As important as matchups are to Pick Six (for more, see last week’s strategy post), the most important aspect of the game is to pick players that are good values at their positions.  Today, I’ll give a run down on some of the better (and poorer) values at the first two positions in Pick Six: Catcher and Corner Infield.  The numbers I’ll report are projected Points per Plate Apperance (Pts/PA), based on a weighted average of Oliver and PECOTA projections (a bit more weight to Oliver, because it’s more current).  YMMV depending on your preferred projection system, or your own adjustments to these systems.  Also, keep in mind that prices change weekly, and so this just represents a snapshot look at player value and may be obsolete by next week!

Catcher

Elite Three  (they cost a fortune, but they’re worth it):

Carlos Santana, $34.25, 1.42 Pts/PA
Brian McCann, $32.25, 1.37 Pts/PA
Buster Posey, $35.50,  1.33 Pts/PA

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Pick Six debuted last week, and since then it’s been sweeping the nation–or, at least, filling up my twitter feed.  If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s a simple, free game that has you pick six players for the coming day’s action.  The player who gets the most points that day wins!  While it’s not an incredibly deep game, you do operate on a budget, and so you can’t just pick the best players at each position.  Therefore, the question is, what should you do?  I’m not exactly at the top of the leader boards right now, but here are some tips:

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Last week I introduced ottoneu Pick Six, a daily points game, and I wanted to update everyone on the recent updates to the game.  For those of you who don’t know, Pick Six is a game that takes less than 5 minutes to enter and lets you compete against other FanGraphs users on your ability to choose players for the day, with achievements for winning or accomplishing other feats.  It’s free to play, and you should definitely check it out.

The next time you visit the Pick Six site, your first stop should be the “Add Friends” tab.  You can now follow other users on Pick Six, allowing you to compare yourself to a subset of the day’s participants.  I think this is a pretty fun feature, but the real reason I am writing today is to share a few Pick Six users that you should consider following.

• nivshah – me, winner of May 3 (which means I totally know what I’m doing)
• Sarris – The captain of Team RotoGraphs
• Cistulli – Keeper of NotGraphs and general thorn in my side
• jhmoore, cloakedarbiter, Wolfersberger, zsanders, Allen – FanGraphs and RotoGraphs writers that all eat, breathe and live baseball (and sometimes also R)
• jinaz – Did the lion’s share of the work in developing the scoring system
• Steve Slow – Brought over the Sabermetrics library
• dooberfig, chy924, jpjazzman, Thad, jgshanas, jonathan1465 – Some of the participants in the original ottoneu league.  Also, not good at Pick Six, so good for your ego.

With over 200 participants in the first 6 days, I’m pretty sure I missed more than a couple of people you should be following.  In the comments, feel free to share your Pick Six profiles with each other, so you can add each other to your leaderboards.  Additionally, make sure to follow ottoneu on Twitter or Facebook for updates and so you can give more of the great feedback I’ve received so far.  Have fun, and good luck!

When playing typical fantasy baseball, the main thing that fantasy managers typically worry about regarding relievers is one thing: jobs.  If a reliever is a closer, he has value.  If not, they generally are considered to have very little value except in very deep leagues.

In FanGraphs Points leagues, however, a reliever’s job means a bit less, because saves (worth 5 points apiece) are worth only marginally more than a hold (4 points).  With that in mind, I think it’s interesting to take a look at reliever rankings without worrying about jobs.  In a sense, what we’re talking about are “true talent” projections for relievers, but still including things like park factors that do matter for fantasy comparisons.  If you have an estimate of a pitcher’s true talent, you may be able to find that cheap bargain pitcher who will outperform bad relievers with jobs.  And in all likelihood, the best pitchers would be expected to be among the first to take on the closer role once it becomes available.

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ottoneu Fantasy Baseball’s argument is that fantasy owners should have to make the same kinds of long-term decisions that Major League GMs have to make.  The secondary argument is that traditional fantasy baseball statistics are too steeped in the past, and the linear weights points system is a big step forward in this regard.  The question then arises – what if you ignore the first rule and focus on the second rule.  The result is ottoneu Pick Six.

Pick Six is a simple game and while it is not completely unique in its mechanics, it should prove to be easy and fun.  You have six positions to fill and $120 to do it.  The positions are C, CI (1B/3B/DH), MI, OF, SP, RP.  The goal is to gain the most points, based off of the linear weights points system, in a given day.  Everyone gains points as the system states, except SP gain 1/4 the points to bring their average points scored in line with the rest of the positions.  Entries open at midnight ET and close when the first game of the day starts.  Sure, that stinks on days with day games, especially for those of us on the west coast, but we want to keep this thing as simple as possible right now, and we’re interested to see what you guys think.

The prices were seeded a few weeks ago with average prices from ottoneu Fantasy Baseball points leagues.  However, these values are adjusted every week based on usage.  To give a real example, Jose Bautista’s torrid start to the season has seen his price go up $3 during the testing period, and I imagine while people continue to focus on using him at CI or OF, his price will continue to rise.

There are some high-variance bragging rights to win and some achievements to unlock and the only requirement is a FanGraphs account.  We’re going to call from now until the All-Star break a test period to get some feedback and see how the thing plays with a larger audience.  I’ll personally make custom achievements for the top 3 overall scores at the break as well, so a bit more than bragging rights are on the line.  Games start early today and entries are open now, so go ahead and fire it up and have some high-variance fun.  As always, you can reach me on twitter (@ottoneu) or via email (help at ottoneu dot com) or in the comments!

Our first trade! The FanGraphs/ottoneu Experts’ League has finally consummated a trade. I gave Andy Behrens my $1 Aaron Harang, and he gave me his $1 Placido Polanco. Early polling on the ottoneu Facebook page (like it! doooo it!) did not favor me, so I’ll do a quick defense. For your reference, the full post-draft rosters are listed in the introduction post here.

I realize that on value alone, I’d rather have Aaron Harang for my team. There, I’ve got that out of the way. Harang, perhaps finally healthy after two years where he only managed about 270 innings combined, is looking good. He’s got his trademark control back, and just enough strikeouts to make the package work. Polanco is also playing well, but his .128 ISO would be his best number in eight years, and his .375 BABIP will surely regress. I’ll take the ZiPs RoS and take a .300-ish batting average with 13-15 combined steals and home runs.

And that’s the key. I’ll take those numbers. I’m not sure Harang would have cracked my lineup too often. He’s still an extreme flyball pitcher – his 33% ranks 12th-worst among qualified pitchers and fits right into his career line (37.8%). As such, he’s probably a confident start about 60% of the time in mixed leagues. On my team, he fit in right behind Josh Johnson, Mat Latos, Ricky Romero, Jaime Garcia, John Danks, Wandy Rodriguez and Derek Holland. You have enough innings for about 6 starters’ worth of work, so basically I was betting that Rodriguez and Holland could handle that final starters’ worth of a workload. That’s a bet I think I can win.

We already looked around at the league and determined that there were only a few teams with extra MIs available. With Ryan Raburn looking like a platoon bat in real life and fantasy, I needed an MI. I offered Aaron Harang for Howie Kendrick (ZiPs RoS .280 with 24 combined HR and SB) and was quickly rebuffed. The best other deal I managed to find was a $5 Alcides Escobar for my $2 Matt LaPorta. I didn’t mind the deal, but my firstbasemen, in a 12-team league, are Gaby Sanchez, Mitch Moreland, Justin Smoak and Matt LaPorta. I think I need to keep all of those guys to see who works out – they’re all flawed.

So, in the end, I traded away a cheap superfluous older player to another team for their cheap, superfluous player. Kudos to user DScott for predicting Behrens as my trading partner. It seemed like a good match. Participant Chad Young (Amateur Hour), when writing about this league on his blog, agreed for the most part – even though it cost him a chance at Matt LaPorta. What do you guys think?

It’s time to check in on the FanGraphs Experts League! You can see the full rosters in this introductory post.

Our intrepid hero is doing ‘comme ci comme ca’ as the French say – in seventh out of twelve. I’m not sure exactly which direction I should tack. Clearly, playing Ryan Raburn in my MI spot hasn’t worked out so well – perhaps it’s time to use one of my FOUR FAAB DOLLARS to drop Josh Thole (my third catcher) or David Hernandez (my J.J. Putz handcuff) and pickup a middle infielder. The problem with that idea is that, with 40-man rosters, I’m stuck looking at Jonathan Herrera and Felipe Lopez. In a twelve-teamer. Maybe it’s time for a trade.

I hope it’s not time to cash in a prospect for this problem. I still have high hopes for Travis Snider. I wonder if the commissioner (Amateur Hour) would give me his $2 Orlando Hudson or $1 Freddy Sanchez for my $3 Erik Bedard, $1 Aaron Harang, or $2 Matt LaPorta? I wonder if I would do that. With Josh Johnson, Mat Latos, Ricky Romero, Jaime Garcia and John Danks as my starting five, I could perhaps trade some pitching – perhaps I should put $1 Jarred Cosart on the block. In the meantime, I’m going to start chatting up Team Rotowire about Howie Kendrick, who has probably hit half of his yearly home run total already.

Let’s take a look at the leader right now. Earl Webb, run by BaseballHQ writer Neil FitzGerald. My first inclination is to say that he won’t stick around in first for very long, but after more inspection, I’m not sure. His veteran team is certainly propped up by some fast starts – Alex Rodriguez, Paul Konerko and Matt Kemp, in particular, have performed ‘ably’ in the early going. As those batting averages regress to career norms, he may have some uncomfortable moments. The back end of the Earl Webb rotation is also iffy – he has two of John Lackey, Scott Baker and James Shields running out there every day, and no minor league prospects that might restock him in the future.

In general, that’s the team’s weakness: It’s very old. Ben Revere, Lorenzo Cain and Carlos Carrasco might be his youngest players. Perhaps he’ll be able to sell some extra pieces for prospects. Saaaay… stopgap MI Chris Getz to me for young pitcher? He certainly won’t be hunting on the waiver wire unless someone loans him some money.

On the other hand, by being a veteran team, he doesn’t have any glaring holes (like my MI problem). His worst everyday players in the lineup are probably Austin Jackson and Vernon Wells. It gets much, much worse than that.

Save for a few rogue ottoneu one league members, we’re all new to this game. One quirk in the game is the fact that though we have two catcher slots, we only get 162 games from those two slots combined. This is to reflect the reality shown in real baseball – all catcher situations are tandems, more or less. It’s a difficult position, and so even the hardiest, youngest catchers need days off. This does leave ottoneu managers in a difficult position – how do we best handle that position?

Let’s focus on the top 12 catchers by games played last year. They averaged 130 games played. That means you should really buy a number one catcher and then look for a $1 value to plug in for those other 32 games. That means if you are playing two catchers every game, you better watch out for your games played limit, like, now.

But how should you use those 32 games best? One thing you could do is find a backup catcher with a great platoon split. Then you could play him whenever that split is activated, and get more value out those games. Going back to 2008 in order to get a decent sample, here are some guys that have played well against lefties but might be backups in your ottoneu league:

Kelly Shoppach (.396 wOBA)
John Buck (.374 wOBA)
Carlos Ruiz (.368 wOBA)
Ryan Hanigan (.360 wOBA)
Ronny Paulino (.353 wOBA)

A natural extension of this approach might actually have you sitting your primary catcher if they aren’t great against southpaws. That would leave more at-bats for your backup in case you ended up with two strong catchers. Here are some front-line dudes that don’t play so front-line against lefties:

Matt Wieters (.275 wOBA)
Kurt Suzuki (.292 wOBA)
Miguel Montero (.328 wOBA)
Russell Martin (.333 wOBA)
Brian McCann (.333 wOBA)

There are some obvious caveats that should come to mind. First, this second list includes some young players that have not ‘proven’ that they cannot hit lefties yet. Also, a .333 wOBA is above average, and strong for a catcher, so maybe you shouldn’t sit Brian McCann, like, ever.

But there is a chance that if you have a first catcher that is a little weaker against lefties, and a backup catcher that is strong against lefties, you might find a great mix between the two. With a little daily effort, you can use platoon splits to get the best 162 games out of your roster.

I play in two points leagues, both of which use lwts-style scoring (although what follows applies to most other points systems).  They differ in format, however: one is a head to head points league with weekly lineups (my yahoo league), while the other is a more traditional points league with game and innings caps but daily transactions (my ottoneu league).

One of the biggest differences between the two systems is what the rule differences mean for reliever value.  In a head to head points league, it’s all about point accumulation.  And in my league’s scoring system, like in many points systems, a major key to generating the most points in a season is playing time, i.e. innings.  Because you can only set lineups once per week, this means that starters who have RP eligibility are tremendously valuable.  As an example, here are the top 11 pitchers who had RP eligibility in Yahoo last season, based on total FanGraphs Points:

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We held what might perhaps be the first keeper auction experts league on the 31st. The results were epic.

At least, they felt that way after so many adult sodas, so many auctions.
So many broken dreams.

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