Quarter Pole Evaluation: Using Rates to Find True Standings
It seems like just yesterday we were talking small sample sizes and trying not to panic about our fantasy teams sitting in 9th place. Or some of us were assuming our early season success was a mirage, masking what was sure to be a brutal year. But now we are coming up on the quarter pole, and it’s no longer time to make cheap excuses.
For ottoneu owners, it is time to evaluate our teams, identify our weaknesses, figure out where we have depth, and decide if this is the year to make a move.
The problem is, 40 games into a season, it can be tough to tell what is real and what is a result of owners over- (or under-) using their players. For example, in the original ottoneu league, Harper & the Hoofnagles is first in strikeouts, four Ks ahead of my Freeport Pretzels. But he has also thrown more then 30 more innings than I have to date. I am pretty comfortable assuming I will make up four Ks in 30 innings.
Instead of just looking over the standings, I like to create “Rate Standings.” I take games played and innings pitched for each team in the league, and create rates out of the counting stats. For example, here are the strikeout stats from the FanGraphs Experts League going into Monday night’s games:
| Team | K | K/9IP | Pts for Ks | Pts if K/9 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amateur Hour | 282 | 8.0657 | 5.5 | 7 |
| Eno’s Slaughter | 282 | 7.2583 | 5.5 | 2 |
| Dyersville Nine (Sabermetrics101) | 285 | 8.1688 | 7 | 8 |
| ESPN Quintong | 313 | 8.2288 | 8 | 9 |
| That’s Chentertainment | 323 | 8.7036 | 11 | 12 |
| Andy Behrens | 280 | 8.0170 | 4 | 5 |
| Fiorentino (RW) | 341 | 8.0622 | 12 | 6 |
| BIG BOPPERS | 224 | 6.6171 | 1 | 1 |
| Earl Webb (BaseballHQ) | 272 | 7.6183 | 2 | 3 |
| KFFL | 317 | 8.0140 | 10 | 4 |
| Team RotoWire | 275 | 8.5443 | 3 | 10 |
| Scouting The Sally | 314 | 8.6071 | 9 | 11 |
As you can see, there would be some pretty drastic changes if we used K/9IP rather than just counting strikeouts. Fiorentino’s 18 K lead turns into a middle of the pack score when you account for his league-leading 380.2 IP (329 is league average at this point). Team Rotowire is poised to make a big run if they can get their IP up – they are garnering only 3 points for Ks but would have 10 if we were using K/9.
And the same is true if you consider W/IP, S/IP, R/G, HR/G, RBI/G and SB instead of W, S, R, HR, RBI, and SB. Check out the chart below, which shows total score, score based on rates, total games played and total IP by team:
| Team | Points | Rate Points | Games | IP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amateur Hour | 80.5 | 84 | 397 | 314.7 |
| Eno’s Slaughter | 50.5 | 48 | 413 | 349.7 |
| Dyersville Nine (Sabermetrics101) | 68 | 62 | 422 | 314.0 |
| ESPN Quintong | 64 | 70 | 399 | 342.3 |
| That’s Chentertainment | 67 | 65 | 423 | 334.0 |
| Andy Behrens | 25.5 | 30 | 402 | 314.3 |
| Fiorentino (RW) | 90 | 76 | 423 | 380.7 |
| BIG BOPPERS | 63.5 | 63 | 440 | 304.7 |
| Earl Webb (BaseballHQ) | 66 | 66 | 410 | 321.3 |
| KFFL | 62.5 | 53 | 428 | 356.0 |
| Team RotoWire | 75.5 | 86 | 416 | 289.7 |
| Scouting The Sally | 67 | 77 | 387 | 328.3 |
There are some pretty big changes. Fiorentino is riding a significant number of games played and innings pitched to his spot in first – if we were to equalize playing time, he would drop 14 points in the standings and fall to 4th place. James Quintong from ESPN would gain only six points, but would move up three spots from 8th to 5th.
What does the data tell me? Well, I am apparently a terrible prognosticator. I had KFFL as a clear favorite – that team is sitting in 10th. I also referred to my team – Amateur Hour – as, “A ragtag bunch of no-good players hoping that their chemistry as a team and chipper optimism can carry them all the way to the top.” And yet in both cuts of the data, I sit in second.
Most importantly, I learn that my team is slightly better on a ratio basis than on a counting basis. I typically stay pretty steady in my player usage, staying on pace to fill out my positions and innings without racing out too fast. As a result, looking at the ratio standings doesn’t move my team much, even though many other teams fly around all over the place.
I also learn that, 25% of the way through the year, I need speed. And badly. I am somehow leading in HR despite having used 16 fewer games than the average team and having no one with more than 7 HR on my roster. I am also way at the bottom of the pile in SB and near the bottom in R. I probably need to add some speed and need to find someone willing to move it.
The key is, before you go about making trades to improve your team, make sure you know how good your team actually is.
A long-time fantasy baseball veteran and one of the creators of ottoneu, Chad Young's is the Managing Editor for RotoGraphs, and can be heard on the Keep or Kut Podcast. You can follow him on Bluesky @chadyoung.bsky.social.
I agree with looking at the data in this way. The only problem with something like this on is effectively making the assumption that you can catch up on innings pitched to equalize out a counting stat like strikeouts if your K/9 is currently better is doing such without considering that to do such you might have to start your more fringe pitchers you aren’t today that could be more detrimental to your rate stats like WHIP and ERA. Might not always be worth the boost in one category to hurt you in two others.
I think these changes can play both ways. Some teams are ahead because they have had good matchups or are riding a relatively healthy staff that will get hit by injuries (as all pitching staffs do) at some point. Some teams are behind because they are waiting on a guy like Wainwright to get back to form, because they lost Cliff Lee to the DL, or because they figure to get 50-100 solid innings from prospects at some point this year.
Basically, over the 12 teams in a league, I think these changes come out in the wash and you can reasonably assume that rates stay the same, on average.
The key is knowing where your own team fits in this. In the league I reference in the article, I think my pitchers are pitching above their heads at the moment, but I also expect contributions from Teheran and Bauer before all is said and done. Plus, I have the MiLB depth to go out and get another SP if needed. I can’t worry too much about how changes in inning usage will impact everyone else – just too much detail.
Pretty please?
Catching up on innings shouldnt be an issue-you can stream a bench player and get a good start if used at the right time. That said, if you have a waiver limit that makes it more challenging and then you don’t want to fall too many innings behind the projection.
Catching up in innings would be closer to replacement level. “Slowing down” your innings pitched might imply that you can stop using your worst pitchers, so you might expect quality per IP to go up. This is the right way to look at the standings, but you can’t just extrapolate the existing figures.
This….to an extent.
The one caveat is that when you have innings to make up, you’re not only going to be picking the arms, you’re also going to be picking their opponents. Streaming by definition should generate results better than the player’s true talent if done correctly.
But yes, it’s important to factor that a team behind an inning pace will likely see their ratios get hurt, while a team ahead of an inning pace will have an easier time improving their ratios, unless in the former case your pitchers have had a run of bad matchups that you’ve benched them for or in the latter case it’s because you over-streamed early on (which is an interesting strategy, but a separate discussion).
See comment to jpjazzman above. I think the changes in pitching usage can cut both ways.
Any chance we can get these rate standing built into the ottoneu interface? Right now on the “standings” page there are rate stats for points/game for hitters and points/inning for pitchers but your charts are better.
I think for points league, the PPG and PPIP are actually enough. At the end of the day, breaking down categories in those leagues doesn’t really help. Basically, there are no diminishing marginal returns in an ottoneu points league. Your 300th HR, which would put you way, way, way ahead in any league, is worth exactly the same as your 175th. In 5×5 leagues, your 300th HR is probably worthless – by that point you are going to win HR and get your 12 points regardless. Trading HR 270-300 for SB 50-70 could benefit you quite a bit. In a Points league, there is no reason to do that.
As a result, breaking this down by category isn’t necessary.
Were you to build and share a google doc that allowed us to do this for our own leagues, fantasy nation would be eternally grateful.
Let me look into this tonight, but I am not sure there is an easy way to do this. To make it work, you have to copy your standings into a spreadsheet, and then pull games played and innings pitched for each team. But let me think on it. I bet there is a solution.
That’s super cool of you, thanks.
FWIW, the quarter pole indicates that a quarter of a mile is remaining, not that it’s taken place. We’re at the 3/4 pole.
And this is why I write about baseball and not…horse racing? That is a horse racing reference right?
Thanks for the clarification. The nice thing is, I know have a title I can use again in about 3 months!
It is a horse racing reference. I can’t say I really know a lot aboout horse racing; for me, it’s just more useless knowledge cluttering my feeble brain.
It’s a lot easier to catch up in IP than in GP for offense. Because starters only pitch one out of five days, you can easily load up on SP and have them all pitch every start if you so choose.
But position players are generally playing every day, and you only have so many positions available on offense each day. Sure you can make a little headway by smartly exploiting Mon/Thurs off days but that requires a deep bench and lots of waiver wire trolling to make sure you optimize how many guys are active.
If you are careless with your roster early (e.g. leaving an injured star in the lineup for 5 games and getting 0’s for those games) and fall behind in GP early, it’s a lot harder to catch up. On the flip side, optimizing your roster to make sure you squeeze out every GP can yield points in close counting stat categories.