Hi Tanner, I am a new and happy customer – thanks for your work. Two questions:
1) How do I account for Ottoneu style leagues where we have a deep bench? Specifically, my confusion revolves around # of hitters vs. # of pitchers — there’s no set formula that all teams have to follow.
2) I am surprised there was no input for setting % split on $hitters vs. $pitchers. I think I can figure out how to add those functions into Excel on my own, but I was wondering why you chose not to include that.
Alright, on to the question about hitter and pitcher splits.
In rotisserie we have this clear and universal acceptance of a split somewhere in the neighborhood of 70/30 to 65/35.
I am not convinced we can apply that to points leagues, so I left it out. My reasoning is that points leagues seem to be like finger prints. Every one is slightly different. Some leagues favor pitchers. Some hitters. Some favor relievers. Some probably favor power hitters.
It all depends on the point structure for the league.
Rotisserie inherently gives us a 50-50 level of importance for hitters and pitchers. You can get half your points from hitters and half your points from pitchers.
I don’t know what that weight is in points leagues.
In roto we then deviate from the 50-50 split because we are better at predicting hitter performance and more pitchers come into the valuable player pool during the season. So we allocate away from pitchers and toward hitters.
Instead of a split, I do have an idea of applying hitter and pitcher discounts to players. It would take studying of past years data. But I would research exactly what points we projected the above replacement level hitters to earn during the season and then determine how many points they did earn. And then do the same for pitchers.
So maybe the top 130 hitters in preseason 2015 were projected to earn 10,000 points and they only earned 8,000. And maybe the top 90 hitters were projected to earn 11,000 and they only earned 10,000.
I might then want to discount the projected points for hitters to 80% of the projected level. And discount pitchers to 91% of their projections. This in effect pushes more import to the pitchers.
There are still some holes in this approach. It doesn’t really consider the amount of points that come into the league during the season. But I think it’s a start.
Great questions. I’ve actually been thinking about the concept of bench players lately because it’s something nobody ever seems to talk about.
I think my conclusion is going to be that you essentially set roster sizes as if they are the starting lineups only. Then you back $1 out of the team salary for each bench player you’re allowed.
I’m not very familiar with the exact Ottoneu setup, but it looks like 22 players. I’m guessing that’s 9 pitchers and 13 hitters. So in a 10 team league, 130 hitters and 90 pitchers would be above replacement level.
It also looks like you have 18 bench players. So you would allocate $18 of your team budget to bench players. If it’s a $400 team salary, that would mean you’d put $382 for each team budget (this is the easiest way to do it without massively changing things).
I do realize that people will surely spend more than $1 on many bench players. So you could adjust those amounts some. Maybe say $2 per bench player or more.
But this gets into another topic I like to remind people of. The first option above, with $1 bench players, is the closest thing to determining the true value of players. Players on the bench can’t earn points for the team. So one could argue that they’re not worth anything.
The more money you send toward the bench players, the more you are trying to model what prices players will go for and not necessarily what their value is or what they would contribute.
Of course, I’m being a bit extreme here. Bench players are going to play… SOME. They’re going to contribute… SOME. Some of them will turn out to be better than the starters. Some starters will get hurt. And such deep benches hurts your ability to pick anyone up during the season. So it’s difficult to decide exactly how to handle these. Hopefully this helps get you thinking.
I’m going to leave another comment about your second question.
Thanks for the prompt reply. Regarding your bench discussion — that segues a bit into a related topic: how to value players that in leagues that allow daily lineup changes (side point: this is an issue for leagues with deep benches as well as an issue for leagues that allow daily transactions). Our league mimics Ottoneu in featuring large benches and daily lineup changes, but it only allows transactions once a week.
This specifically creates an issue with valuing platoon hitters, expected mid-season rookie call-ups, players returning from injuries and relief pitchers. Each one of these types will have depressed $ valuations due to insufficient playing time. In a league with no bench it is legitimate for their $ values to take a hit, but in a league that has very deep benches an adjustment is in order b/c you’re not going to get zero points out of that player’s lineup slot when your player is out. I was toying around with the idea of adding in expected replacement value (at that position) PTS for the games the player will miss — what do you think?
I am more confused about how to value SPs vs RPs. The scoring system awards far more points to SPs than RPs because it awards 7.4 points per IP, but RPs score significantly more PTS/IP (there is a cap of 1500 IP/team). Given the deep roster sizes it isn’t unreasonable for a team to load up on quality relievers and maximize their point totals by maximizing the % share of IPs from RPs relative to SPs. Of course, the cost to this strategy is devoting more total roster spots to RPs and being a more active manager in rotating in relievers expected to play on a given day…but it seems like a very sound strategy. Back to the point: I think such leagues require separating SPs from RPs b/c otherwise reliever values turn out to be too low. What I am wondering is how to capture the PTS/IP component of this dynamic. It isn’t immediately clear to me how to do that. Any thoughts?
That article isn’t exactly what you’re talking about. But it addresses many of the same principles you’ll need to consider when doing such an adjustment.
I am very strongly in the camp that RP and SP should not be valued separately. Let’s say for example that there were no position requirement on where hitting stats came from. This is an extreme example, but bear with me.
If the stats could come from any position, we would know not to draft catchers. If we were not required to start a catcher, we wouldn’t. And we also would not feel a need to only compare catchers to other catchers so as to artificially increase their value.
With that said, I understand your dilemma. And you’re correct in feeling like RP are not being properly valued. If you face an innings limit, you may need to change the way you value pitchers. But I don’t think it is comparing RP to other RP that is the necessary adjustment.
Instead of valuing “points”, you may be better off valuing “points per inning pitched above replacement level”. This will probably cause RP values to sky rocket. So much so that many SP will now fall significantly.
The challenge will then be to make sure you hit the 1,500 inning cap.
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Please ask me any questions you might have about Part 8, “Converting Points Into Dollar Values”.
Hi Tanner, I am a new and happy customer – thanks for your work. Two questions:
1) How do I account for Ottoneu style leagues where we have a deep bench? Specifically, my confusion revolves around # of hitters vs. # of pitchers — there’s no set formula that all teams have to follow.
2) I am surprised there was no input for setting % split on $hitters vs. $pitchers. I think I can figure out how to add those functions into Excel on my own, but I was wondering why you chose not to include that.
Alright, on to the question about hitter and pitcher splits.
In rotisserie we have this clear and universal acceptance of a split somewhere in the neighborhood of 70/30 to 65/35.
I am not convinced we can apply that to points leagues, so I left it out. My reasoning is that points leagues seem to be like finger prints. Every one is slightly different. Some leagues favor pitchers. Some hitters. Some favor relievers. Some probably favor power hitters.
It all depends on the point structure for the league.
Rotisserie inherently gives us a 50-50 level of importance for hitters and pitchers. You can get half your points from hitters and half your points from pitchers.
I don’t know what that weight is in points leagues.
In roto we then deviate from the 50-50 split because we are better at predicting hitter performance and more pitchers come into the valuable player pool during the season. So we allocate away from pitchers and toward hitters.
Instead of a split, I do have an idea of applying hitter and pitcher discounts to players. It would take studying of past years data. But I would research exactly what points we projected the above replacement level hitters to earn during the season and then determine how many points they did earn. And then do the same for pitchers.
So maybe the top 130 hitters in preseason 2015 were projected to earn 10,000 points and they only earned 8,000. And maybe the top 90 hitters were projected to earn 11,000 and they only earned 10,000.
I might then want to discount the projected points for hitters to 80% of the projected level. And discount pitchers to 91% of their projections. This in effect pushes more import to the pitchers.
There are still some holes in this approach. It doesn’t really consider the amount of points that come into the league during the season. But I think it’s a start.
You can see an example file here:
Excel File with Discounting
Hi David,
Great questions. I’ve actually been thinking about the concept of bench players lately because it’s something nobody ever seems to talk about.
I think my conclusion is going to be that you essentially set roster sizes as if they are the starting lineups only. Then you back $1 out of the team salary for each bench player you’re allowed.
I’m not very familiar with the exact Ottoneu setup, but it looks like 22 players. I’m guessing that’s 9 pitchers and 13 hitters. So in a 10 team league, 130 hitters and 90 pitchers would be above replacement level.
It also looks like you have 18 bench players. So you would allocate $18 of your team budget to bench players. If it’s a $400 team salary, that would mean you’d put $382 for each team budget (this is the easiest way to do it without massively changing things).
I do realize that people will surely spend more than $1 on many bench players. So you could adjust those amounts some. Maybe say $2 per bench player or more.
But this gets into another topic I like to remind people of. The first option above, with $1 bench players, is the closest thing to determining the true value of players. Players on the bench can’t earn points for the team. So one could argue that they’re not worth anything.
The more money you send toward the bench players, the more you are trying to model what prices players will go for and not necessarily what their value is or what they would contribute.
Of course, I’m being a bit extreme here. Bench players are going to play… SOME. They’re going to contribute… SOME. Some of them will turn out to be better than the starters. Some starters will get hurt. And such deep benches hurts your ability to pick anyone up during the season. So it’s difficult to decide exactly how to handle these. Hopefully this helps get you thinking.
I’m going to leave another comment about your second question.
Thanks for the prompt reply. Regarding your bench discussion — that segues a bit into a related topic: how to value players that in leagues that allow daily lineup changes (side point: this is an issue for leagues with deep benches as well as an issue for leagues that allow daily transactions). Our league mimics Ottoneu in featuring large benches and daily lineup changes, but it only allows transactions once a week.
This specifically creates an issue with valuing platoon hitters, expected mid-season rookie call-ups, players returning from injuries and relief pitchers. Each one of these types will have depressed $ valuations due to insufficient playing time. In a league with no bench it is legitimate for their $ values to take a hit, but in a league that has very deep benches an adjustment is in order b/c you’re not going to get zero points out of that player’s lineup slot when your player is out. I was toying around with the idea of adding in expected replacement value (at that position) PTS for the games the player will miss — what do you think?
I am more confused about how to value SPs vs RPs. The scoring system awards far more points to SPs than RPs because it awards 7.4 points per IP, but RPs score significantly more PTS/IP (there is a cap of 1500 IP/team). Given the deep roster sizes it isn’t unreasonable for a team to load up on quality relievers and maximize their point totals by maximizing the % share of IPs from RPs relative to SPs. Of course, the cost to this strategy is devoting more total roster spots to RPs and being a more active manager in rotating in relievers expected to play on a given day…but it seems like a very sound strategy. Back to the point: I think such leagues require separating SPs from RPs b/c otherwise reliever values turn out to be too low. What I am wondering is how to capture the PTS/IP component of this dynamic. It isn’t immediately clear to me how to do that. Any thoughts?
Hi David,
Not so prompt on this reply! I have written some about the idea of adding back “expected replacement value” to certain players. You can read about it here: http://www.hardballtimes.com/properly-valuing-hitters-with-injury-risk/
That article isn’t exactly what you’re talking about. But it addresses many of the same principles you’ll need to consider when doing such an adjustment.
I am very strongly in the camp that RP and SP should not be valued separately. Let’s say for example that there were no position requirement on where hitting stats came from. This is an extreme example, but bear with me.
If the stats could come from any position, we would know not to draft catchers. If we were not required to start a catcher, we wouldn’t. And we also would not feel a need to only compare catchers to other catchers so as to artificially increase their value.
With that said, I understand your dilemma. And you’re correct in feeling like RP are not being properly valued. If you face an innings limit, you may need to change the way you value pitchers. But I don’t think it is comparing RP to other RP that is the necessary adjustment.
Instead of valuing “points”, you may be better off valuing “points per inning pitched above replacement level”. This will probably cause RP values to sky rocket. So much so that many SP will now fall significantly.
The challenge will then be to make sure you hit the 1,500 inning cap.