Chad Young’s Tiered Rankings Preview

Last week, I asked you what you wanted to see from my rankings this winter, and the results were pretty interesting. I got a ton of comments, messages on Slack, etc. It was great to hear how much those value those rankings provide (except to the one dude who clearly hates rankings; sorry to you and the anti-rankings community for any harm I cause you with my rankings this off-season) and how much people appreciate the one-line comments on each player. But there were some other pieces of feedback worth noting, and those have all shaped my plan for rankings this year.

First of all, a quick summary of what I heard:

• The most consistent feedback was to continue doing the one-line player comments, regardless of what rankings I publish.
• FanGraphs Points remains the most “needed” set of rankings, both because it is the most popular Ottoneu format and because it is unique enough that you can’t just go find rankings elsewhere.
• A number of people asked for a different format (especially if Jake is still providing FanGraphs Points rankings), with 4×4 the most requested.
• I got multiple requests for prospect rankings of some kind, and I will look into how we can make that happen.

There was more than that, but those were the themes that stuck out. With all that in mind, here is my plan for rankings this season, with some important notes and reminders, like I share at the start of this process every year. And as I have the past two years, I will structure this as an FAQ.

Ok, so let’s get right to it – what rankings are you going to publish?

I am going to prioritize 4×4 rankings but also publish FanGraphs Points (FGPTs) rankings, while Jake Mailhot will publish his rankings for FGPTs. FGPTs has some real similarities to SABR points (hitters are scored the same!) and 5×5 rankings exist in a million places (even if they are not Ottoneu-specific), so I think this will give us the broadest possible coverage. I also plan to post a companion for my rankings that talks about specific players or types of players who would move up and down for the formats we are not directly covering – head-to-head and 5×5.

So why does Jake get FGPTs and you get stuck with 4×4?

Ah, see you only think I am getting stuck with 4×4. Those of you who know your Ottoneu history (which is, like, no one, cause why would you study the history of a fantasy baseball platform?) will know that 4×4 is the format used by the original league, and it happens to be my favorite Ottoneu format. If you aren’t playing 4×4 yet, I recommend joining or starting a 4×4 league.

What makes 4×4 so great?

My tastes have changed over the years, but I have come to enjoy the challenges inherent to a roto format. You have to balance your lineup and roster is ways that aren’t necessary in points leagues and there are more strategic options. In Ottoneu Basketball (did you know there was Ottoneu Basketball??), I play in H2H categories, rather than points. Outside of Ottoneu, I play two H2H categories leagues and two 5×5 roto. I just generally find roto more interesting. As for why 4×4 rather than 5×5, part of that is nostalgia (I have been playing Ottoneu 4×4 for more years than I care to count) and part of it is just that I prefer a format that doesn’t include wins or saves, uses OBP instead of average, etc.

Are we getting off-track?

Yes, go back to asking me questions about rankings.

Are you doing tiers instead of ordinal rankings again?

Yeah, that is kinda my jam. I’ll still provide ordinal rankings, but the tiers are the focus. The rationale for this remains two-fold:

1. For me to sit here and tell you that Gabriel Moreno is definitively more valuable than Salvador Perez or some other catcher in that same tier suggests a level of confidence in projections and in myself that I simply don’t have. Whether I am looking at a projection or just making my own judgement on player production, those predictions are probabilistic and cover a range of outcomes and even if I prefer Moreno and even if I am theoretically right to prefer Moreno, there are a lot of worlds in which that proves to be the wrong choice. I would rather give tiers that reflect that and let you make your calls from there than pretend to be able to see the future.
2. Especially outside of the top tiers, who I prefer within a tier may vary team-to-team or draft-to-draft. Looking again at Moreno vs. Perez, if I am picking one of those two, who I prefer might depend on my roster. Did I keep a $25 Cal Raleigh? Then I don’t really need many games from my backup catcher and grabbing a cheap Moreno who might be a long-term answer at C if I decide Raleigh is too expensive in the future makes more sense than grabbing Salvy. If I held a cheap Samuel Basallo and a bought into an Agustin Ramirez breakout, Perez might be a better option as a C3 – give me some floor with my upside guys.

Are you going to use the same tiers for every position again?

Yep. Those tiers are:

• $0 – I don’t plan to roster this guy, and don’t think you should either.
• $0-$1 – This player does not need to be rostered in every league, but I get it if that’s the route you go.
• $1-$2 – This guy probably shouldn’t be a free agent, but also doesn’t need to be bid up.
• $3-$5 – This is a solid player worth counting on for current production or betting on for future production.
• $6-$9 – I am going to stop describing the tiers from here – you get it, right? – and just tell you what they are
• $10-$14
• $15-$20
• $21-$27
• $28-$35
• $36-$44
• $45-$54
• $55-$65
• $66-$77
• $78-$90

How many players will be in each tier?

That depends on the position and the players who qualify at that position. To be honest, I haven’t historically spent a lot of time worrying about that. There is no reason there HAS to be a $45-$54 2B or multiple $21-$27 C or anything. Positions are different and how players fall into tiers will vary. But what I am going to do is try to make sure the number of players in the $1-$2 tier or above and the $0-$1 tier or above makes logical sense.

Expand on that.

Well, I said above that anyone in the $1-$2 probably shouldn’t be a free agent. That would obviously apply to guys in the higher-priced tiers, as well. But if I put together my MI rankings and have 96 players at $1-$2 or above, that implies there are 96 MI (eight per team) that should be rostered. That doesn’t really make sense. Most teams will roster ~5 MI. Add in prospects, plus stashes, plus some teams being a bit deeper, and you can probably expect more like 7 MI per team, on average. That means we should probably have more like 60-72 “must-roster” MI and another big chunk who could be rostered (in that $0-$1 tier). I want to try to stick to those types of targets at each spot.

How did you build these rankings?

Copied from last year, here is my process:

1. I pull every player in the Ottoneu universe into a spreadsheet.
2. I then filter out anyone who meets ALL of the following criteria:
   1. Not rostered in any of three Ottoneu Slack Community mock auctions I looked at
   2. Rostered in less than 4% of Ottoneu leagues
   3. Has a value below $0 based on Depth Charts projections
   4. Is outside the top 125 prospects on a consensus ranking I created based on rankings I like to use
3. For the remaining players, I assign each a position (C, 1B, 3B, MI, OF, U, SP, RP)
4. I create a sheet with all remaining players and with columns for position, value from Justin Vibber’s Surplus Calculator, two different values for different valuation methodologies I used, average price from those mock drafts, and prospect ranking
5. I put each player into a tier – yes, I create tier BEFORE rankings – using all of those columns, plus other data (likely role, how I feel about their depth chart projection, etc.) as inputs
6. I go back and rank players within each tier and make corrections to tiers if I find a player who I know longer think belongs in the tier I originally assigned.
7. I review the full rankings for the position, make player notes, and adjust rankings and tiers as I go.

So if I have a player at a higher price than his tier, I should cut him? And I should never bid above the top of the player’s tier?

Well, no. See these are based on a first-year league with no inflation (this article includes an outline of what inflation is). I do that because every league’s inflation is unique and there isn’t a good way to generalize that for rankings. So if you are in a league that has been around a few years, your prices at auction will be higher than these tiers in most cases. You should be willing to bid above these tiers to get guys you want/need at auction, and that might mean keeping guys above these tiers.

How do you handle multi-position players?

Every player is only ranked where I think they are most valuable. Any player with C eligibility will be at C; anyone with 2B or SS will be at MI (I’ll combine those two positions into one and explain why at that time) unless they qualify at C. After that, I will put guys at 3B, then OF, then 1B/Util.

If you see a guy at one spot (say a 2B/3B eligible player at MI) and you want to know what tier they would be in if you used them at another spot, the general rule for me is that moving down the defensive spectrum moves you down one tier or less. Some times, especially for players in the larger, more expensive tiers, it might just move a player down within a tier. If a player is near the bottom of a tier, it might move them down a full tier.

In general, I would recommend building your roster so that you are using players at their most valuable position, but there are exceptions:

• 3B and OF just aren’t that far apart, so feel free to move guys between those spots.
• MI is more valuable than 3B/OF, but if you have a MI-eligible and occasionally need to drop them in an OF or 3B spot to fill out games played, that isn’t the end of the world.
• Games played are a crucial part of points leagues (less so in roto) so if your choice is “start this 2B-eligible player at 1B or fail to reach 162 games played at 1B, just plug that guy in until you can find a better option.

Wait, I read very closely and I see that you are prioritizing 3B over OF this year and last year you did the opposite! What gives?

I started by prioritizing OF this year, and ended up with OF replacement level higher than 3B replacement level. That hadn’t happened before. When I dug in, I felt that 3B would play shallower than OF this year. So I put 3B/OF guys at 3B. That said, the gap is not huge and if you want to plug in Addison Barger in your OF, I am not going to blame you. In fact, I have at least one team with both Barger and Noelvi Marte, and one of those two will be in the OF most of the time.

When can we expect to see these rankings?

They are in process now and my plan is to have them rolling out starting after the first of the year, all completed before the cut deadline at the end of the month.