MoFo Fantasy Baseball '11 - The Regular Season

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Some fun numbers now that the regular season totals have been tallied coming right up in the next post. But first: the Roto-style standings I've been babbling about all year. A quick update on those.

As a reminder, Roto standings take the raw totals for each team (IE: 196 homers for the season, a team ERA of 3.55, etc) and assign each team a rank relative to all the other teams. Since we have 14 teams, first place in a category gets you 14 points, second gets you 13, and so on. Whoever has the most total points wins.

This is generally fairer, because it removes the random luck of having good weeks at bad times, or vice-versa, and ensures that every stat counts equally regardless of whether or not it comes in a week when you happen to really need it or not. In other words, it doesn't penalize you for happening to lose in HRs 13 to 12, and it doesn't discard the value of all the extra Stolen Bases if you win that category 9 to 1. Here's what the Roto standings would have looked like:
  1. Springfield Isotopes, 113
  2. The Naturals, 104
  3. I Like Turtles!, 89
  4. The 'Roid Ragers III, 89
  5. Team Hannahmals, 86
  6. The Clueless Clowns, 77
  7. Dodgers, 71
  8. Wright Turn Clyde, 69
  9. Zeppelins, 62
  10. Ming's Mongrels, 57
  11. Dynamic Dynamite, 57
  12. Spud's Fry Guys, 57
  13. Suicide Squeeze, 56
  14. Eastbound Charros, 50
Naturally, these won't be perfect, because a number of us would have managed our teams differently if we'd been playing in this format, but it gives you a rough idea.

There are tradeoffs in going with this format, of course. There is less week-to-week drama, but there's more of a horse race feel, it better rewards people who manage well throughout the entire season, and whatever it loses in playoff drama it makes up in late-season drama, because it actually makes some pretty wild deals downright smart if you can correctly calculate which rankings of yours are vulnerable and which can improve. For example, if you have a huge lead in homers and narrowly trail several teams in Saves, it might make perfect sense to trade Albert Pujols for Heath Bell with a month to go.

If anyone is intrigued by this I have a spreadsheet I've been keeping since week 8 that has all the raw totals and rankings after each week broken down for all 10 specific categories, broken down into just Hitting and Pitching, and of course, added up into one total. Pretty interesting stuff, and useful for figuring out which categories you're actually weak or strong in, because the Wins and Losses don't always tell the whole story. For example, Spud was last in ERA, but somehow managed to go 10-12 in the category, anyway.

Anyway, thought you guys might find this interesting. I still think this is something it might be really fun and interesting to do next year. This is how fantasy baseball was originally played, and I'm pretty sure the head-to-head thing was probably devised or popularized as a way to make it more similar to fantasy football. But I think Rotisserie dovetails better with the natural differences between the two.



Okay, some records and statistics and stuff.

Weekly Records
For generic "who had the most in this category this year" totals, you can use the league's Record Book feature. Most of those have stood for a good chunk of the season, but one (RBIs) fell in the very last week, when I put up 59 over the old record of 55. I also fell one short of tying the HR mark (15-16) in the same week, and appropriately enough I had one benched homer, too. D'oh.

Anyway, this is a new feature, so we can't be sure of the records for the league's entire three years. We can't compare these to the first season at all, but we can compare some of it to last year, as I did happen to save some of those marks (and lemme tell ya', determining them "by hand" was no picnic). I'll give the same caveat I did last year, which is that because I did these manually, I can't vouch for their accuracy completely, but they should be mostly correct, if not totally.

Anyway, here are last year's highs. Note how closely some of them align with this year's highs:
  • Most Runs: Dodgers, 56 in week 7
  • Most HRs: TONGO and Meat, with 16, in weeks 21 and 7
  • Most RBI: Roid Ragers, 50 in week 9
  • Most SB: Flashers, 14, in week 2
  • Best AVG: .386, Zeppelins, in week 12
  • Most Wins: Flashers and Clowns, with 8, in weeks 10 and 1
  • Most Saves: Roid Ragers, 12 in week 22
  • Most Ks: Dirt Stars, with 80 in week 10
  • Best ERA: Turtles, with 1.04 in week 19
  • Best WHIP: Dirt Stars, with 0.68 in week 8
Compared to this year, we have a new weekly record for Runs (Sedai, 62), RBIs (Me, 59), SBs (Adam, 15), Wins (Me, twice, and Adam, once, with 9), and Ks (Adam, 100). The other marks from last year still stand.


Best/Worst in Categories
It's more accurate to use the raw totals described in the previous post, but still, let's take a look at some of the best Won-Loss records in specific categories.

The best record anyone had in any category was Mark's Dodgers, who went 20-1-1 in Ks this season. He had room to spare, too, as Spud's 17-5 record in AVG was the next-best mark. The worst marks in a given category was Spud's 3-18-1 in Saves, and Vince's 4-18 mark in Ks.

Best winning percentage in all hitting categories goes to Sedai, who went 61-40-9 in all offensive categories, good for a .604 winning percentage. Best in pitching was TONGO, who put up a winning percentage of .708 in the pitching categories, going 75-31-4.

One thing that seems to keep coming out in all these numbers, interestingly enough, is that there was a bigger disparity in pitching than in hitting. And sure enough, when I check the standard deviation of the Roto-style rankings, it's a bit higher for pitching than hitting. I've got theories for why this may be, but it's hard to know for sure. Still, interesting stuff.


Gems and Busts
There's no way to really do justice to all the best or worst draft picks and waiver pickups, so I'll just list some of the more notable ones, and I'll try to parse out guys who were good but just got hurt. First, the gems:
  • Matt Kemp, drafted 21st overall
    Taken by Mike. A bitter pill for me to swallow, as I loved Kemp this year and specifically wanted to draw a mid-round pick so I could take him in the 2nd. Even though Mike nabbed him plenty early in the draft, he's still a steal, as he's the #1 player on ESPN's Player Rater for the season with a bit of margin to spare.
  • Justin Verlander, drafted 49th overall
    Taken by Adam. Top-rated pitcher on the season, 10th pitcher off the board. Not a huge disparity, but he's been #1 by a huge margin.
  • Jose Bautista, drafted 37th overall
    Taken by Spud. Lots of debate coming into this season about whether or not Jose was a fluke, on steroids, or what have you. Spud took a chance on him in the third, and it's paid off. His power numbers are down a bit from last year, but it appears to be part of a league-wide trend, so relatively speaking he's been nearly as valuable this season as he was last season. First-round numbers in the third-round = really good.
  • Cole Hamels, drafted 61st overall
    Taken by Dustin. He's been good-but-not-great for awhile, but this year he took a huge leap forward and is ESPN's 7th-rated starter on the year, and he'd probably be a slot or two higher if he hadn't suffered a late-season injury.
  • Michael Young, drafted 82nd overall
    Taken by Fiscal. Power numbers are way down, but he's hitting a ridiculous .334 at the age of 34. Particularly valuable given that he qualifies at three positions, particularly 2B, where such numbers are very hard to find.
  • Jered Weaver, drafted 84th overall
    Taken by Yoda. The fourth-ranked SP on the year was the 18th off the board and went at the tail end of the 6th round.
  • Paul Konerko, drafted 88th overall
    Taken by Mark. He's chilled a bit since the middle of the season and his Runs are quite low, but he's still going to put up 30 homers, 100 RBIs and a .300+ average, and in the 7th round of a league this size, that's a bargain. He's been more valuable than Texieria or Howard, even though he went 67 and 73 picks after them, respectively.
  • Jacoby Ellsbury, drafted 95th overall
    Taken by Vince. The #4 player in all of fantasy, taken at the start of the 8th round, for two reasons: 1) he managed to stay healthy all year, and 2) he took a huge leap forward with his power numbers. Given his speed and solid average, taking on a dozen extra numbers transforms him from a good fantasy outfielder to an elite one.
  • Curtis Granderson, drafted 103rd overall
    Taken by Adam. Arguably the best pick in the entire draft. The #5 player in all of fantasy this year. Finally started hitting lefties, and is on pace for a ridiculous 147 runs in baseball's most potent lineup.
  • Tim Hudson, drafted 182nd overall
    Taken by Yoda. 16th among starting pitchers, taken in the 13th round near players like Rajai Davis, Brad Lidge, and Travis Snyder
  • Josh Beckett, drafted 191st overall
    Taken by TONGO, the 9th-best starter in all of fantasy. Granderson's best competition, I think, for the best pick in the draft
There are more, but as you can see, the draft was littered with late-round steals, and I think these are the biggest names.

Now, a few busts, which is a much shorter list, since it has to be relegated to the first few rounds for the players involved to really qualify as a bust. I'm also excluding players that played well but busted almost entirely due to injury.
  • Hanley Ramirez, 2nd overall
    Played in only 92 games and hit about over 60 points below his career average, though most of his other numbers were within an acceptable range. The main reason he's on here is that he was a consensus top-two pick.
  • Evan Longoria, 5th overall
    Pretty much stopped running this year, and has hit .236 to date. Will end up setting career lows in two categories and probably barely edging out his rookie numbers in two others. Was first taken at his position.
  • Carl Crawford, 13th overall
    It's hard to fathom how a great hitter and speedster like Crawford could score only 56 runs so far on the second-highest-scoring offense in baseball. His totals in every category other than average are literally about half (or less) of what he was projected to put up, and he's hitting .250.
  • Adam Dunn, 27th overall
    Dunn had been, before this season, a model of consistent power. Here were his home run totals in the seven years leading up to this one: 46, 40, 40, 40, 40, 38, 38. Never been good on average, but good for 40 homers and 100 RBIs, and you always knew what you were getting. This year he disappeared with a downright historic suddenness, hitting 11 homers and putting up a mind-boggling .162 average.
  • Jason Heyward, 33rd overall
    He came out gangbusters last year and faded down the stretch, but still had decent total numbers for a rookie. He's a tremendous talent and many people expected him to make a huge leap this year, but he's actually regressed in all five categories, and has had some nagging injuries.
And a few great waiver pickups throughout the year, to show you how many undrafted guys emerge:
  • Lance Berkman
  • Michael Pineda
  • Ryan Madson
  • Michael Morse
  • Jordan Walden
  • Sergio Santos
  • J.J. Hardy
  • Alex Avila
  • Coco Crisp
Lots of players on this list have finished in the top 10 at their position, and all were snatched up in the first four weeks of the season.



By the by, PW and I are the only players to make it to the playoffs in all three seasons. Mark made it the first two before missing out this year, and Adam's made it for the second straight year but didn't play in the first. TONGO made it in the first year, missed it in the second, and finished #1 this year. Though, of course, the first season saw 6 of 10 teams make the playoffs, and it's become steadily harder as we've gone from 10, to 12, to 14 teams.

At some point soon I'll probably sit down and plug the standings into a spreadsheet so we can produce a "lifetime" record, though we might have to have two numbers, given that the first season had twice as many categories.



A system of cells interlinked
Fun stuff!
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In Crawford's defense he did miss a very large chunk of time. Almost a month and a half I think. He had a terrible start but was just starting to make some progress when he got hurt. He's gone steadily up since then. But yeah, would have liked to have gotten a lot more from a first rounder.

Corey Hart was by far the waiver pick up of the year for me. That dude can flat out hit. A close second is Freddie Freeman who I'm sure you didn't really want to drop at the time Chris but were either looking for more pitching flexibility or maybe you just couldn't justify playing him? Either way, he's been terrific.

And yeah, Pineda is a phenom and the only reason I was able to get on him so early is because he plays here. This guy will probably go pretty high next year. Especially if the M's could just figure out how to score some damn runs!
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