Game Balanced Fantasy Baseball

If I have one complaint about fantasy baseball, it’s the importance of an early lead. Of course, it’s possible to scuffle through April and still win a roto league. In such a scenario, victory requires a heroic effort. The roto game is rigged to favor April’s top performers, and H2H isn’t much different. I’ll present an alternative today, but it does require some manual work from your commissioner.

First, why is the early season so important? In roto leagues, an early lead in the standings can open up various strategic and tactical opportunities. Fluky April power can allow you to convert J.D. Martinez into Dee Gordon without serious risk to your power related categories. Now you have more runs, stolen bases, and average.

An early lead can be especially valuable on the pitching side of the ledger. A lucky win total makes it easier to siphon more innings to relievers. As we’ve discussed recently, relievers can post anything from a zero to 35 win pace. Usage matters, but reliever wins are still mostly unpredictable.

An excellent performance in ERA and WHIP means you can manage your starters for wins rather than ratios. It’s not so hard to pile up the Ws when that’s the only category you’re maximizing. A huge early season lead in strikeout rate also gives you room to maneuver.

The H2H game is slightly different since your stats clear after each week. You won’t be able to exploit the same institutional advantages as a roto owner, but you do have one common factor in your favor – perceived value.

The first few weeks of the season can massively upgrade a fringy player’s perceived value. Why do we all know Anthony Gose’s name? It’s not because he ever looked like a starting quality outfielder. He happened to have a good April once. I saw him traded in industry leagues for non-trivial talent. Remember that year John Buck was a thing?

Players like Gose and Buck are extreme examples. There are plenty of regular major leaguers who will happen to perform well in any given April. Those players will have more trade value for the rest of 2016 (and possibly beyond).

Owners who build an early season lead probably own a few of these players. If they’re savvy, they’ll sell high for a more reliable player. Owners with a lead can better afford to manage downside rather than upside. Maybe Buck keeps bashing like a 40 homer star, but he probably doesn’t. Why not deal Buck and a second piece for steady Yadier Molina (remember, we’re talking about 2013 here)?

This phenomenon happens for a few reasons. While the player is still hot, it’s possible to fall for his “breakout” as real. We’ve all done it. Even once the player regresses to his normal production, it’s tempting to view the fiery period as repeatable. Often, it’s not. Further, trades are at least casually weighed based on performance to date. The fast starters have superior stats. Your brain will intentionally mislead you to expect more of the same numbers over the remainder of the season.

The Solution

I occasionally play a 5v5 team game. It has almost nothing in common with fantasy baseball (although it is an esport). One thing it does have is game balancing. The game favors the underdog using a wide array of methods. My proposal for fantasy baseball game balance isn’t nearly as aggressive.

The answer is weighted monthly scoring. It’s a purely roto-based solution because roto has the biggest issue with early season leverage. As an added bonus, this scoring system should also keep owners attentive through the entire season.

Here’s how it works. Break the season into one month periods such that there are six segments to the season. Calculate monthly scores for each category. It might look something like this:

In this example, we have an owner who finished the season strong in a 12 team league. The number in parenthesis is the coefficient (weight) that I used. In this case, I increased the weight by 0.25 every month. The number after the parenthesis is the month rank as a score. In September, this owner finished with the highest total. They bombed out in May. Our example owner scored 76.25 points in runs out of 117 possible over the course of the season.

Feel free to use different coefficients. You can also divide the Total amount by some number. In this example, dividing by six (months) or 9.75 (sum of the coefficients) both make sense. Personally, I prefer the raw total.

None of the sites I use directly support this scoring system. Your commissioner will need to manually calculate each monthly scoreboard. It’s not hard, it just requires careful attention. Export the league raw stats page on the morning of May 1. That’s your April export. On June 1, rinse and repeat. Then subtract the April export from the June 1 stats. Now you’ve created the raw output for only May. Score it normally and you have the finished leaderboard.

Rate stats can be a challenge. For example, Yahoo does not reveal the plate appearances that go into average, OBP, or OPS. Instead, they uselessly show games played. So whichever stat you use, you’ll have to settle on a work around for calculating it. Using hits or total bases is the easiest alternative if you don’t mind reward volume over quality.

On the pitching side of the ledger, most fantasy platforms include an innings pitched column on the scoreboard. You can use innings to derive the correct monthly ERA and WHIP. Just remember that 10.1 innings really means 10.3333.

If you have an excel savvy owner in your league, he or she should be able to make a useful spreadsheet that auto-calculates everything once you copy-paste the stat export. If I happen to play a league like this in 2016, I’ll re-post this article with our spreadsheet attached.