Sometimes the standings can play tricks on you. You see your team in first, but it’s an optical illusion. You are in seventh but are sure you have the best team.
In my experience, this has always been the domain of match-up leagues, but in my first go-round with the ottoneu FanGraphs Points Leagues, I am learning that I was missing a use case – and now I am hoping to take advantage to secure a championship with a very simple step.
Jim Johnson has 42 saves. You own closers for saves. Ipso facto bingo blatto, Jim Johnson is an elite fantasy closer.
— or —
Jim Johnson has 36 strikeouts in 58.1 innings. The average closer would have 65 strikeouts in that amount of innings. Ipso facto dingo datto, Jim Johnson is a poor fantasy closer.
I can’t claim “killing your babies,” although I really wish I could. And before you go marching off with a fungo bat looking for your first born, please, put the bat down. ‘Killing your babies’ is a term/phrase/philosophy I’m stealing from an editor I worked with who used it to describe something difficult in writing. That is, sometimes you just have to get rid of entire chapters of your book, despite the fact that you think they’re brilliant — because they really just don’t work anymore. I like to apply this principle to fantasy baseball.
Admit it — you fall in love with players. To see certain names on your roster just warms the cockles of your heart. Even the sub-cockles. But there’s a point at which carrying your favorite beau is actually hurting your chances at winning. And although I actually know some managers who would rather lose with players they like (because, they say, they enjoy “rooting for them” – BAH!) — I refuse to believe that the good readers here want anything other than the final prize. If a player isn’t bringing your team closer to a championship, it’s high time to get out the hatchet. Kill your babies.
Arguing for a potential rule chance in fantasy leagues can be an arduous process. The longer you’ve been playing in a league, the more difficult it becomes to move away from the status quo. When I first started getting into advanced stats, I began to realize the silliness of some traditional fantasy stat categories. Why were we still using pitcher wins and batting average as major components in our league, I asked myself. Wouldn’t it be better for our fantasy league to mirror real-life value? While this seemed like a no-brainer in my head, I knew it would be difficult to persuade my league to make some changes. From the FanGraphs After Dark chats, I also know that many of you are curious about moving to leagues that use more advanced stats. Here are a few suggestions on how to move away from a traditional fantasy set up.
At the start of 2011, Jhoulys Chacin was actually a pretty hot commodity. While he didn’t pile up many wins in 2010, Chacin was striking out nearly 24% of batters, he had a tidy little 3.28 ERA, and even though he had an elevated walk rate, his WHIP was a respectable 1.27. In fantasy circles, he was largely seen as a bit of a risk-reward starting pitcher due to his penchant for the free pass, his high strikeout rates, and the Coors factor.
His 2011 season turned out to feature both reward and risk as his strikeouts regressed to an 18% rate, his walks remained high at 10.5%, although he maintained a decent 3.62 ERA and 1.31 WHIP. He came out of the gates smoking, with an elevated strikeout rate, only to see his K/9 fall off the table in July, all the way down to 4.13 K/9 in September.
The ottoneu trade deadline has come and gone, and Friday was a busy deadline day for the original ottoneu league. While there had been a number of deals weeks or even months before the deadline, two big stars with rather large contracts remained on non-contenders, and a number of other teams were still trying to get over the top.
Between 8:00 p.m. ET and 10:45 p.m. ET, we had three deals go down and had another owner make the call to hold onto a rather expensive star.
I’m not having my best fantasy year — more on that another time — and so I found myself on the edge of my seat this last weekend, trying to make sure I made the playoffs in three leagues. (Two others I’m cruising in, and the remaining seven or so are roto). In one of the close head-to-head leagues, I was victorious and squeaked in on the last day. In another, I found out I had another week to make my case. And then there was that one. I won my weekly matchup 7-3 on the last week and felt good about it. The guy ahead of me in the standings lost his matchup 3-7. I went and did the math.
My team had a 118-98-4 record. His team had a 118-96-6 record. I was out, in the closest final standings situation I’d had in a head-to-head league.
Before I get cool story bro’ed, there’s more to this than just my fantasy team. There was at least one universal lesson hidden within all the pain.
He has thrown 69.2 innings over 10 starts and 15 appearances with a 2.45 ERA, pitches in one of the best pitchers parks in baseball, and yet is owned in just 8% of Yahoo! leagues. So what gives, why isn’t anyone owning Eric Stults?
Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday, Fielding Dependent Pitching was release here at FanGraphs which is used to compare FIP-WAR and R/9-WAR. While WAR and its components sometimes have little affect on fantasy baseball, I have found the LOB-WAR to be useful for finding pitchers who may consistently have their ERA out perform their FIP value.
To get an idea of what traits these pitchers have in common, I looked at the top 10 pitchers (*) in LOB-Wins for 2012. Each of these pitchers had an ERA less than their FIP with the average difference being -0.70. Initial reaction may be that the pitchers crank it up a notch and get more strikeouts, which is not the case. Here are the average strikeout and walk numbers for the group.
| Split | K/9 | BB/9 | K/BB | K% | BB% |
| Bases Empty | 7.4 | 2.0 | 3.9 | 19% | 5% |
| Men on Base | 5.9 | 2.9 | 2.2 | 17% | 8% |
| Men In Scoring | 6.4 | 3.8 | 1.9 | 18% | 10% |
You know it affects you. April, that is.
One or two of your players go out there and they really stink it up or they really light the world on fire and despite the fact that you’re a rational human being with faith in the sample size of the marathon instead of the sprint, reliance on our collection of nerds that try to preach patience when warranted — it messes with you.
We have the luxury now of looking at the stat line and having, most categories considered, stable numbers. So when Ryan Zimmerman falls off the face of the earth and then cortisone suddenly rejuvenates him into Clark Kent, well — we’ve still got a steady .280/.349/.451 which is just vintage Ryan Zimmerman.
