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October 13, 2014 Fantasy FreestyleMy Personal Scorecard: Part 1 - American League
If you have read my work for any appreciable amount of time (either here at Baseball Prospectus or previously at my blog), you know that I am a significant believer in accountability. Many of us post our predictions in the spring. In turn, many of you rely on these predictions to construct your fantasy teams. Unfortunately, few fantasy writers revisit their work after the season and offer an honest assessment of how well or poorly they did. There are many reasons for this, and I could write an entire piece simply discussing why we as an “industry” are not very good at self-auditing. The short answer is that while it is human nature to pat ourselves on the back for our successes, we don’t really like to call attention to our failures. I was guilty of this last year as well. After posting bids at BP for the first time in 2013, I wrote absolutely nothing about how I did (which kind of stinks, because I actually had a pretty good year). It is easy to criticize others for not auditing their work, but at a minimum I have to hold myself up to my own standard. Even when fantasy analysts do take the time to look back, their analysis focuses almost completely on how the player performed against the analyst’s projection. Below is a broad example of this style of retrospective review.
We missed the mark on Blow’s home runs, but his increased line drive rate led to some additional batting average and an improved lineup (particularly in the second half after the Stars traded for Tom Prototype) led to more RBI opportunities. Overall, this was a fairly solid statistical projection, particularly since it was very close in every statistical category except for home runs. While there is certainly some value in this exercise, most fantasy players don’t buy or draft players using only statistical projections. It is more likely that rankings (in draft formats) and dollar values (in auction formats) are the primary driver for fantasy players. Put simply, the most important factor in determining how well we did isn’t based on what we thought the player would do but rather on what we were willing to pay for that player. What you will find below is a complete list of players where my bid limit was three dollars higher or lower than the average expert league price in the CBS, LABR, and Tout Wars auctions. In this article, I will take a look at how I did in the American League compared to the expert market. Next week I will examine how I did in the National League. Table 1: Gianella Bullish, AL Hitters
The $ earnings are the AL-only earnings using my formulas for 5x5 valuation (coming next month to Baseball Prospectus in their entirety). The “AVG” is the average salary for these players in the CBS, LABR, and Tout Wars expert auctions. The “MG” column is my projected bid limit from my final pricing update in late March, and the “MG +/-“ is the difference between my bid and the average market price (not the $ earnings column). The drawbacks of this methodology are fairly obvious. Claiming a “win” on Ryan Hanigan when I had a $4 bid limit, the market had an average $1 salary, and he earned $3 is rather silly. Yes, technically I was closer to Hanigan’s value than the market, but this isn’t the kind of advice that sells website subscriptions. Instead of simply presenting the tables, a more useful exercise might be to self-grade my projections. Grade A: Lonnie Chisenhall, Michael Brantley, Lorenzo Cain, James Loney Grade B: Trevor Plouffe Grade C: Marcus Semien, David Murphy, Yunel Escobar, Asdrubal Cabrera The idea here is that a $6 buy on Murphy for $11 of stats might be better than my $6 bid, even though the $9 price was closer to what Murphy earned. A slight profit certainly isn’t bad, but as you start filling out the bottom half of your squad, your goal is profit, not a push. Cabrera gets a “C” because he earned $4 for the Nationals. If you play in an -only format where you can keep players traded to the “other” league, this is a virtual push. Grade D: David DeJesus, Ryan Hanigan, J.P. Arencibia Table 2: Gianella Bearish, AL Hitters
An 8-4 record sounds terrific, but I had the advantage of more recent information on Profar and Soto than the expert leagues did and adjusted my bids downward accordingly. I will give myself “incompletes” on both players and keep them out of the grades below. Grade A: Prince Fiedler, Mark Teixeira Grade B: Kendrys Morales, Stephen Drew, Mike Trout Grade D: Shin-Soo Choo Grade F: Kole Calhoun, Yan Gomes, Derek Norris, Brian Dozier Table 3: Gianella Bullish, AL Pitchers
There is less variation compared to the expert market on pitchers as there is on hitters because there is less bid money assigned to the pitchers than there is to the hitters. I could expand the sort to $2 higher or lower than the average bid, but a $2 bid difference offers little variance in my opinion. I could give myself credit for Soria, but this is a case where I raised my bid only after Neftali Feliz didn’t work out in spring training. I was pretty close overall—and beat Tout Wars’s adjusted Soria bid—but this explanation is giving me a headache and I’m not even halfway through it. Let’s just leave Soria out of this and avoid any potential battles in the comments section. Even if I did include Soria, I still did badly here: 3-6-1, with only one clear cut victory. Grade A: Yordano Ventura Grade C: Jarred Cosart Grade D: John Danks, Tyler Skaggs Grade F: Jesse Crain, Zach McAllister, Alexi Ogando, Ricky Nolasco, Tanner Scheppers Table 4: Gianella Bearish, AL Pitchers
Again, an 8-2 record sounds impressive, but a number of these pitchers can and should be removed from an honest accounting. Feliz is the other side of the Soria coin. I had him at $14 before it was obvious he wouldn’t close, and it is not fair to take credit for Feliz after the fact. Griffin and Parker were both injury cases, while Santana signed with the Braves between LABR and Tout Wars. Grade A: Tommy Hunter, Danny Salazar Grade B: Yu Darvish, Taijuan Walker Grade D: Chris Sale, Drew Smyly Overall Impressions I would have been better off not pushing so many marginal players like Almonte and Sizemore up at the end of spring training. I probably overreacted to late spring news and should have stuck with my guns on these marginal types of players. It would have been better to move my money to the middle or the top and maintained low bids on these players. My biggest failing, though, was not staying with my first instinct on players like Fielder and Salazar simply because the market was more aggressive than I was. I didn’t like Fielder coming into the season; there was no good reason to push my price up to $30 just because the market was pushing so hard on him. Next year, I am definitely going to hold the line on players like this that I truly dislike. I am going to attempt to build more on players like Brantley and Cain next year. Players with their profile are my bread and butter. Bargain-bin finds are great, but if you can get a foundation player for less than $20, this is an even-more-stellar win in a fantasy league in my opinion.
Mike Gianella is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @MikeGianella
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This is very useful stuff but I wonder if it would also be useful to go a level deeper and understand why you bid what you did, and why that worked/didn't work.
Sometimes my rationale for drafting a player is relatively simple, like "age 26-28, prime breakout years" or "had a great August/September last season" and it would interesting to see if those rationales were smart or not.
Not sure if you can break down your thought processes on players as easily as I can, most of the time.