Weekly Draft: Einstein Observations. Discussions Go Here.

[OzzyKP]

So if the draft ends before all the slots are filled, how do you get more players?

[OzzyKP]

Scoring - you sum up the stats for all players across the week, then you win each stat category or lose it versus whomever you are playing based on whomever has the best stats in that category. You win the week if you have more category wins than your opponent.

So we have 15 total categories, right? If someone focused exclusively on 8-9 of them and ignored the other 6-7 categories they'd do better than someone who tried to get the best players for all 15 of the categories?

[snoopy369]

Waiver wire claims for the first few days (effectively like the draft but Yahoo does it automatically - waiver priority is #12 [you] first, me second, etc., down to EmpFab last, and you don't have to put in a waiver claim if you don't want to [some won't]. Once you take a player on the waiver wire, your priority drops to #12.

After that, it's free agents - anyone can pick up anyone instantly - except that any player dropped by one manager goes on the waiver wire for IIRC 2 days [same rules as above] before becoming a free agent.

[OzzyKP]

With stats like ERA, K/BB, SLG, OBP, etc, do at bats or innings pitched get taken into consideration?

Like if starting pitcher pitches 13 innings in a week and a closer pitches 4, how do you add together their ERA?

[snoopy369]

So we have 15 total categories, right? If someone focused exclusively on 8-9 of them and ignored the other 6-7 categories they'd do better than someone who tried to get the best players for all 15 of the categories?

Not necessarily. That's certainly one strategy, particularly with hitting when you somewhat have a choice between a power hitter and a speedster. But, remember that players are up and down, and weekly performance matters; so if you have a team that ALWAYS loses 5-6 categories [say, a team with no power hitters, so SLG, TB, HR, or RBI are all pretty much out the window] will consistently lose in general, because they're only competitive in 12 categories, and even though they might win 8 of them most of the time, that's 2/3 of the categories in play, they're still going .500 on average.

In general, you can afford to punt ONE or TWO categories, but not more. SB, SV, HLD are the categories most often punted, I'd say. Certainly you can focus a bit more on some categories than others, but don't go too all-out, in general.

Most of the strategy of this nature tends to be which stats you think are best representative of consistency and performance in other stats. OBP is one focused on stat for many; OBP is something that is much more consistent than SB or HR, and usually players with good OBP are consistent from year to year. Alternately, you could focus on SLG, preferring a player with .500 SLG and .350 OBP to a player with .400 OBP and .450 SLG, say. You can usually tell who's going for what pretty quickly. Some go more balanced, choosing an overall 'average' Team OBP and Team SLG; and some ignore the rate stats entirely and choose people with the accumulated stats, going for more HRs and TB over SLG or OBP [somewhat meaning taking players with more total games overall, and perhaps with a later strategy of playing multiple players depending on who gets more total games each week]. That's where the Adam Dunns of the world come in [though again his OBP and SLG are actually quite good, since we're not using AVG, where he's awful.]

[snoopy369]

With stats like ERA, K/BB, SLG, OBP, etc, do at bats or innings pitched get taken into consideration?

Like if starting pitcher pitches 13 innings in a week and a closer pitches 4, how do you add together their ERA?

Oh, certainly. There are lists Yahoo! and other sites put out with SP's who have 2 starts in the week, for example. A lot of people choose pitching staffs with the intent of punting ERA/WHIP to some extent and instead attempting to accumulate wins/qs's and K's through having multiple starters on the bench - or even using the free agent wire and picking up the best available FA that has a sunday or monday start [and thus 2 starts in the week] to fill out their roster.

There are a lot of variations on this - punting SV/HLD and keeping a SP/RP like Aaron Heilman in the RP slot to accumulate QS/K; keeping a single or pair of superstar SP's [like you have now] and then a bunch of junk like above after that, counting on the superstar SPs to keep the ERA/WHIP down; etc. Also, a lot of people make park considerations in this strategy, choosing someone who starts @ OAK or LAD over someone who starts @ HOU or @ COL, for example [and the inverse with hitters].

It's a tricky strategy, because you have to know the players well enough to accurately choose between one stat and another; but it can make drafting slightly easier because you choose to ignore one element [say, SP] after an initial burst, so you don't have as many tradeoffs to make. It's very dangerous, though, don't get me wrong, and even a very skilled player with only a little bad luck can screw it up badly (especially if you're hoping to get a couple of sleepers to fill out the SPs and you get scooped by Imran )

[OzzyKP]

How does it work for scoring?

Lets say you have 3 SP and 2 RP on your roster for the week. Your SP's pitch 13 innings each and lets say they all have an ERA of 3.70. And your two RP's pitch 4 innings each and have an ERA of 1.40.

Do you simply add 3.70 + 3.70 + 3.70 + 1.40 + 1.40 and then divide by 5 to get your total week's ERA stat?

Cause the few RPs taken so far in the draft crush all the starters in ERA, WHIP and K/BB. Are those stats given the same weight for RP as SP?

[snoopy369]

No, it's actual runs over actual innings. SP ERA matters more than RP ERA in nearly all cases. (A really busy RP pitches 100 innings; average SP has 31 starts and 6 innings a start, for nearly 200 innings.)

This is why it is unusual to pick an RP high in the draft.

[OzzyKP]

So Mariano Rivera who has a 12.83 K/BB last year but only pitched 70 innings wouldn't count as much in that category as someone like Roy Halladay who had a 5.28 K/BB last year pitching 246 innings?

[snoopy369]

Yep...

RP basically do a couple of things for you:
* Get you saves/holds
* Lower your overall ERA some, about 1/2 to 1/3 the effect of a starter who's started all the time [rotating SPs to get 2 starts/week will mean a RP has less net effect, since you usually can't do much with them that way]
* Get you unpredictable innings

The only way to have a RP-ERA focus is to limit yourself to as few starter games as possible. 3 closers will get you between 6 and 12 innings per week, and you must get 20 minimum; so you need at least 14 starter innings to guarantee 20, meaning 2 or 3 starts from a starter. In theory a team with a single star SP, a single low-era/whip non-star [10th round or so] SP, and four RPs obtained at various points in the draft, two of them closers and two of them holds guys, could kick ass in the rate stats (ERA, WHIP, K/BB) and usually win HLD, and be competitive in SV; but you'd punt K and QS for sure, nearly no chance in those two versus guys getting 40+ innings from their 4-5 starters, and you'd probably have to draft RPs instead of good hitters at this stage in the draft to pull it off.

Don't get me wrong, it's a valid strat, and someone may try it - pay attention for the strat, it's usually pretty obvious in the early draft, and it can be easy to screw that person over by taking a good rate RP right before they do - but it's VERY hard to do well, I certainly don't recommend you try it in your first league. Punting two pitching categories to pick up 4 solid categories and a good chance at the fifth sounds like a good idea, until you realize a) the damage done to your hitters by not drafting them earlier and b) that you'll still lose ERA/WHIP and K/BB against some teams with solid starting staffs, and they'll have punted a lot less than you in the hitting department. You also have to be very smart in your selection of RPs and CPs such that you can take people in the very late rounds who still do very well for you.

[Berzerker]

So we have 15 total categories, right? If someone focused exclusively on 8-9 of them and ignored the other 6-7 categories they'd do better than someone who tried to get the best players for all 15 of the categories?

Not really, better balance means they will be able to compete for some of your higher priority categories. Give away almost half and you run the risk of losing to teams more like your own but with better balance.

[Berzerker]

With stats like ERA, K/BB, SLG, OBP, etc, do at bats or innings pitched get taken into consideration?

Like if starting pitcher pitches 13 innings in a week and a closer pitches 4, how do you add together their ERA?

just add up all the ER and the IP and do the math, and no, I dont know why yahoo is listing AB/IP when we dont use them.

[Berzerker]

How does it work for scoring?

Lets say you have 3 SP and 2 RP on your roster for the week. Your SP's pitch 13 innings each and lets say they all have an ERA of 3.70. And your two RP's pitch 4 innings each and have an ERA of 1.40.

Do you simply add 3.70 + 3.70 + 3.70 + 1.40 + 1.40 and then divide by 5 to get your total week's ERA stat?

Cause the few RPs taken so far in the draft crush all the starters in ERA, WHIP and K/BB. Are those stats given the same weight for RP as SP?

We have 7 pitching spots, 3 SP - 2 RP - 2 P - I suppose you could fill only 5 (or whatever) spots but I wouldn't play games with the minimum IP A rainout or injury or who knows what could mean 1 or even 2 fewer starts. It happened to me, two guys in the same week. Those guys got picked because they're closers with outstanding stats, but their weekly contribution wont be as big as an SP, especially a 2 start SP. A typical week is 6 games, that means a 5 man rotation will have a 2 start SP on Monday or Tuesday (1st game of the week) and 4 man rotations would have 2 SPs with double starts. Teams vary between 4 and 5 man rotations depending on availability and schedule so you gotta know these things.

yup, snoop is probably right - without ab and ip we'd be kinda clueless about often some of these guys played

[SlowwHand]

just add up all the ER and the IP and do the math, and no, I dont know why yahoo is listing AB/IP when we dont use them.

They're not using them in the Reset Pre-Draft Rankings.

[snoopy369]

I imagine they are showing AB and IP to give you an idea of how many AB/IP a player had last year [if they had 300 AB, then their HR total should double in a full season, for example].