Apolyton Fantasy Baseball - Weekly League

[snoopy369]

Are extra base hits covered by any of those stats? Or are they not worth keeping track of?

XBH are 2b, 3b, HR; the latter is obviously its own category. SLG effectively captures this as well (slugging = # of total bases / # of plate appearances, so 1.000 means you hit a single every time you get to the plate and/or hit a HR every four times you get to the plate and strike out or whatever the other three).

[snoopy369]

Used to like em, but its basically just a 2nd "closer" role. I dont mind them, I typically delay nabbing enough closers to get hitters and Holds allowed me to wait and I didnt care for the mad rush to get Closers anyway.



AVG is nice, but OBP is what counts. QS are for SPs and Wins covers SPs and RPs used to keep games close.



There are 3 classes of relevant RPs - Closers (SV), set up men (Holds), and RPs (Wins) designated to keep games close. The Holds guys and closers are more susceptible to losses than the RPs who get more wins by virtue of coming from behind. Adding Losses will hit SPs, closers and set up men more, but we'd need Holds in the mix.

We could get rid of K/9 and put in Holds and Losses, that would spread our range to RPs beyond closers and even set up men.

I think the problem is (somewhat covered in my other post but i'll elaborate) is that your 'third category' are not very good pitchers for the most part. It's sort of like adding fielding to allow lousy hitters but good fielders to have some purpose; you COULD do it, but would you really want to?

I don't think there's a really good reason to want to enable long relievers to be selected. The point is either to expand the pool of players, or to enable good pitchers to be counted in some way. The former is not necessary (plenty of acceptable SPs on the waiver wire even in a 12 team league, if it's mixed league), and the latter isn't necessarily applicable. The 8th inning guys are overall better pitchers than the LRs, and I guarantee you even with W and QS I'm not taking a long reliever for any reason. The top LR gets fewer wins than a mediocre starter on average, and in nearly every case has worse stats (WHIP, ERA, K/9, K/BB) than most starters. LR are, after all, generally 'Starters who couldn't make it'; there are a very few specialist LRs, but not very many.

I really don't care for Losses, either (like you); I don't think that accomplishes anything in terms of RP vs SP, and it's far too correlated to team performance and even somewhat to GOOD pitching [a good pitcher has more decisions on average, and stays in long enough to get the loss, whereas a poorer pitcher gets pulled earlier. Look at the Royals' pitching staff, for example. ] I think you're pulling at straws to try and make people relevant that aren't. Either include holds to include the 8th inning guys, or don't include holds and leave the relievers to a specialty strategy [several LRs to ditch QS and win ERA/WHIP/K9/KBB]; I think you're better off that way.

[snoopy369]

By the way, I think you're wrong in believing RPs can win a significant number of games. ESPN stats for last year indicate that no true reliever won more than 8 games last year (Aaron Heilman). There are about ten players above him 9-12 wins, but they're all starters who were eligible at RP initially last year (ie, Brendan Morrow).

To put that in perspective, there were over 100 starters with 8 wins or more last year... so we'd be down to the 9th starter before we considered LRs for wins. (Also note, Heilman is not a LR, but was a holds guy prior to getting hurt last year. He's also going to start this year apparently, though that will probably go horrifically for the Cubs...)

edit: I was looking at 2009 projections; i'll reconsider this once I get to their 2008 stats. Still...

[snoopy369]

From MLB.com, 10 is the most (Arredondo); he had 10 wins in 52 appearances. He also would probably be usable normally (not counting wins), having an incredibly low ERA (1.62). He was a 1 inning pitcher (62 innings in 52 games). One other pitcher had 8 wins (Jamey Wright) and a few had 7 (example Brocail), both short relievers (<1.5 ip/game, Brocail is actually under 1 IP/game) and both relatively lousy stats (Wright was > 5 ERA). Wright certainly has no business being selected in Fantasy sports, Brocail is marginal. Kevin Gregg interestingly enough was one of the 7 winners as well, notching 7 wins and 29 saves.

Anyway, point is, I don't think Wins is going to help RP value any here... there are a few that would be selected anyway, and the rest are absolute crap; and most starters are superior by W than these RPs anyway.

[Imran Siddiqui]

R, H, HR, RBI, SB, TB, OBP, SLG
W, SV, ERA, WHIP, K/BB, K/9, QS

Here's how I'd change them:

R, H, HR, RBI, SB, TB, OBP, SLG
QS, H, SV, ERA, WHIP, K/BB, Ks

TB kinda overlaps with SLG, but I'm not sure what it should be replaced with.

[EPW]

Here's how I'd change them:

R, H, HR, RBI, SB, TB, OBP, SLG
QS, H, SV, ERA, WHIP, K/BB, Ks

TB kinda overlaps with SLG, but I'm not sure what it should be replaced with.

[Berzerker]

R, H, HR, RBI, SB, TB, OBP, SLG,
SV, HLD, ERA, WHIP, K/BB, K/9, QS

I just edited the league stats - this is what we have as of now

Imran wants Hits and Ks to replace K/9 and Holds. I was just looking at the options and saw Total Bases exists for pitching too. How about TB instead of Hits? Actually Ks for K/9 aint bad, we got the K/BB to penalize the wilder flamethrowers, but I'm still leaning toward Holds.

maybe something like this

R, H, HR, RBI, SB, TB, OBP, SLG,
QS, SV, HLD, ERA, WHIP, K/BB, K, TB

[Berzerker]

SLG overlaps with TB and HRs, but if I had to get rid of one it would be HR in spite of their relevance to the psyche of a game. SLG and TB just do a better job of representing offensive production. But a league without HRs just dont feel right

[Berzerker]

updated stats

R, H, HR, RBI, SB, TB, OBP, SLG,
SV, K, HLD, TB, ERA, WHIP, K/BB, QS

any objections? Anyone second the objections? We got a few more days, I'd like to start the draft this coming weekend

you guys know how this works, no excuses about not leaving a list of players with someone if you cant be around to make yer pick. This should go smoothly and fast...

[Imran Siddiqui]

The only problem is whe have 16 catagories. Means the possibility of ties is much greater. If that's not an issue to y'all, then I'm happy with the catagories.

Oh, and by H, I was meaning Holds, not Hits... sorry for the confusion.

[SlowwHand]

All I personally like, as far as Pitching, is Starter and Closers. I'm not so into the stats of it all as to go Long Relief. I guess the main criteria would be innings pitched.

[Berzerker]

oops, so I added TB for Holds?

It can have the effect of canceling out QS, more IP usually translates into more QS and more TB. I'll drop it... But I do like it as a cat, few stats actually represent total production and TB is one of them.

Okay, here's what we have as of now

R, H, HR, RBI, SB, TB, OBP, SLG,
SV, K, HLD, ERA, WHIP, K/BB, QS

That aint bad, my only gripe would be HR, TB and SLG - seems like a bit too much power. Course the problem is HRs, the SLG and TB reflect all hits. Oh well, we could add Ks to hitting and TB to pitching That would cause a problem for most sluggers

How do those stats look?

lets have a vote

aye for me

[OzzyKP]

you guys know how this works, no excuses about not leaving a list of players with someone if you cant be around to make yer pick. This should go smoothly and fast...

If you don't leave a list, do you guys just pick the best available player?

Also, when will the draft start/end?

[snoopy369]

R, H, SB, OBP,
HR, RBI, TB, SLG,
Pretty good mix between speed/OB and power; TB is not exclusively power (2b hitters) either. I'd rather have 2B than TB, given the SLG/TB correlation, but they're not nearly as correlated as OBP/AVG or QS/W, so that's fine.

SV, HLD,
ERA, WHIP, K/BB,
K, QS
Reasonable balance there... K instead of K/9 favors starter over relievers, and also favors 'long starters' (think CC Sabathia) over 'short starters' (think Javier Vazquez) which is not necessarily bad; if you include HLD it's fine. (If you removed HLD i'd suggest K/9.)

I'll say aye, though it's not the precise mix I'd have done. It's certainly an acceptable mix.

[snoopy369]

If you don't leave a list, do you guys just pick the best available player?

Also, when will the draft start/end?

1. There is no if. You will leave a list.

1a. If you don't leave a list (and list = short list of 3-4 players that the person you leave it with picks the highest on the list for you - we're not talking a multiround list unless you're out for an extended period of time) then you have at the start 24 hours, and not too long in 12 hours or less (up to the commish) to make a pick before the BAPAY (best available player at yahoo) is given to you, subject to positional needs (we try to be fair that way).

2. Draft will start SOON - probably within the week. It ends after 2-3 weeks depending on the drafters.