RotoGraphs Audio: The Sleeper and the Bust 1/12/14
Episode 86
Today’s episode of The Sleeper and the Bust is a very special one. I make my triumphant return to hosting duties and am joined by both RotoGraphs editor Eno Sarris and six-time Tout Wars champion Larry Schechter. We discuss Larry’s new book, Winning Fantasy Baseball, and talk auction and snake draft strategy.
Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @mikepodhorzer or @enosarris on Twitter and tweet us any fantasy questions you have that we may answer on our next episode.
You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed.
Intro by DJ Sinton (no, contrary to popular belief, I do not moonlight as a rap star)
Approximately 45 min of fun.
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Mike Podhorzer is the founder of ProjectingX IQ, an advanced fantasy baseball analytics platform that transforms projection data and in-season performance signals into actionable intelligence. He is the 2015 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Baseball Writer of the Year and three-time Tout Wars champion. He is the author of the eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance, which teaches you how to project players yourself. Follow Mike on X@MikePodhorzer and contact him via email.
Do you guys ever go *against* your auction values? If you have a player valued at $7, and the bidding stops there, you wouldn’t be willing to pay $1 extra dollar? Seems like a boring way to draft.
Boring? If your goal is to win, then you trust your values. If you just want to have fun, do whatever you want!
I’d pay the extra buck if I knew I was at risk of not spending all my money. That’s really the only reason to overpay. It’s great to get all your players at 80% of your value, but if you only spent $230 of your $260, then your auction was still a failure. The goal of the auction is to get the most value from your $260. The only way to do that is to buy as many players for as large a discount as possible. Period.
Ehh…so is Pod back for good? What of Jason Collette? You’re messing with the autistic demographic, Wapner style.
Ha, no. This was just a one-off show planned several months ago. Perhaps I’ll make an appearance on some Sundays in the future, but with a full-time day job, I am usually unable to record during the week.
Nice interview. Awkward at times but good questions. Didn’t get much out of the book. A lot of “this is stupid” or “that doesn’t make sense, but oh by the way this is how i do it, and while I can’t clearly articulate why it works at times, it just does”.
I agree with where you went on the mixed league auction chapter. A lot of it was from Larry’s perspective and lacked any evidential support. He should have named the sources he was comparing cause it felt like he just made up the whole table to more easily criticize its failings and bring out his strategy.
Some interesting tidbits and ideas to consider in the book, but Frankly, I’ve read more informative strategy pieces here.
I listened yesterday and I got the impression that Larry isn’t all that good at explaining the theory behind his strategies (nowhere near as good as Mike, for example). This is probably like that idea that the best players don’t make the best coaches – I think Larry is extremely objective about player values and he has a very good feel for how to approach auctions, which I think he was trying to articulate when he was talking about using the AL/NL-only values for mixed auctions because mixed values are unrealistic, but he doesn’t know how to teach that sense of value. I remember seeing one of the Tout Wars drafts from a previous winning year and wondering how the hell he did it, because he’d spent a lot of money on some huge busts, so I get the impression he makes a lot of really shrewd moves during the season as well.
This was an informative podcast but it still raises fundamental questions in my mind. If I continue to hold out on guys because I think they are being overpaid, I will end up sitting pat until only scrubs are left.
In any 12 team league, there is always going to be some guy who wants to pay more than your value, and you will have to spend to get that person. Any advice on how to find a happy medium?
This is not right. If (a) you you believe in your values, and (b) your values add up to the dollars that will be spent by the league as a whole, then every time someone goes above value there will be a discount (based on YOUR values) on the remaining player pool.
Bingo. The problem though might occur where all the top tier goes go for way over value and then you end up getting the $10 guys for $1. But then you hit the end game and suddenly you have $50 left over and everyone else has $10. You’re going to end up leaving over muchos dineros and that ain’t good. Auctions are hard, but a blast, and are totally superior to snake drafts!
Any link to his draft and roster?
I have to admit that I haven’t read the book yet. But with so much of the podcast emphasizing “stick to your values,” I do have to wonder how league positional requirements impact your picking in a snake draft.
For instance, you’ve stuck to your rankings for picks 1-5. You got lucky and have Votto, Encarnacion, and Hosmer for 1st base and your two utility slots. You have Cargo and Choo in the outfield. Your team looks great, obviously, but don’t your remaining values have to shift, considering the new context? Now, wouldn’t you think about maybe drafting a middle infielder, even though the remaining ones are rated lower than the next OF and you can’t draft another 1B?
In other words, do values change once the landscape does?
If this gets covered in the book, please just refer me there.
Snake drafts are an entirely different animal. There’s a whole art to snake drafting and your example perfectly illustrates why it’s impossible to literally stick to your values for every pick. I think I recall Larry discussing strategy and it mirrors mine. I’m pretty sure I wrote an entire article about snake draft strategy somewhere, at some point in time, that I’ll have to try digging up and perhaps posting it again.
I think you might be referring to the “Do Not Ignore ADP” article? That one is also helpful.
I would love to see some discussion of when to break away from value-first evaluations. For me, it might be the first five rounds. If other people start drafting Pedroia because he’s a top second baseman when I’m still getting Encarnacion, then I’m winning.
In the early rounds, then, I guess the key to is get the best value, then consider position issues later on. This did come up a little in the podcast.
Anyway, thanks for the follow up, Mike.
Nope, I actually found it. It was posted on the old Fantasy Baseball Generals blog, where I got my writing start.
You guys seem to completely miss the point during this podcast. You seem completely baffled by the idea that someone would pay more than a player is “worth” and how stupid someone must be for doing this. Newsflash, guys…many fantasy managers play for *fun*, not just to win $. If they have an exciting player that they love to track by owning on their team, it totally makes sense to pay an extra $1 or 2 to make sure you get them. If they love Clayton Kershaw, they may overpay by a bit to get him so they can root for him every week, versus a no-name, boring SP. It’s more fun for them, even if it decreases their odds of winninig by 1%. It’s not rocket science. When you reduce fantasy baseball down to a complete science, focusing only on crunching numbers, you take some fun out of the game. The casual FB fan probably gets a lot more fun from playing this way than from the hardcore FB manager nerding it up.
Well, of course! You’re free to bid however much you want on whoever, regardless of values. Our advice obviously only applies if you actually want to win, or at least give yourself the best chance of winning.
Is Larry chewing gum?