Poly Fantasy Baseball Draft Thread - Weekly league

[Ninot]

I live by sabermetrics! I plan to raise my kids believing in them

I'm not sold on 3B. 2B, fine, but 3B I think depends so much more on the manager's placement of the outfielder's than any merrit of the base runner.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Berzerker


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.

1B is counted in H and OBP already. 1B is not 'special' so no reason to count it more (like 2B or HR). 1B ~= BB give or take (they're roughly equivalent in terms of run potential, 1B is only slightly more).

OBP > AVG because OBP is correlated to run potential much closer than AVG. AVG was created by a guy who played cricket, and he disliked walks (so throws them out) for example. There's no reason to throw out the walk. The batter's goal is not to 'get a hit'. It's to 'not get an out'. Not getting outs means the inning continues and more runs can be scored. (This is why many consider the sacrifice to be a poor choice when done by someone with any reasonable chance of getting on base, IE above the mendoza line.)

You can never 'nullify' the better-team effect (especially when you consider 'protection' and things like that). However, limiting it as much as possible is obviously something you can strive for, and things like SLG and OBP do mostly nullify it (they're averages, so the only element is the protection effect). Some criteria like 2B or HR tell you more than they lose in specificity from exetrnalities like team quality; some don't (like RBI). Manny might have a +30 RBI bonus from playing on Boston compared to the average, but he'll hit about the same number of HR and 2B, maybe a couple more at most; those are individual stats. (Park externalities are impossible to deal with in the fantasy realm unfortunately, that's just getting too deep.)

It's all down to what do you want to do in Fantasy ... some people like to just see stats they are familiar with (5x5), some want more detailed statistical relevance. I have nothing against traditional 5x5 and love playing it - though adding obp/slg does make it a bit better - but if you're going for a many-category field, the only reason to do this is to 'go a bit deeper' statistically. If you are doing that, you should go ahead and use meaningful statistics. Too many fantasy leagues have just a random collection of stats that end up biasing the league significantly because of their natural biases, and the more stats you have the more the 'better team' bias will show through unless you make a concerted attempt to avoid it...

[Berzerker]

but 3B I think depends so much more on the manager's placement of the outfielder's than any merrit of the base runner.

Oh brother, y'all can go overboard with this stuff. And some stadiums are more conducive to triples, but thats true for HRs.

1B is counted in H and OBP already.

So are 2B, 3B and HRs, but they get a boost from SLG and their decreased occurrence make them more valuable. Not counting 1B makes it an even bigger boost.

1B is not 'special' so no reason to count it more (like 2B or HR). 1B ~= BB give or take (they're roughly equivalent in terms of run potential, 1B is only slightly more).

Its special to the game, you guys aren't considering the mental aspects of the game. A hit is more damaging than a BB. Oh well, I'm not gonna nitpick anymore. I'm intrigued, if y'all can convince a few more people I'll go with it.

[Ninot]

Like I implied before, I'm cool with anything that is in line with sabermetrics.

[snoopy369]

The point of sabremetrics/statistics is to remove the mental aspects of the game as they're provably rubbish

[Ninot]

Remove the mental aspects? That's not exactly how I'd describe it. More like remove the uncertainty of chance and risk, no?

[snoopy369]

It is to remove the reliance on the existence of mental aspects - 'momentum', 'heart', 'clutch', etc. - and describe the value of a player in purely numerical terms. Terms that meaningfully describe the probable future output of a player, without emotional baggage that makes good decisions into bad ones.

[Ninot]

Ahh, alright. I'd be more prone to labeling those things as intangibles. But I digress.

[Berzerker]

VOTE PEOPLE

Do you wanna go sabremetrics ie Snoopy's cats or some version resembling last year's categories. We appear to have 3 enthusiastic supporters of Sabremetrics and I'm leaning that way.

[SlowwHand]

Do it then. I don't give a rat's rump. We all are scored the same. The draft is conjecture. Make it whatever you want to make it.

[Ninot]

Yeah, I just want to draft really. but Snoopy option #2 is my fave

[Berzerker]

snoopy option 3 for me

[jdd2007]

I like Version 2

[Deity Dude]

I personally like Ave. And since baseball games are decided by Runs I would think runs and RBI's are important. My vote would be to do it the way we did last year.

[Ninot]

last year was fine by me.

For all my talking, I'm pretty easy.