Draft Strategy Question (1 Viewer)

[Softballguy]

This will be my second year at fantasy baseball and I'm still pretty vanilla. I wanted to try some new things this year, so I applied VBD strategies to my rankings. Given the scoring of the league, does it make sense to grab pitchers right away? This seems to fly in the face of conventional wisdom.

10 teams

Starters - 8 + 1 utility.

Pitchers - 6 general pitchers.

Bench: 5 players.

Head to head points system.

Batting

Singles (1B) 1, Doubles (2B) 2

Triples (3B) 3, Home Runs (HR) 4

Walks (BB) 1, Runs Scored ® 1

Runs Batted In (RBI)1, Stolen Bases (SB) 1

Strikeouts (K) -1 Caught Stealing (CS) -1

Pitching

Innings Pitched (IP) 3, Earned Runs (ER) -1

Wins (W) 10, Losses (L) -7

Saves (SV) 10, Blown Saves (BS) -5

Strikeouts (K) 1, Hits Allowed (H) -1

Walks Issued (BB) -1, Holds (HD) 3

The 3pts per inning really give the pitchers high scores.

I took my projections, applied the league's point system, and then subtracted the last starter's score at each position from each player's score at that position. I used the 10th ranked player at each IF position, 30th for OF, and the 30th pitcher for pitchers.

My top 20 looks like this:

Pujols, Albert 1

Halladay, Roy

Lincecum, Tim

Hernandez, Felix

Mauer, Joe C

Sabathia, CC

Ramirez, Hanley S

Wainwright, Adam

Verlander, Justin

Braun, Ryan O

Lester, Jon

Martinez, Victor C

Tulowitzki, Troy S

Haren, Dan

Cabrera, Miguel 1

Lee, Cliff

Greinke, Zack

Wilson, Brian

Cano, Robinson 2

Holliday, Matt O

Seems like pitchers and catchers are ranked too high... are they?

 

[Eephus]

Agree your ranking system seems to overvalue position scarcity. Since you have all the data, you might want to try comparing the top players to the median (#5) rather than replacement level (#10) ranked players.

The other thing to consider is the variability among pitchers (see Wainwright, Adam). A shallow mixed weekly points league format really encourages streaming of two-start pitchers. I'd downgrade all SPs in your rankings because of this.

 

[Softballguy]

Agree your ranking system seems to overvalue position scarcity. Since you have all the data, you might want to try comparing the top players to the median (#5) rather than replacement level (#10) ranked players.The other thing to consider is the variability among pitchers (see Wainwright, Adam). A shallow mixed weekly points league format really encourages streaming of two-start pitchers. I'd downgrade all SPs in your rankings because of this.

Thanks for the input. I'll run it again using the median like you suggested. I originally used the 60th pitcher for the cutoff point, but then realized that I would be swapping about half my rotation for guys who will get two starts, so I changed it to 30. It just seems to me that with this scoring format quality starting pitchers may be the way to go. But then again, I've only played this once so I'm not sure.

 

[Pip's Invitation]

Your scoring system bumps up the value of the true ace starters -- Halladay, Lincecum, etc. They should be rated higher here than in conventional formats.

But it should still be OK to wait to fill out the rest of your staff, once you get past the guys that are a lock to throw 7+ innings every start.