Archive for player valuation

When Dylan Higgins invited me on to the Field of Streams podcast last week, he asked me what I typically like to write about. My answer was an incoherent, stammering mess, but the gist of it was I like to write about all sorts of things. The trajectory of my writing has changed a lot over time.

I think I originally wanted to write primarily about market inefficiencies in fantasy baseball. The constant instantaneous misvaluation of players fascinates me, and effectively exploiting these inefficiencies make champions. Occasionally, I return to this topic.

That occasion is today, and today, I’m in the mood for blind résumés. I cherry-picked some stats for three players, whose names I stripped away, and I want you to decide, before reading any farther, in which order you would take these players.

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I don’t know if y’all are familiar with Tanner Bell. He recently joined the RotoGraphs staff and has wasted no time churning out quality post after quality post. He performs analysis, but he also offers technical advice regarding the “offline” components of fantasy baseball such as building cheat sheets in Microsoft Excel. It’s good stuff, even for people who consider themselves proficient in Excel — I do and, alas, it never occurred to me to conditionally format my draft prep workbook to strike out players already drafted.

Similarly, it seems Tanner recently experienced an epiphany (or two) of his own in regard to player projections and valuations. I mentioned to him I wanted to respond, so to speak, to his post, not as a criticism but as an expansion. A validation, I guess.

Also, rarely, if ever, do we engage in back-and-forth call-and-response posts. I don’t intend for this to be one of those. It’s just that Tanner inspired me, but I have some thoughts of my own to add.

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I must be getting old. Or maybe I’m just learning. But I have a confession to make. I’m starting to change my line of thinking as it relates to fantasy baseball player valuations and team construction.

I’ve been obsessed with the process of finding projections, calculating dollar values, and relying almost exclusively on those inputs to guide my draft process. To make matters worse, after already having those thoughts entrenched in my brain, I then read Larry Schechter’s book, Winning Fantasy Baseball.

My process and beliefs sounded a heck of a lot like the ones Larry uses. And he’s arguably the greatest rotisserie player of all time. “All these chumps not calculating player dollar values out to the penny are doing it wrong“, I thought.

Well, I’m starting to soften on that stance. And here’s why… Read the rest of this entry »