Market Value on Multi-Position Players
There is no argument that if two position players would be guaranteed to produce the exact stats, the one with multi-position eligibility should have more value. The added flexibility would be helpful while drafting or setting lineups. The question of how much value does it add remains unanswered? Todd Zola and I have attempted to answer the question with Todd coming to the conclusion of “adding $3 or $4 to each player in mixed formats, and a couple bucks in single-league formats.” That’s fine in theory but I wanted to see how the market values the flexibility in this short season by matching similar players with and without extra positions. In the end, the results matched up with Todd’s findings.
The premise for this study is simple, match up to similarly productive players and see determine if and by how much drafters value multi-position eligibility. I need to set some guidelines:
- I used the NFBC rules for games played to determine position eligibility. Also, I used the NFBC’s July ADP. I need the valuations and rules to jive. I selected all the multi-position hitters in the top-200 of ADP.
- With the ADP, I converted the ADP into auction values. This adjustment is necessary because the talent curve flattens and a $1 difference could be one or two spots in the first couple rounds but 30+ spots later in the draft.
- Next, I went to the FanGraphs auction calculator and found a match with the closest dollar value at one of the qualified positions.
- Finally, I compared the ADP generated auction values.
Here are the results.
| Multi Pos Player | ADP | ADP to Auction | Auction Calc | Matched Player | ADP | ADP to Auction | Auction Calc |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cody Bellinger | 4 | $41.2 | $33.7 | J.D. Martinez | 24 | $25.9 | $32.6 |
| Alex Bregman | 17 | $28.5 | $28.0 | Jose Ramirez | 13 | $31.3 | $28.7 |
| Gleyber Torres | 29 | $24.2 | $22.6 | Ozzie Albies | 32 | $23.3 | $22.8 |
| Jonathan Villar | 39 | $21.5 | $15.3 | Elvis Andrus | 149 | $10.0 | $14.2 |
| Ketel Marte | 40 | $21.4 | $21.7 | Austin Meadows | 36 | $22.2 | $19.7 |
| Kris Bryant | 61 | $17.7 | $18.0 | Eddie Rosario | 102 | $13.3 | $18.2 |
| Manny Machado | 65 | $17.2 | $23.7 | Xander Bogaerts | 42 | $21.0 | $23.1 |
| Whit Merrifield | 65 | $17.2 | $18.1 | Luis Robert | 77 | $15.7 | $17.8 |
| DJ LeMahieu | 74 | $16.1 | $12.3 | Justin Turner | 152 | $9.9 | $12.4 |
| Max Muncy | 79 | $15.4 | $9.1 | Miguel Sano | 113 | $12.4 | $8.2 |
| Jeff McNeil | 94 | $14.0 | $15.3 | Marcell Ozuna | 100 | $13.5 | $15.6 |
| Mike Moustakas | 100 | $13.5 | $16.9 | Vladimir Gurerro Jr. | 57 | $18.3 | $17.4 |
| Tommy Edman | 130 | $11.2 | $2.2 | Adam Frazier | 681 | -$3.1 | $2.1 |
| Danny Santana | 140 | $10.6 | $8.9 | Eric Hosmer | 254 | $5.4 | $8.8 |
| J.D. Davis | 159 | $9.5 | $4.7 | Nick Senzel | 195 | $7.7 | $4.5 |
| Garrett Hampson | 160 | $9.4 | -$1.6 | Freddy Galvis | 629 | -$2.4 | -$1.5 |
| Yuli Gurriel | 162 | $9.3 | $16.4 | Yoan Moncada | 70 | $16.6 | $16.6 |
| Ryan McMahon | 168 | $9.0 | $5.8 | Cavan Biggio | 125 | $11.5 | $6.0 |
| Scott Kingery | 175 | $8.6 | $1.3 | Jason Heyward | 698 | -$3.3 | $1.7 |
| Hunter Dozier | 189 | $8.0 | $6.6 | Ryan Braun | 206 | $7.2 | $6.4 |
| Kevin Newman | 198 | $7.6 | $7.2 | Kolten Wong | 228 | $6.4 | $7.2 |
| Average | 102 | $15.8 | $13.6 | Average | 190 | $12.5 | $13.5 |
The values come in as expected with the multi-position players being valued at $3.2 ($15.8 – $12.5 with $0.1 from the auction calculator difference) more than the matched players. It eerily close to Todd’s estimate and it’s tough to know if he influenced the market or the market organically gravitated o this value.
While a $3.2 difference doesn’t seem like much, it ends up being an 88 pick difference. The market is boosting up a multi-position player almost 6 rounds in a 15 team league. But the difference does change as the draft goes on. The ADP difference before pick 75 is 26 spots or $3.6 in value. For the players going after pick 75, it’s 133 pick difference or $3.0.
Circling back to the $100,000 question. Is the additional cost worth it? For those who have drafted, it seems that way. Truthfully, I’m not 100% sure with some diminishing returns by owning too many such players, but being able to roster the best player for the waiver wire instead of just a shortstop as some value.
Complicating the question is the shortened season with the risk of any player going on the COVID-19 IL at any point. Possibly owners are putting more of a value on flexibility than normal.
The true theoretical adjustment, if any, doesn’t matter at this point. The market price has been set for the multi-position players and fantasy managers need to decide if they want to pay up for the extra draft and in-season flexibility.
Jeff, one of the authors of the fantasy baseball guide,The Process, writes for RotoGraphs, The Hardball Times, Rotowire, Baseball America, and BaseballHQ. He has been nominated for two SABR Analytics Research Award for Contemporary Analysis and won it in 2013 in tandem with Bill Petti. He has won four FSWA Awards including on for his Mining the News series. He's won Tout Wars three times, LABR twice, and got his first NFBC Main Event win in 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jeffwzimmerman.
I must admit I do like to have a few multi positional players on my rosters. I like to have the flexibility if a player bombs or gets injured. It helps with platooning too.
I don’t mean to spoil your party but the problem is with the comps not that the player values are adjusted for multi-positional usage.
Bellinger – Young player coming off a monster year (47 HR/15 SB)
JD Martinez – Old player people are shying away from because of his age (36 HR/2 SB)
Why wouldn’t you comp Mookie Betts?
Tommy Edmond (Project his 2019 stats over 162 games and you get 167 R+RBI, 19 HR and 26 SB with a .304 – 1st or 2nd Round pick numbers)
Adam Frazier (Project his 2019 stats over 162 games and you get 138 R+RBI, 11 HR, 5 SB .278 BA undraftable)
Danny Santana (Project his 2019 stats over 162 games and you get 202 R+RBI, 35 HR and 26 SB with a .283 – 1st or 2nd Round pick numbers)
Eric Hosmer (Project his 2019 stats over 162 games and you get 173 R+RBI, 22 HR, 0 SB .265 BA end of draft at 1B)
Villar vs. Andrus. Andrus has always struck me as SB only guy. Villar hits 20+ HR and steals 40 bases.
Heyward is on his last legs and Kingery is up and coming.
Kingery vs. Heyward. Kingery should get more AB this year and was and as good as Heyward last year.
The first three are terrible comps because of SB which needs to be overvalued in today’s world. 67 SB/7 SB.
Take out these 5 and it is fairly even.
I needed a process and stick to it. I couldn’t use what “Stock thinks is best” to try to remove any bias. If you can come up with a set process to pick out players, I’ll gladly use it.
1. Use the what “Jeff thinks is realistic” approach then. I have no idea what your rankings are but am thinking you don’t have Edman and Frazier anywhere close to each other. Edman adding 3B eligibility helps but not as much as adding 2B would.
2. Garbage in garbage out.
a. The calculator must be limiting Edman’s plate appearances because why would his R/RBI value be so much lower when he is on a better team. This is something people disagreed with on draft day.
b.The calculator adds 7.7 points to Edman’s score because of position eligibility (2B/3B). The calculator adds 8.9 points to Frazier’s score because of position eligibility (2B). We both know this is not right.
3. Don’t you think the position you are adding should be a factor. Grandal being eligible at catcher makes him much more valuable than someone of similar stats at 1B.
What about averages among the whole hitter pool? What I would try is something like:
1. Use the auction calculator to generate projected values for a bizarro league where each team has 15 utility slots, no other hitters. (or similar. there are many ways to distill a single value for non-position specific production.)
2. Pair every hitter’s projected auction value with the value associated with the value from their converted ADP.
3. Eliminate the top and bottom end of the pool to minimize any weirdness associated with the model (say, look at only players with ADPs between 50 and 250).
4. Within this pool, generate average costs and average returns for every category you can think of: all single-position players, all two-position players, all three position players, all catchers, all non-catchers, all players eligible at only (say) OF, all players eligible at OF+at least one other position. etc.
Drafting a top-tier multi-position player enables considerable flexibility in a draft (hence, potentially much more value), but may also be more difficult to quantify except on a case-by-case basis.
> Possibly owners are putting more of a value on flexibility than normal.
I think you’d have to be crazy not to in a 60 game season where the plague is lurking. Random players are going to suddenly lose a week or longer with no warning.
This i agree with 100%. The uncertainty regarding the virus increases the value of position eligibility.
This is definitely a steep price to pay for the premium, but in a shortened season I think it will be more important than ever to try and consolidate talent, and use the multi position flexibility to aggressively churn the roster all season. Where fewer raw stats will have a greater effect on the standings, I am definitely going stars-and-scrubs with an aggressive roster churn for hot bats.
In Ottoneu, having some solid hitters with multiple positions (especially if they can fill MI and OF) helps you carry an extra RP or 2.
Example: with Michael Chavis, Ian Happ, and Carter Kieboom on your bench, you cover every non pitcher/catcher position with 3 players, all of whom can hit well enough to get by with them filling in somewhere daily. By saving bench spots, you can carry extra RP.
Ottoneu can be won with smart bullpen management. If you maximize the % of innings your RP throw (out of 1500 max innings), you will boost your P/IP.
In that format, with 5 outfielders and a MI spot to fill daily, multi-position players are a huge asset. How to objectively value it, I do not know. But I definitely value it.
I did extensive work on this for Best Ball leagues in March. It seems like a lifetime ago but I think I used the solver tool in Excel and added a column for “Number of Positions” with each spot other than UT counting as 1. And it turns out that the type of multi-position matters. A guy who qualifies at 1B and 3B probably won’t get much of a boost. You only get one additional position to play them (1B/3B/CI). But for a guy who qualifies at 1B and 2B, you can use him at two additional spots (1B/2B/CI/MI). And the ADP bore that out.
I personally love targeting 1B/2B multi-positioners because they generally don’t come with the same premium price tag that the left side of the infield comes with (such as a guy with SS/3B) since they’re more defensively challenging, even though they qualify for the same amount of spots.