with THE BAT X’s runs scored favorites.
Tommy John surgery week continues with the hitter edition. With both Riley Greene and Jasson Domínguez (Shohei Ohtani got the brace procedure) getting a Tommy John surgery, I wanted to know how their performance changed from when they were healthy, to hurt, to fixed.
Note: I’m pushing my limits on what I’d like with a sample was 26 hitters. Sometime the matched seasons doesn’t lineup thereby pushing the number even further down. I understand if someone feels the sample is too small and blows off the results.
I found the change by using a weighted change from season to season. The hitters who had the most matched plate appearance got the most weight. Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday, I reviewed the hitters that THE BAT X was most bullish on for RBI compared to Steamer. Let’s now flip over to Steamer’s RBI favorites.
Today, we transition our 2023 projection showdown review to runs batted in. This is a fun one to look at because lineup spot (and obviously the strength of the hitters ahead of the player in question) dramatically influences RBI projections. So I’m always curious how a system forecasts a player’s lineup spot and whether that forecasted spot changes as we head into opening day. A system can’t always assume a hitter will hit in the same spot as the previous year, so there has to be some sort of awareness of where the hitter is hitting during spring training and adjustments made if necessary. Sometimes we see a speedy guy with a mediocre OBP flip-flop between leading off and hitting ninth and where he ultimately ends up will influence all his counting stats. As a result, it is imperative that a computer projection system knows where a hitter is expected to hit in the lineup.
Yesterday, I reviewed THE BAT X batting average favorites, as part of my recap of the 2023 projection showdown, pitting the system against Steamer in various fantasy categories. THE BAT X was closer for five of six players in which it was most bullish on. Let’s now check in on the hitters Steamer was most optimistic on for batting average compared to THE BAT X.
Let’s continue on reviewing the 2023 projection showdown series, pitting THE BAT X projections against the Steamer forecast in various statistical categories. Today, we’ll move on to batting average. Batting average projections are tough as they rely heavily on BABIP, which is driven a great deal by the whims of lady luck. So over a small sample of players, the system that proved closer here isn’t necessarily better at projecting batting average. So that’s the caveat. With that out of the way, let’s get to the players that THE BAT X was projecting for a significantly higher batting average than Steamer and find out which system ended up closer.
To qualify for this totally made-up award, a player must have earned positive value by the season’s end (2023) and show the largest difference in projected value versus end-of-season value. Simply put, I subtracted earned value from projected value, called it ‘Diff’, and sorted descending. It should be noted ahead of time that these three players were negatively valued due to very low plate appearance projections.
2022 Finalists: Jon Berti, Brendan Donovan, Brandon Drury
2023 Finalists: Josh Lowe, Jake Burger, Nolan Jones
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Yesterday, I reviewed the five hitters THE BAT X was most bullish on for stolen bases compared to Steamer projections. Now let’s flip over to Steamer’s favorites. As a reminder, this exercise isn’t as enlightening as the exercises in the various other categories I hosted a showdown for. That’s because leaguewide stolen bases were up 41% compared to the 2022 season, so the typical stolen base forecast is going to be lower than the actual total. Let’s see if that means that Steamer forecasts proved closer here more often, just as THE BAT X took four of five wins yesterday.