Quirky Leagues
In yesterday’s comments about Wilmer Flores, a reader referenced K/HR leagues. I must admit, I have never heard of K/HR as a fantasy stat. I don’t feel bad, a couple pointed google searches turned up precisely nothing on the topic. With K/HR in mind, let’s turn our attention to some quirky leagues. As always, we have the comments for further discussion.
Razz
I started thinking about the kind of league that would use K/HR. And that led me to my annual yearning for a true Razz league. They are the gold standard of quirky leagues. You may be familiar with the site Razzball.com, which provides standard fantasy advice and analysis. You may also be aware of the poker game Razz, in which the goal is to make the worst possible five card hand. A Razz league has a similar purpose – the goal is to see who can get the most playing time from the worst players.
Scoring can be done in any number of ways. You can build a fairly standard rotisserie league using stats like strikeouts, total outs, and caught stealing for hitters and walks, hits, and OPS allowed for pitchers. The drawback with roto-Razz is that good players can still make useful assets. I’m more interested in points leagues since they give more flexibility to the commissioner.
I especially like the idea of a linear weights based format, where the lowest WAR scores the most points. Depending on your league size, you might have to manipulate the weights such that replacement level actually corresponds with two (or more) WAR. No matter which Razz scoring system you use, the league will force all owners to develop their own valuations without the aid of RotoGraphs or any other fantasy website.
The 20 Category Behemoth
The very first league I commissioned was a 20 team, 20 category Yahoo public league. This was…a long time ago. In fact, I recall drafting Toby Hall “for batting average” (never mind the other nine offensive categories). That was the year I learned more is not better.
I occasionally get requests for advice in leagues with more than 12 categories (to me, 6×6 is the highest justifiable set of categories). The first thing to know about these leagues is that correlation is king. Often, you’ll find stats like doubles, home runs, and slugging percentage being counted; aka power. Therefore, one power hitter will help you in multiple categories.
I ran a little math prior to last season for a reader. He was in a 20 category auction league with a $260 budget. He wanted to know the drop dead price on Mike Trout. I tinkered with a couple different weights and came back with a range of $90 to $110. In other words, math said Trout was worth 34 to 42 percent of his budget. Why? Because Trout offered positive value in 10 categories.
Once you get down past say Carlos Gomez, you’re starting to look at guys who can help in five categories and hurt five others. The same thing doesn’t usually happen on the pitching side because there are usually several reliever and starter specific stats included. A Clayton Kershaw might only be a seven category pitcher.
Weird Stats
When thinking about weird stats, K/HR certainly qualifies. If you’re going to take the time to build an atypical league, it should be done in one of two ways. Something that measures real performance, like linear weights, is one way. Such leagues are gaining popularity; I’ve been in one for five years now. The better way, at least to me, is to make something where none of the stats correlate. That’s easier said than done.
The traditional 5×5 format is still common in large part because few things get double counted. Home runs are the obvious exception. However, even though a home run is a hit, there is a reverse correlation between home runs and batting average. Runs are generally determined by a batter’s place in the lineup and plate appearances, as are RBI. Maybe the standard set of five stats isn’t the best way to measure hitter performance, but it does force fantasy owners to make trade offs.
The best of the weird stats leagues operate on a similar principle. If a league counts K/HR and K/hit, then it isn’t making owners do much work. Just pick players who don’t strikeout. However, if you use a set of stats like K/HR, BB/H, and SB-CS, you’ll force owners to make some serious trade offs. Never mind that most of the stats aren’t a great way to measure real life performance. The game of fantasy is designed to measure an owner’s ability to predict how real players will perform while collecting the specific statistics valued in that league.
Parting Thoughts
So let’s talk about your quirky leagues. Have you experienced the mayhem of 20 categories? Do you play with weird stats unknown throughout 99.9 percent of fantasyland? Tell us.
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Since you find it hard to justify anything beyond 6×6, let me try to justify my favorite league of all time which is 7×7:
Standard categories plus: OPS and K’s for batters; Complete Games and K:BB for pitchers
Why? OPS is kind of obvious, but this rewards players for controlling the strike zone which is something highly underrated by traditional categories. It also gives a lot more strategy to the H2H week because you can play for low strikeouts if other things go wrong.
CG is an unstreamable counting stat. It gives values to the true aces and the workhorses which, because of streaming, most other stats can’t measure. K:BB is pretty obvious, and it hurts streaming further. A true ace gets the proper value they deserve in this format.
Why not just make an innings/starts limit to deal with streaming instead of adding categories? That has completely solved the issue in any league I’ve played in that has a limit.
Well, agreed it would solve the issue but I enjoy the idea of being able to stream if you really want to. Adding K:BB makes three categories streaming can kill you in, without any additional benefit. I feel like if you REALLY are that good at streaming that it can help you, then why not allow that strategy to exist?
Also I like complete games: its a way to reward the true aces that can take over entire games themselves and who are valuable workhorses in another way without radically changing too much.
The reason I don’t like CG (or GS, game-winning hit, etc.) is that when you only have 90 total CG in an entire season, and a good percent of that is random, you give so much weight to a single player (and benefit too much from getting lucky with, say, Keuchel).
The leader in complete games in the majors this year was Kershaw with six. Six! Having just one complete game was good enough to rank you in the top 25. And Felix Hernandez–an ace by anyone’s definition–has zero CG over the last two seasons.
Complete games are just too rare these days to be a meaningful stat in fantasy, especially in head-to-head leagues, where most weeks you’re going to have zero or maybe one. Would’ve been a great roto stat in the 70s, though.
I think if you want to reward workhorses in fantasy in this day and age, the stat to use would be innings per start.
I’m currently in a Razz league. Before the scoring was changed, it was also a behemoth — 13×14 IIRC. Now it’s a more manageable 4×6:
Hitters: Caught Stealing, K’s, Errors, GIDP (1.5 points per)
Pitchers: Losses, HR’s allowed, BB’s, HBP’s, Wild Pitches, and Blown Saves (1 point per); 1250 inning limit
Yahoo was pretty accommodating with projections in those categories, but everyone still has to do personal valuations if they want a shot. It might need more tweaking, though, since Trout and Stanton ended up top five in OF.
Wouldn’t you be able to use traditional rate stats for Razz? Your cats seem to ignore runs/getting on base completely.
I would want PAs (have to pick people who play)
OBP (lower the better)
ISO (same)
and then you can keep some of your others
For pitchers, IP has to be in there.
Then you need ERA or WHIP… that’s the heart of a bad fantasy pitcher, right? lots of innings, lots of base runners.
I’d like to incorporate rate stats, but how would you score them as opposed to the counting stats?
Might I suggest K-HR or K-XBH as a “fake” Razz category? Given that K’s are tolerable in a good power hitter, dropping the power out of the equation will find you the guys who are just killing their teams at the plate.
BJ Upton would be first off the board.
I once played in a 6×6 league that used On Base % against for pitchers. It is practically another WHIP category. The main outcome was that low WHIP pitchers became much more valuable. It rewarded pitchers for getting batters out as opposed to getting outs on the bases. Groundball pitchers were a bit devalued because of double plays.
A perfect league in my mind would be 7×7.
R, RBI, HR, SB, AVG, SLG, OBP
W, QS, ERA, WHIP, S+H, K/9, IP, with a games started limit for hurlers.
H2H or Roto a 7×7 of this format would rawk! I’ve nevet ran a league before but I’m seriously considering forming one counting the above stats.
In 2006, I played in a 4-team, NL West-only league. The NL West at that time was Peavy and Bonds and then blah players when it came to fantasy that year.
how much did they go for at auction?
Ooh, this is my time to shine.
I’ve put together what I call an “experimental league” for at least the last few seasons. Some of the recent league setups:
2011 – No transactions; basically, you draft your players and then rosters are locked. Nothing incredible, but it was fun and low-effort. Injuries weren’t as big a deal as you might think.
2012 – Razzball, points league (with about 25 different categories, including balks and GIDP). Top players that year were Henderson Alvarez, Nick Blackburn and Clint Barmes.
2013 – Team roster draft. 7 owner league, each owner drafted 4 MLB teams whose players they had the rights to, plus a supplemental draft to claim players from the two leftover teams (Marlins and Astros). 40-man rosters.
2014 – Open positions. Each team starts 14 UTILs and 10 Ps, regardless of actual position. This was one of the less crazy options, though we also did FAAB and included some slightly unusual categories (SBN, SV + HD) to make up for it.
On the whole, it’s a nice change of pace from more competitive leagues and gets you looking at some players you might not normally consider. For 2015, we’re thinking of going with a ‘home run derby’ league (only cats are HR for batters and HRA for pitchers), but I’d love any suggestions.
Love some of your formats… the no transaction league is great as an experiment, though many leagues can give you final standings based only on draft day roster… I would need something else to keep me going.
The team draft is highly interesting… though having 4 teams seems like way too many. Give me, like Nats and Dodgers and I am set.
HR derby league seems boring to me. I want a reason to care about the whole game, not just one isolated type of result.
Thanks! 4 teams actually worked out pretty well, with the deep rosters–when you’re starting 2 Cs, 8 OFs, etc., having a bit of choice is helpful.
Agree that HR Derby may not be our most exciting league, but the hybrid regular/razzball setup between batting/pitching is intriguing. We’ll see if we come up with anything better.
Just wanted to chime in with Steve – these are fantastic and I can’t wait to try a few of them myself, and maybe come up with some of our own.
Wow, those leagues sound like tons of fun. My twitter account is the link for my name: please get in touch if you ever need a new owner.
I’ve tried to do weird leagues with some of the guys in my main league. Nobody is ever as excited about it as I am…
Sure thing! We tend to get a couple inactive guys every year, so it’d be nice to have another competitive owner.
I played in a 20-team league for a few years where each owner picked an MLB team and could only use players that had appeared in a game for or were currently with that team.
I chose the Brewers each year. You could draft players like Braun and Lucroy in the last rounds because nobody else could touch them. You learn a lot about the recent history of your team scouring through previous rosters to find guys who briefly appeared with your team. Grant Balfour was a Brewer?!?
It led to a lot of interesting strategy. For example, the Royals team picked before me and there was no Angels team, so I could skip Grienke in the 1st round (even though he was my best player available) and take Nelson Cruz, safe in the fact that none of the teams picking between my first 2 picks could draft him.
I love this idea.
I play in two 4×4 keeper leagues, one is NL only, the other is AL only. In the 4 x 4 format, runs and strikeouts are removed from the common 5 x 5 league format.
The first rotisserie leagues used the 4 x 4 format.
That’s not quirky at all… that’s the original roto. I guess the only quirk was why the founders didn’t think Ks would be useful to have.
I played in a 14×14 H2H Yahoo league for the first time this year. I found ways to be successful, but was never even able to do Pitcher projections because of all of the negative counting stats. Kershaw ended up being less valuable than 50% of all projected relievers.
R, 1B, 2B, 3B, HR, SB, BB, K, AVG, OBP, OPS, Cycle, Grandslam
W, L, CG, SHO, SV, H, R, ER, HR, BB, K, ERA, NH, PG also had a innings minimum of 24IP
Team fell apart by the playoffs, but I had basically every high strikeout reliever, and started the year with a bunch of high contact hitters, but realized I was missing out too much on “power” categories and abandoned this.
Commissioner is thinking about adding a salary component next year, and have no clue how I’m going to prepare for that.
I play in a 6 x 5 league that added an offensive stat they call “base count”. It is calculated as (BB + (2 * 2B) + (3*3B)). It is sort of a crude way to reflect OPS without giving added weight to singles (accounted for in the BA category) and HR.
I play in a 10×10 H2H dynasty league.
Runs, HR, RBIs, SB, BB, Avg, OBP, SLG, Batter Ks, and Total Bases for hitting.
Innings Pitched, Wins, Saves, HR Allowed, Ks, ERA, WHIP, K/9, H/9, BB/9.
For weekly H2H leagues, having a lot of categories works just fine and is more interesting than traditional 5×5. For year long Roto leagues, I doubt it would work, especially because it’s easy to pile on quantity over quality for some of the stats.
There are four conditions a multi category league should be satisfy:
1. The categories aren’t repetitive
You want your categories to relfect lots of different aspects of the game. The above league does this pretty well, except for counting WHIP and H/9 and BB/9. As for the argument that power hitters are rewarded to highly, I think it reflects better on real baseball. A HR is the best posible outcome for a batter. Shouldn’t it be rewarded accross multiple categories?
2. The best positive results are always rewarded
This is pretty simple. You shouldn’t be in a situation where you are watching Sunday night’s game and rooting for your player to hit a double instead of a homer because 2B is a category. It’s poorly constructed leagues like that that give multi category leagues a bad name.
3. There is a balance of quantity vs. quality
It’s easy to pile on counting stats, especially with pitching. If I’m able to start twice as many pitchers as you in a week, I’ll surely have more Ks and Ws than you. If Kershaw, Kimbrel and King Felix pitch all your innings, you’ll have better rates than me. Make sure that there are drawbacks to each strategy. Rate stats or negative counting stats (HR allowed) can make someone think twice about piling on pitching, counting stats and minimum IP for the week prevent people from throwing one ace out every week and neglecting the rest of their staff.
4. The categories allow multiple strategies for roster construction.
Am I okay with having three true outcome hitters who sacrifice Ks for power or would I rather have guys who consistently get on base? Is it viable to draft cheap, low WHIP starters with mediocre strikeout rates or should I draft high K guys with control issues? Multi category leagues force you to think carefully about constructing your roster as many different strategies will work. This is where a properly formed multicategory league shines above 5×5.
Two other points about multicategory leagues:
One category contributers (generally closers and one dimensional SB guys) are less valuable than in roto. I view this as a positive since it is closer to real life baseball, but it does mean the market for closers is usually stagnant. Starting pitchers become more valuable, again like real life.
Players in these league need to come up with their own rankings systems and methods of player evaluation. Most fantasy writers are used to writing about 5×5 and are unwilling to consider anything much outside the scope of that. Other stats, like batter K rates aren’t usually written about unless they pertain to one of the 5×5 stats.
I’ve run a 15 x 15 Yahoo league for the past 9 years now, and your comments are right on. Basically it comes down to being more like real baseball. I’ve chosen categories which are non-repetitive, and eliminated what I call “luck” categories – CG, 3B, etc. I also limit teams to 45 transactions per year and IP to 1460 (9 x 162). Rosters are set to 1 player per position (LF-CF-RF instead of OF) plus a utility spot, 5 SP slots, 6 RP slots, and 5 BN slots. I use “new age” stats like WHIP, but also traditional stats like W, L, AVG, and HR. Basically I try to let teams construct their rosters in many ways that can viably win. I also limit the league to 8 teams. 8 x 25 = 200 players, which is where I feel the drop-off in talent starts, but the key to having a good team is jumping early on those top 200 guys who weren’t projected to be so pre-season (see Corey Kluber & Garret Richards).
Anyway, it’s a load of fun, but to win you have to actually work at it, not just watch stats pile up like you do in traditional 5 x 5 leagues.
We play in a league that I don’t think is quirky, but it is 7×7. I quite like it, as no one is afraid to change up categories as new and better ones come along. We score:
R HR RBI SB K AVG OPS
W S+H K HR ERA WHIP K/B
We’ve been doing this league for 13 years now, so these definitely weren’t the stats we started with. We also keep 15 players every year, plus an 8 man minor league roster that automatically gets carried over, unless you want to release someone, or they were called up.
We use rookie rules to determine who is “Minor League Eligible.”
Also, it’s a H2H league with daily moves. We don’t have an innings limit, but we do have a minimum, at 45 IP per week.
I once played in a points league that counted Assists as 1 point, same as a hit or RBI or Run.
There were 16 teams, but league was pretty much immediately over for 14 of those teams, as only 2 of us drafted with the understanding that middle infielders got an assist for every single grounder they threw over to 1st. I specifically remember that Orlando Hudson was worth over 100 points more than Pujols that year.
Those of us that got everyday MI’s that were eligible in the OF completely ran over everyone else. I finished 2nd by 160 points, with 3rd place another 750 points behind me. Orlando Hudson had 881 points all by himself.
The league I am the commissioner of has 14 categories. The seven hitting categories are: R, XBH, HR, RBI, BB, SB, and AVG. The seven pitching categories are: K, QS, W, L, ERA, WHIP, and SVHD. It isn’t perfect, but it has been working really well for seven years now.
I love the 16 categories in my league:
Hitting:
AVG, OBP, SLG, 2B, HR, K, Net Steals, Runs Created
Pitching:
QS, IP, ERA, WHIP, K, SV, HD, K/BB
Only major flaw in my opinion is that it sucks when your guy hits a triple since if he would’ve stopped at second you would’ve gained a double
So change that category to (2B + 3B), or simply XBH if you don’t ming double-counting the HR.
I once joined a 3×3 roto league where the pitching categories were ERA, WHIP, and K/9 with no innings minimum. So I drafted Joakim Soria and put all the rest of my budget into hitting, thinking that if I picked the right outing I could get 1 perfect inning with 1 or 2 K’s and win all those categories.
The day I put Soria in, he gave up 4 ER. Took me a while to recover from that.
This will be our 27th year for SRBL (Sloan Rotisserie Baseball League), with 6 of the original 9 members still playing. And yes, I’ve been commissioner for life, just like the Waggoner book says it should be.
We have a 6×6 league:
Hitting: AVG, HR, R, RBI, SB, RTB (Revised total bases = ((1B)+(2B*2)+(3B*3)+(BB))). Homers don’t get counted twice, and benefits the “gappers”.
Pitching: W, L, SV, ERA, WHIP, K/9. I wouldn’t play in a league that has K’s rather than K/9. It makes the middle reliever/setup man valuable (Giles, et al.).
We were standard 5×5 for the first 8-10 years, and have been in this format ever since. I won this year for the first time since 1993. Gregg Jefferies won it for me that year. Kershaw, Altuve, and V-Mart won it for me this year.
I like k-bb as 5th pitching category and we use a variation of OPS, we add sb-cs to the total bases portion of the slugging %