The 2020 Edition of The Process is Now Available in Paperback
A few weeks back, I posted that the 2020 edition of The Process was available in e-book form for downloading. All the loops have been jumped and now all it is available in paperback form at Amazon.
Here are some of the additions:
• A comparison to see if it’s more efficient to buy closers versus starters in the draft or wait for free agency for each one.
• Also, a study was done on if previous overall production matters when evaluating a player. If a player has never performed up to a certain level, what are the odds they’ll do it the first time? Here are how hitter production compares when they are grouped by their previous three-year high.
• Tanner expanded on his groundbreaking study from last year’s book where he shows how many drafted and undrafted players end up being useful over the whole season or just each week. Here are how many pitchers end up in the top-75 overall and in week over different seasons and league types.
• Tanner didn’t stop there. He took all the teams in the 2018 Main Event and found common traits depending on how each team finished in their league and the overall. Here are the weekly moves a team made depending on how they finished in the standings.
• And again we included the update Standing Gain Points formula for several common league types.
These studies are just a taste of the 325-page book where we try to further refine our fantasy baseball process, hence the title. We hope everyone enjoys the book and finds some way to improve how they play this great little game.
Jeff, one of the authors of the fantasy baseball guide,The Process, writes for RotoGraphs, The Hardball Times, Rotowire, Baseball America, and BaseballHQ. He has been nominated for two SABR Analytics Research Award for Contemporary Analysis and won it in 2013 in tandem with Bill Petti. He has won four FSWA Awards including on for his Mining the News series. He's won Tout Wars three times, LABR twice, and got his first NFBC Main Event win in 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jeffwzimmerman.
Loved the book. Rather in depth! One thing I still struggle with that was not addressed much was how to compare potential keepers. I’m in a H2H non-auction league with custom categories (R/HR/RBI/SB/AVG/OBP/K & HR allowed/K/QS/W/S/ERA/WHIP) that lead to potentially interesting player valuations. There are 14 teams and roster size 21. I’m already a bit clueless with H2H because of the idea of only needing to target enough categories to win a given week, makes things far more complex.
In any case, teams can keep four players and if they were drafted 18th or later, the cost to keep the player after one year is three rounds, between 7-17 is two rounds, above that one. For example, this offseason I can keep Matt Olson with my last pick, JRam 5th round, Bo Bichette/Victor Robles 18th rounds, among other options. Those four seem like the obvious keeps, but then there’s a Gallen last pick option, Lindor at the 12th overall (probably not worth it given the other options), and a few others.
As mentioned, I think I already have my picks, but I’d like to have some sort of way to properly value players to determine some level of degree better a given option is, if that makes sense. Anyway, thanks!
Just my $0.02 here: (1) Jose Ramirez in the 5th round for sure, no brainer. Recency bias is depressing his price too much. (2) I wouldn’t keep Gallen or any non-Elite pitcher in this format. (3) Lindor at 12th overall is below his early ADP of 8, so discounted. Tempting to stack with J-Ram as two rare all-category elites. (4) Bichette is a good value at 18th round, and Olson is tempting at 21st with 1B weirdly shallow — also solid value. OF is deep and not as sold on Robles as a hitter, especially if you already have steals covered elsewhere.
Summary: I would keep Lindor (12th overall), Ramirez (5th), and Olson (21st). Bichette is a good one too if you don’t mind keeping 2 shortstops (do you have MI? – if so, do this). If sticking to 1 SS, Robles is a fine option in this format, or maybe another hitter not listed above. Gallen is promising but just a young arm (of which there are always more), too unproven & volatile for me to keep by far.
* Note – 3B is crazy deep, but you’re still getting a huge discount on J-Ram and most of those guys don’t fill out as many categories as he does anyway. 5th round should be at least a 2 round discount, if not 3, and those gaps get more valuable towards the top.
Appreciate the thoughts, thank you!
The biggest issue with keeper leagues is each one has so many distinct rules and contention cycles, it’s tough to come up with just one set of guidelines to handle each set of league rules. Let me think on it.