Mock Draft: Punting HR
A little while ago I did a mock draft where I punted AVG. Pleased with those results, I tried again to do something I have never done in a real draft. This time I punted homers. Unlike last time, this was not a private draft. This was just a regular draft over at Mock Draft Central where I took over an AI team at the last minute.
I can see you shaking your heads now. There is no way to punt HR because you will end up finishing at or near the bottom in RBIs, too. That is certainly a possibility. But even if the team has no chance of winning, let’s see how it would look. It is always good to test out an hypothesis, just to confirm that the conventional wisdom is indeed correct.
This was a 12-team, mixed Yahoo! Style Draft in which I had the 11th pick. Here is my team:
Tim Lincecum (ADP 12)
Carl Crawford (15)
Ichiro Suzuki (39)
Dustin Pedroia (38)
Jon Lester (59)
Lance Berkman (60)
Chone Figgins (79)
Ricky Nolasco (106)
Torii Hunter (99)
Chad Billingsley (120)
Carlos Marmol (137)
James Shields (128)
Yunel Escobar (152)
Jorge Cantu (168)
James Loney (180)
Chad Qualls (208)
Todd Helton (196)
Mike Gonzalez (192)
AJ Pierzynski (235)
Nick Johnson (266)
Wade Davis (288)
You can quibble with the selections of Berkman and Hunter and if they really fit into a punt HR strategy. I thought Berkman was just too good of a value to pass up at pick #62. I wanted Bobby Abreu but he got picked two slots ahead of me (when I ended up taking Figgins) and I ended up taking Hunter. The James projections give Berkman 31 HR and Hunter 24. The next highest projection is Jorge Cantu’s 18.
So, how did this team rate? This team was picked to finish first, with a total of 86 points. The second place team had 76.5 points. The individual category projections were as follows:
AVG – 12
HR – 1
RBI – 1
SB – 11
R – 9.5
W – 11
S – 6.5
K – 12
WHIP – 11
ERA – 11
Because it was a Yahoo! Style Draft, they graded both the starting lineup of 16 and the 5-man bench. My bench came in 10th place with a score of 56.
Theoretically, a team can punt HR, finish last in RBIs too and still win, as this draft shows. I certainly would not try this in a real draft. But it is interesting to see how a team that ignores power can be a productive one, at least on paper.
All about supply and demand. Scarce power hitters make Crawford (the 6th best 5×5 producer in 2009) fall to the second round. Doesn’t surprise me at all that you were able to finish near the top in 7 of 10 categories.
Why wouldn’t you try it in a real draft? What’s the worst thing that can happen? 😉
Thanks Jimbo.
Perhaps I will if I end up in a low-stakes league this year!
you cant win competitive roto leagues by punting
You can if you punt AVG. There’s so much standard deviation with every player from year to year that punting AVG can still give you a reasonable finish in that category while excelling in other categories. ESPECIALLY in head-to-head. I ALWAYS punt AVG in head-to-head leagues and it works out really well, you still win the AVG categorically about one in every 3 or 4 weeks.
well, maybe YOU can’t… but don’t tell me I can’t, because I have with both saves and SBs… it just has to be done well; you have to do well to win about any league, right?
The downside is the BA risk. If any of the high BA guys have down years and/or get hurt (namely Ichiro), this adversely affects Rs as well. So now you’re stuck with a 1 category offensive team and a major dependence on pitchers, which are always unpredictable.
There’s a lot of batting average on that roster though. If Ichiro got hurt on opening day I think it still wins the category going away. Most teams carry one or two sluggers who are on the team just for power. I’d say the drafted roster wins avg by .010–a huge margin in my experience.
From a replacement-level viewpoint, wouldn’t it be easier to replace runs than HR/rbi?
This doesn’t even touch on the potential trade value of this team. If you can accumulate avg/runs/sb to such a degree that you pretty much ARE the market maker? Can leverage any excess at mid-season to perhaps target a few points in HR/RBI. There will always be those few teams that either draft poorly, face massive injuries, or are similarly opting to go easy on power hitters.
It depends on how far out you are in home runs. With that team you should be able to make trades at the deadline to still win in steals and runs (at least) to pick up a few points in HR/RBI if you aren’t too far out.
Alternatively, you could swap those players for pitching at the deadline to improve your pitching stats.
This is exactly what I said in response to your previous (‘punting average’) post!
Certainly AVG is a risky category but having said that, I think your are overestimating the impact of Ichiro on this team’s success. Crawford, Pedroia and Figgins all had more R than Ichiro and Crawford and Figgins both had more SB. So even if he were to go down, it would not make this a one-category offense.
But I agree that the risk is with the pitchers, as it is with any punting offense strategy.
I’d really be interested in the pitching side of this– maybe an article on punting strikeouts or saves or ERA and see what happens.
I can see punting saves, think that happens in a lot of drafts (especially h2h), but the thing about punting Ks or ERA is then you seem to be just drafting in hopes of either playing matchups or drafting on the come. Sounds like the LIMA plan. If you don’t spend money/picks on pitchers with historically low ERAs, what exactly are the redeeming factors of the pitchers you are going to target?
You could make sure that Jon Sanchez, Jorge de La Rosa, Matt Garza, etc. were all on your team, and save the pick you would normally take an ace with for a high-octane bat. The problem with this is that like with HR/RBI, you would probably be punting WHIP as well.
interesting strategy, you definitely have serious leverage at trade times if everything turns out right. If you have all the other categories covered I don’t see why this wouldn’t work.
Be quiet! I don’t want any of the other owners in my league to know about this. I’ve been planning on following this strategy for months.
I think this works much better in auctions than in snakes. Why? Because the player pool of .280+ hitters with speed but not power is small, and you need to hit basically all of them. Someone could take Prado one pick ahead of me in a draft, but I can easily go $1 more than anyone else’s evaluation of Prado.
I did an ESPN public league last year where i went almost all pitching. Lincecum 1st, Halladay 2nd, Haren 4th, Greinke 8th, and added in a few elite closers, won all 5 pitching categories and dominated the league start to finish. There are other ways to win.
public leagues in my experience are the bottom of the barrel so to speak when it comes to competition… not to mention people quit half way through or earlier when they think they can’t win
@ Brian: Thanks for this! I really enjoy this kind of experiment. Even if you’re certain you won’t punt HR/RBI, this kind of exercise helps to familiarize yourself with the rest of the player pool. It also helps you to appreciate possible value picks, like Berkman.
I’d call this a punting of offense in general. Offense is rated at about average while pitching is strong.
That’s if you take these ratings at face value, which I don’t.
If you use James to rate all the picks, then I expect you used James in order to draft, and this is essentially a Bill James projections draft and you went for the guys that are likely over projected. (EAch player will either be over projected or under) you grabbed the ones that were over, because you are using Bill James as the “correct answer”
The draft was rated by the MDC projections, which I believe are Baseball HQ and Mastersball. I did not use Bill James projections at all during the draft. The only time James was used was assessing the individual HR projections and the only reason I used that one was because it’s the first one listed on the player pages here at FanGraphs.
interesting stuff.
What do you guys think of punting Ks in deep leagues? That way, you could focus on amassing an amazing offence, while not depending as much on pitchers, who have a higher chance of getting injured. Also, by drafting all the low K, low-ERA & WHIP pitchers, I inflate every team’s ERA as they don’t have these guys to bring down their ratios. How does this rotation look?
Oswalt
Shields
Hudson
Buerhle
Porcello
Pineiro
Marcum
Gotta say, I tried a pitching / speed combo last year, punting HRs. Problem with dominating the pitching cats in H2H is that your opponent can manipulate the stats and take 2 of the 5 pitching cats. If he just starts a reliever that throws 1 inning of scoreless ball and benches his pitchers for the week, he gets a 0.00 ERA and WHIP. Now all he has to do to beat you head to head that week is win 4 of the 5 of the offensive cats, and he will probably have an advantage over you in everything except steals.
If your league makes you pitch a minimum number of innings, then this can definitely work. Otherwise, stay away from a loaded pitching strategy.