Chad Young’s Ottoneu Tiered MI Rankings Follow Up

My 4×4 tiered rankings for middle infield came out yesterday, and as promised in my intro article back in December, I am going to follow up each positional ranking with two things: my rankings for FanGraphs Points leagues and notes on how rankings would differ for other formats.

I will leave the FanGraphs Points rankings table for the end, so feel free to scroll down there if that is all you are looking for.

Some of how rankings vary format-to-format is obvious – guys who steal a ton of bases are a lot more valuable in 5×5, where steals are 20% of the offensive categories than they are in 4×4, where steals basically don’t exist. Yes, stealing a base can help you score more runs, but that’s a much smaller impact. But there are some subtler ways the formats vary that can impact player values quite a bit. Let’s go format-by-format, using the 4×4 rankings posted yesterday as a baseline, and identify players who would be more or less valuable in those other formats.

FanGraphs Points

I have argued in the past, 4×4 and FanGraphs Points are not that far apart. But there are some differences. We can just look at the top 10 to see some great examples:

• Corey Seager moves from 6th in 4×4 to 4th in FGPTs. That isn’t some massive jump, but it does represent a change in tiers. This is because missed time hurts more in roto than points leagues, and when I create my rankings, I try to account for that. If (ok, when) Seager misses time, in your 4×4 league, you are likely replacing him with someone who will add some HR and R (though not as many as you would like) but will actively hurt you in OBP and SLG. In fact, you might be better off only replacing him when matchups and park factors work to your advantage, even if that means you leave 10-15 MI games on the table. In Points leagues, though, even a bad shortstop or second basemen can give you something like 4-4.5 P/G, and that is pretty valuable. So I dock players who miss time or need to be platooned less in Points leagues. Prospects get pushed up a bit in Points leagues because of this – the wait is less painful in Points leagues. Other names impacted by this include Tyler Freeman (86th in 4×4, 41 in FGPTs), Ronny Mauricio (102 vs. 70), Nolan Gorman (103 vs. 85), and Curtis Mead (110 vs. 86).
• Trea Turner moves from 12th in 4×4 to 9th in FGPTs. There are multiple factors that help him rise, but the most obvious is stolen bases. Turner projects to get somewhere between 30 and 35 points from his stolen base output. That may not seem like a lot, but over 150 games, 30 points is 0.2 P/G, and that matters. His THE BAT X projection is worth 5.2 P/G which equates to about a $20 value. If I dock him that 0.2 P/G, he goes down to $15-$16. Others impacted by this include: Xavier Edwards (58 vs. 49), Nico Hoerner (40 vs. 36), and Bryson Stott (57 vs. 46). One note here: a lot of players who accrue a lot of stolen bases also play a ton, which puts their stolen base gains up against a relative loss from the point above. A guy expected to play every single day without major platoon or park issues might lose value moving from 4×4 to FGPTs, and the steals might merely offset that rather than creating a direct gain.
• Bo Bichette move from 10th to 8th. This is at least in part due to something I have been noticing more and more recently. We think of FanGraphs Points, like 4×4, as an OBP league, because walks and hit-by-pitches have value. But it’s really not – it’s an AVG + OBP league, and it rewards average more. This is pretty obvious when you look at the scoring. A hit is worth 5.6 points. A walk is worth 3. Over a season, if you assume a player gets 600 PA and has a .333 OBP, getting 50 walks and 150 hits is worth 65 more points than getting 75 walks and 125 hits. And that assumes those extra hits are all singles. Bichette’s projected OBP isn’t bad, but his high average carries more weight here than it does in 4×4. Other players who gain value because of this include Jacob Wilson윌슨 (25 vs. 14), Tyler Freeman (adding to his “platoon” gains noted above), and Jeremy Pena (20 vs. 17).
• Among players projected to be at least replacement level in both formats, and looking purely at projections (no adjustments made by me, simply converting projected production into dollars), the biggest movers from FanGraphs Points to 4×4 are:
  • Willy Adames (-$8), Trevor Story (-$7), Dansby Swanson (-$7), Gleyber Torres (-$6), Ceddanne Rafaela (-$6), Bobby Witt Jr. (+$8), Ketel Marte (+$7), Tyler Freeman (+$6), Corey Seager (+$4), and Romy Gonzalez (+$3).

SABR Points

SABR points and FanGraphs Points use the same scoring for offense, so the only real call out here is that because of the change to pitching scoring, I find that bats are just generally more valuable; that is, it makes sense to allocate more money to hitters, driving up their prices a bit more. The effect is about 10%, which doesn’t seem like a ton, but does mean you should be willing to spend a bit more on bats, especially the elite ones, in SABR Points.

Head-to-Head

Head-to-head (H2H) leagues come in FanGraphs Points and SABR Points flavors, but the ways in which H2H differs from season-long are the same in both formats, so we will take H2H vs. Season-long as a single comparison. And the biggest difference here is that volume matters more. That shows up in two ways.

• In the FanGraphs Points section above, we discussed how players who platoon, play in bad parks, or are expected to miss time lose more value in 4×4 than they do in Points leagues. H2H is something of a middle ground on these players. A platoon bat is easier to replace in H2H points than they are in 4×4, but the lack of games played caps means you have more work to do to replace them. In a season-long points league, you have 162 games played at each position (and 810 at OF), max. If you have three middle infielders who are all going to play 155 games, you need 21 games from a backup to fill in the gaps, and that is that. But in H2H, you can start a player at each MI position every day. That works out to closer to 180 days (the All-Star Break plus short slates on Mondays and Thursdays, etc. make this inexact, but 180 works for our purposes). That means you can get 540 (rather than 486) total games at MI. If you have those same three 155-game players, you now need 85 games from another player. And you can’t be as picky about when you use that backup – if your starter is off on a Thursday, you start your backup that day. You can’t pick and choose which days to use your backup to maximize matchups. If you have a guy like Seager, expected to miss some time, that could be another 20 games you have to make up. This makes even someone like J.P Crawford, who projects below replacement level, interesting as a H2H depth option, because you can count on him being in the lineup when you need him. Elly De La Cruz, Bobby Witt Jr., Willy Adames, Maikel Garcia, Gunnar Henderson, Anthony Volpe, and Brice Turang, are all middle infielders who played at least 310 games over the last two seasons. Dansby Swanson, Trevor Story, Ernie Clement, Geraldo Perdomo, and Crawford, are others who missed five or fewer games last year. Unless you are worried about injury (Story) or lost playing time (Clement), those guys are worth more in H2H.
• For the same reason, replacement level gets lower. You simply need more active MLB players on your roster everyday to be sure you have a full lineup everyday. The lower replacement level means more players are above replacement level. Crawford is again an example, as are Ramon Urias, Casey Schmitt, and Tommy Edman (all pending role). This also pushes DOWN prospects in this format. You simply can’t afford to use as many roster spots on stashes, because you need those active players. So “replacement level” for prospects (i.e., the minimum “value” prospect worth holding) goes up, making fewer prospects worth holding, but driving up the price of those few who are worth holding, because they are so scarce.
• The other impact of the need for deeper benches and the decrease in replacement level is a very small decrease in the value of all bats. This is simple economics – if there is the same basic amount of money split over more players, that’s less per player. This is mitigated by the bullet point above – if most of those players are cheap players replacing prospects, they don’t really need to take much away from the rest of the active MLB bats. This impact is small enough that it can be ignored, especially if you (like me) are thinking in tiers, but it is something like a 1-2% impact that takes a dollar off the values of the highest priced players.
• Among players projected to be at least replacement level in both formats, and looking purely at projections (no adjustments made by me, simply converting projected production into dollars), the biggest movers from FanGraphs Points Season-long to head-to-heat are:
  • Bobby Witt Jr. (-$3), Ketel Marte (-$3), Corey Seager (-$2), Gunnar Henderson (-$1), Mookie Betts (-$1), Nico Hoerner (+$1), Ceddanne Rafael (+$1), CJ Abrams (+$1), Jeff McNeil (+$1), and Jared Triolo (+$1).

5×5

This format is the most divergent from the others. So many of the things that make players valuable in points leagues or 4×4 don’t matter here (doubles are basically just singles with a higher chance for a R or RBI in 5×5; they boost SLG in 4×4 and are worth more than singles in points). Other things gain in value – batting average is a bit more valuable than in points leagues, stolen bases are a lot more valuable, and RBI are very valuable in 5×5 and have no value in the other formats.

• Stolen bases are the most obvious difference and that shows up heavily in the rankings. Chisholm, Story, Stott, and others (good hitters who also steal bases) gain some value while players like Turang, Hoerner, and Ceddanne Rafaela (guys who project to add limited offensive value outside of speed) gain a lot of value. The most extreme examples of this come at other positions. A lot of middle infielders offer stolen base upside, so the impact of stolen bases on this position is somewhat muted. At other positions, we’ll see players who are easily below replacement level in points or 4×4, but could be $10 players in 5×5.
• The impact of RBI is harder to see. The highest projections for RBI for MI are from Ketel Marte, Bobby Witt Jr., and Seager. For all three, the gains they get from RBI are more than offset by their relatively low SB output. The expectation that you will get SB from these spots hits all three of them. Witt is still the number one MI, but Marte drops to 7th and Seager to 12th in THE BAT X 5×5 projections (playing time/volume concerns hurt there too).
• The increased variety of ways in which players can accrue value also means that value is more widely distributed. In FanGraphs points we can directly point to the value of a HR vs. a SB and identify whether the 40 SB/10 HR guy is more or less valuable than the 25 HR/10 SB guy. In 5×5, team context and needs play a big role in settling that debate. Widely distributed values means a shallower value curve, which means the top guys are less valuable. While 4×4 and all points formats have four MI projected at $30+ by THE BAT X and anywhere from 11-13 projected at $20+, 5×5 has only two at $30+ and only seven at $20+. The players most impact by this are the top-tier guys – Witt, Seager, Marte, etc.
• Among players projected to be at least replacement level in both formats, and looking purely at projections (no adjustments made by me, simply converting projected production into dollars), the biggest movers from FanGraphs Points to 5×5 are:
  • Ketel Marte (-$22), Corey Seager (-$22), Bo Bichette (-$11), Mookie Betts (-$11), Gunnare Henderson (-$11), CJ Abrams (+$13), Trevor Story (+$12), Ceddanne Rafaela (+$11), Jazz Chisholm Jr. (+$8), and Brice Turang (+$8).

Chad Young’s Tiered MI Rankings for FanGraphs Points