Poly Fantasy Baseball Draft Thread - Weekly league

[Ninot]

9th? Ouch. I'll start my homework.

[jdd2007]

I'd prefer to have RBI and/or Runs, in addition to


SLG, OBP, 2B, 3B, HR, SB, H, FPCT


I don't particularly care about the pitching stats

[Imran Siddiqui]

If we have to include one, I'd far prefer Runs to RBI. I don't want to see RBI involved at all.

[Ninot]

I don't like having 3B. They happen sooooooo rarely. I think having SLG is enough.

[Ninot]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
If we have to include one, I'd far prefer Runs to RBI. I don't want to see RBI involved at all.

Each has their place, although I wouldn't mind seeing neither as well. For me though, I'd prefer to see both rather than neither.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Ninot
Each has their place, although I wouldn't mind seeing neither as well. For me though, I'd prefer to see both rather than neither.

Aside from the fact that RBI is probably the most overrated baseball stat (BA falls just after it) .

[Ninot]

I agree entirely about it being overrated, but if you're going to put in Runs which probably benefits the leadoff spot, then I think its only right to put in RBI which will help the 3rd, 4th and 5th spot guys in a lineup.

[Berzerker]

You dont want RBIs involved at all? Aside from runs, aren't RBIs the most important offense cat?

Anyway, I know you and Snoop like fewer cats but we already have Snoop running an auction league with maybe 12 cats.

What does TB add if you already have 1, 2, 3 and HR?

Well, lets say you wipe your opponent out in HRs and doubles but he beats you in singles and triples (by a small margin). Thats a 2-2 split but one player dominated in TB - and TB is a good cat to represent overall offensive output.

Well, if we have "K" and "K/BB" that is a bit much 'K'.

if we have Ks and BBs they tend to cancel each other out and since we're usually trying to add a pitching category to keep some balance with offense, K/BB aint entirely irrelevant since it helps had clarity to the Ks and BBs split situation.

Dropping CGs is fine with me, but I dont want to cut down cats too much

Don't like BB also, They reward pitching few innings... I'd keep K/BB which is a good efficiency index and works for both starters and relievers.

Thats true, thats why we have IP and a minimum IP per week to make sure people are throwing starters.

A good compromise would be
SLG, OBP, 2B, 3B, HR, SB, H, FPCT

and

ERA, WHIP, W, K, SV, HLD, BB (or some other pitching category instead of BB - can we gauge runners stranded for example??)

I'm torn on this, I like triples but do they really deserve a separate cat? At least doubles are fairly plentiful... My head hurts... We can drop Ks and BBs from the offense and put in OBP

Here are some options

R, H, HR, RBI, SB, TB, AVG, OBP (or BBs), SLG, FPCT

(The player winning HRs will likely win SLG so that emphasizes or over emphasizes the power players). Technically, Runs and RBIs are what really matters.

R, 1, 2, 3, HR, RBIs, TB, SB, BBs, Ks (or replace both w/OBP), AVG, FPCT

(we could drop Ks and BBs and put in OBP, Slugging is already represented pretty well.)

Do you guys even want Ks as an offensive cat? BBs should be represented somehow, maybe we could just have BBs and not have Ks or OBP.

SLG, OBP, 2B, 3B, HR, SB, H, FPCT

Thats Snoop's suggestion... But you gotta have runs and RBIs, thats what the game is about. Well, I'm pretty flexible on this stuff but I dont wanna whittle the cats down too much. I like having some overlap or partial duplication to help provide some separation in scoring.

Do you guys want to count doubles and triples as separate cats?

It looks like pitching cats are a bit easier to settle on...

I'm leaning toward

R, H, HR, RBIs, TB, SB, AVG, BBs (or OBP), FPCT (we can add slugging or Ks or something maybe)

IP, W, L, SV, BB, K, HLD, ERA, WHIP, K/BB

(W-L often cancel each other but they are what the game is all about - winning and losing. Ks and BBs do the same so K/BB helps add clarity. IP is needed just to add weight to throwing starters.

[Imran Siddiqui]

You dont want RBIs involved at all? Aside from runs, aren't RBIs the most important offense cat?

No. RBIs are VERY susceptible to the OBP of the players ahead of you. It's a bad individual stat. I should get you some sabermetric reading material .

Do you guys even want Ks as an offensive cat? BBs should be represented somehow, maybe we could just have BBs and not have Ks or OBP.

K's need being there. Either k/9 or k/bb or both.

And no, runs nor RBIs have to be there.

[Ninot]

I'm with Imran

[Berzerker]

No, Ks as an offensive cat, not pitching. Do you guys wanna penalize the players who swing and miss more often? Contact hitters move the runners along more and thats noteworthy wrt the game, but if y'all wanna whittle down the cats to the basics, no, bare necessities, then Ks just aint that relevant. Well, in reality Ks are important - the pitcher is saying "you guys aint ****" and the batters are getting a bit more nervous. But limiting the cats too much removes these aspects of the game.

I see yer point about RBIs, but scoring and driving in runs is what the game is about. RBIs are a talent nonetheless, it favors clutch hitters and so do managers. So we need to consider the OBP of players in front of the guys we're considering. Whats wrong with that?

I sure look at the offense of teams when considering their pitchers, dis-entangling individual stats from the team is pretty hard, but RBIs are such an important part of the game. Its like fantasy soccer without assists and goals. No runs or RBIs? Thats just crazy talk, Imran (and Ninot) . But if you can get 6 people to agree we can go with it. Basically we're stuck with the settings from last year as our default position until enough people wanna make changes.

But why dont you like average, Imran? Thats an individual stat more isolated from the team. Anyway, maybe you, Snoop and Ninot can agree on what you want and post it for us to see.

Take yer time DD, we need to iron this out and we need everyone to chime in. People who dont chime in are assumed to support basically the same settings from last year.

Its a question of "the basics" or some duplication/overlap (more categories)

[snoopy369]

R, H, HR, RBIs, TB, SB, AVG, BBs (or OBP), FPCT (we can add slugging or Ks or something maybe)

No AVG for sure, that's totally 1995... OBP instead, and then you can drop BBs. Slugging certainly.

I'm not that concerned with R or RBI, but I'd vote for excluding both in this one. Mine is being run more standard style, making only the OBP/SLG concession to sabremetrics, mostly to make the auction easier for people to find materials on $ values. In a draft league this isn't a huge concern...

R and RBI are basically determined by the spot in the batting order and the folks around you. They do very little to measure individual performance. (For example, Manny Ramirez might have 150 RBIs this year. But, in an alternate universe, Tampa Bay trades their entire team for him, and then promotes the shrubs in AAA to hit around him; there he gets 90 RBIs, 70 of which were on solo HRs.)

2B and 3B are nice stats IMO - and 3B aren't that rare, there are plenty of people nowadays that get them. They both reward individual performance, measuring the Mark Grace type hitters who have power but not QUITE home run power. 3B rewards the speedsters who have some power, of which there are more and more each year...

SLG is better than TB (it's more familiar to people, and otherwise is identical in what it measures).

IP, W, L, SV, BB, K, HLD, ERA, WHIP, K/BB

L are a terrible stat, better pitchers get MORE losses to some extent because they stay in long enough to get the loss. It doesn't just measure 'lousy pitching outings', but measures 'outings where my team sucked hitting' and 'outings where I was neither good nor bad'. "QS" might be better to add instead of L - quality starts - as that measures games that are well pitched regardless of W or L. (It's probably a better stat than W actually also as a result - W is still very team-dependent, Andy Petite wins 15 games as a Yankee and 10 as a Devil Ray as in the other example.)

[snoopy369]

A few modifications of my original suggestion:

VER 1 (original)
SLG, OBP, 2B, 3B, HR, SB, H, FPCT
and
ERA, WHIP, W, K, SV, HLD, BB

VER 2: (RBI instead of 3B, K/BB instead of BB) "The Fist Proposal"
SLG, OBP, 2B, HR, SB, H, FPCT, RBI
and
ERA, WHIP, W, K, SV, HLD, K/BB

VER 3: (Original hitting stats, QS instead of BB, K/BB instead of K) "Snoopy 3"
SLG, OBP, 2B, 3B, HR, SB, H, FPCT
and
ERA, WHIP, W, K/BB, SV, HLD, QS

[Berzerker]

oh yeah, I for one dont wanna play basically the same settings as the auction league. One Poly league has traditionally used ~20 cats so you know my vote

This is what we used last year

R, H, HR, RBI, SB, BB, K, TB, FPCT, AVG, OBP, SLG,

IP, W, L, CG, SV, BB, K, HLD, ERA, WHIP, K/BB

We have several votes already for dropping CG and a few people like adding K/9 (thats fine with me).

What else do we remove from pitching? IP and L? Losing a game is kinda important to pitching. The IP is there to add weight to starters, thats all. If we drop it we lose an incentive to throw SPs so dropping L helps reduce that loss. Eh, I'll let you Fundies figure out what to cut from that side of the equation. I can see dropping OBP (or BBs), SLG, and Ks from offense, so thats 9 off cats as a compromise.

The number of pitching cats kinda forces us to use more offense cats. So what pitching cats do you guys want?

[Berzerker]

SLG, OBP, 2B, 3B, HR, SB, H, FPCT

Why no 1B and AVG? I see you guys like SLG and OBP over R and RBIs

Oh yeah, better teams get more ABs so how you gonna nullify that effect?

eh, I'm keeping an open mind to this sabremetrics stuff.