Brock for Broglio

..that might be true if you’re in love with somebody 10 years your senior; but in fantasy baseball, age is everything.

 

You want a team full of players on the upward swing of the age curve:

 

 

The average player doesn’t “breakout” at age 27, they increase their skill level from age 20-26 (when the greatest chance for a breakout will occur), enjoy a season or three at their “peak”, and then decline thereafter. (Studies: 1 | 2 )

There’s hundreds of metrics that give us clues about any given players worth. As value detectives we want to pay attention to the right clues. We want defining evidence, not superfluous excess. So what data matters? What clues tell the real story? In this article I’m going to answer those questions by identifying the opposite.

 

1. Spring Training Cliches

We’ve all heard the hyperbolic statements given by coaches and players in the offseason. Some of us might’ve even bought into their optimism a time or two. In 2005 Adam Dunn said he would steal 40 bases, and Vernon Wells swore he prepped his body for a 30/30 season. Or what about 2006 when Zito claimed he rediscovered his 90-92MPH fastball? The list goes on…

Ultimately, almost none of these claims materialize into anything other than false hope.

My Theory:
By the time a player gets to the majors, he’s been through many off-season regimens (high school, college, minors, etc). Incentive is at its highest for young MLB prospects to “build muscle”, “lose weight”, “get eye surgery”, “find velocity” etc. If a player has shown the ability to increase his physical body–that results in higher production–it can be identified in his previous season statistics. There’s a prodigious amount of available and accessible data; trust it. (the right data of course)

2. Run Totals

Runs tell us almost nothing and are highly susceptible to off-season roster reshuffling. Instead of looking at a players previous run total, get a good understanding of where players are positioned in their line up, and how many runs that lineup can potentially produce. When targeting the runs category, find players who meet the following criteria:

• High BA/OBP
• Bats at the top of a run producing offense.
• Has speed as defined by the ability to bunt for hits, get infield hits, and steal bases.

3. RBI Totals

Apply many of the explanations given in #2. When targeting the RBI category, find players who can:

• Hit for power and average as identified by: a high Contact Rate, high FB% & high Isolated Power
• Bat behind players who have the same skill set as described in #2
• Play in a lineup that’s great at avoiding outs

* For team run production projections, visit Baseball Musings. Pinto, has an on going series using Marcel 2008 projections and the line up analysis tool. It would be a good idea to rank the top 30 and draft/pay accordingly.

4. ERA & 5. WHIP

In a previous entry I detailed why ERA and WHIP do a poor job at summarizing a pitchers skill level. You want to pay for pitchers who have been successful at:

• Striking out their opposition (high K/PA)
• Inducing ground balls (high GB%)
• Controlling the strike zone (low BB/PA), and
• Getting batters out efficiently (low P/PA)

If a pitcher had success in these areas last season–but his ERA/WHIP were poor–than he was probably on the wrong side of luck, and should be a nice value selection in your upcoming draft.

6. Save Totals

A players save totals from year to year are mostly just random variance. Elite, good, and average teams compete for the same amount of save opportunities annually. When targeting the saves category find pitchers who:

• Excel in the areas mentioned in #4/5, and
• are the best pitchers in their respective teams bullpen (eliminating competition issues).

7. Win Totals

Target effective pitchers with high IP totals on teams that win a lot of games. And even than, it’s still a matter of luck. Why is this even a standard category anymore?

 

So there you have it, a macro view of information and statistics you should ignore in place of more player defining alternatives.  How much do you agree or disagree with this list?

You simply won’t find an article that has the potential to impact your fantasy baseball “skills” more than this one can.

 

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to:

• Receive instant injury updates, managerial decisions, and prospect information from all 30 MLB teams in one screen?
• Browse entire message board content, and receive all Rotoworld & Fanball news blurbs in a matter of 3 clicks?
• Quickly navigate through your favorite blogs, and Baseball headlines, and bypass irrelevant or unimportant information?

If you’re not convinced, than I’ll have to beg you to take my word for it. It’s something I’ve been taking advantage of for the last 2 years.

 

Here’s How it Works
Almost every blog/news/major-media website publishes a RSS feed. All you have to do is click a simple button to subscribe. Once you subscribe to the RSS feed, updates will automatically be sent to your Feed Reader — A Feed Reader is just a fancy name for a web based tool that consolidates all of your subscriptions, and puts them in a pretty interface for your reading pleasure.

I thought it would be a good idea to walk you through the set up, since its easy to get scared by unfamiliar abbreviations.

I will show you how to:

• Get a feed reader
• Identify sites that publish a feed, and
• Subscribe to a feed

 

Here’s How to Get a Feed Reader

Go to Bloglines.com and create an account. There’s alternatives to Bloglines, but in the interest of simplicity, I’ll recommend Bloglines for now. After you’ve created an account, come back here.

 

You now have a feed reader. That wasn’t hard was it?

 

Here’s How to Identify Website’s That Publish a Feed

The orange button below is the recognized symbol for sites that publish a feed (you might see variations of this symbol but they essentially do the same thing)

 

Clicking this button will take you to a page with an array of subscription options… Simply find anything that reads: “Bloglines” and click it to subscribe.

 

You’ve now manually subscribed to your first RSS feed. Go back to Bloglines.com and click the “feeds” tab at the top left, you should see your new feed.

 

Now you can visit your favorite blogs, and news sites, and subscribe to their feed.

Almost every blog publishes a feed whether you see that symbol or not. You can copy the website URL manually and paste it into Bloglines, if you don’t see the symbol.

 

Once you subscribe, you won’t have to manually visit those sites anymore, just read the content in your feed reader and save yourself a Giganto-matic amount of time!

 

More of a visual learner? check out this video:

 

Now you know how to subscribe to blogs. Here’s a list I compiled of 100+ best baseball blogs.

Earlier in the week I shared 101 of the best fantasy team names. Based on your feedback, I’ve compiled a list of your favorite Fantasy Baseball League Names:

1. L.U.M.B.E.R.: The League of Unrepentant Maniacal Baseball Escapists and Renegades
2. The Legend of Dirty Joe - All team names from the movie Joe Dirt
3. The Uberroth Urinalysis League
4. League Of Their Own 
5. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Got something better? Let me know in the comments. If its good enough, it will replace what’s in the top 5 already.

Patrick DiCaprio has been playing fantasy baseball since the 1980’s, and has won multiple championships in high stakes leagues. He is an associate editor with Fanball, and wrote a weekly column for THT Fantasy Focus. This year he will write a weekly column for RotoTimes, and co-host a fantasy baseball radio show on Sundays.

1. How important is defense to pitcher evaluation?

Defense is an underrated aspect of pitcher analysis in the general fantasy community. A good case in point is the entire Tampa Bay staff and Scott Kazmir in particular. Virtually all of their pitchers performed worse than one would expect because of elevated hit rates. Tampa Bay had historically bad defense last year by any measure. It should be much better this year with the addition of Bartlett and the possible move of BJ Upton to the OF. So there could be some very good bargains there.

As far as metrics there is no single metric that works. I look at as many as I can without exclusion, since we are still in the infancy of defensive statistical analysis and there is no magic pill. Some that I use are runs above/below average, UZR, and OOZ, which was invented by The Hardball Times and measures the total number of outs made on balls outside of the zone. For pitchers, there are also adjusted ERA metrics like FIP (fielding independent pitching) and expected ERA.

2. What is your draft philosophy? Pay for best on board, or pay for scarcity?

My philosophy is one of flexibility. There is no substitute for coming up with multiple plans and budgets based on what you expect to happen. For example, in my high stakes leagues there is often high inflation and tough position scarcity problems (we have 32 and 33 man rosters in the AL and NL, respectively). So I will prepare plans for depletion of specific positions that are scarce, plans for scenarios where owners are reticent to spend early, plans for owners spending profligately early etc.

The goal oriented approach is OK and is what most people use (draft for value, or draft for specific category targets etc). But against tough competition where other owners have similar goals it is very tough to pull off. I subscribe to the philosophy of Sun-Tzu—the target should be to leave yourself many options, full of potential force to be meted out as circumstances dictate.

3. What is the most critical information the common fantasy manager fails to utilize?

Without question in my mind it is the failure to plan appropriately. There is so much information out there that is tactical in nature; who is a good value, who should be hot or cold, who will become a closer etc. All of this is readily available and much of it is of dubious utility. More importantly, most tough owners or strong competitors know all this already, so it has little profit potential. What needs to be done is to prepare accordingly and to craft as many plans as needed to cover the multiple scenarios that arise, while maintaining flexibility. It is not very easy, and in the leagues I play in many of the owners are skilled, which makes it even tougher.

If I had to pick one type of information that is not utilized sufficiently it is the use of “expected” metrics that translate a player’s statistics into what he should have done based on his underlying performance and skills, as opposed to what he actually did. An example is the use of expected ERA, or the analysis of hit rates and strand rates, which are bedrock staples in the analysis on my site (as well as others).

4. As quantifiable as everything is in fantasy baseball, how much does luck still play a factor?

Luck plays a large role and there is simply nothing that can be done about it. If it weren’t for luck there would be no fantasy baseball, since the weaker owners would simply get killed! But it is easy to ascribe poor results to luck when in fact it is a failure of the owner. As Carl von Clausewitz would say, a failure in war is a failure of policy, and in many ways a failure in fantasy is a failure of policy/planning also. Any one result can be largely luck, but over the long haul it should even out.

In head-to-head leagues one could quite reasonably argue that the winner of the championship is essentially luck; but making the playoffs generally is a matter of skill. Once you get there you roll the dice.

5. What is your best advice to aspiring writers looking for opportunities in this niche?

Learn to write well. Much of what I read is simply duplicative of advice that is readily available and has little value. Trying to develop expertise in a specific area is a good idea. But it really comes down to being able to write well, and that takes some work.

Additionally, don’t be afraid to take risks; this is one of the hallmarks of good analysts, and let’s face it, if you are going to write for a large audience your work is going to be scrutinized. So you have to do the best job you can and not worry about whether people agree with your opinions.

I want to thank Mr. DiCaprio for taking the time to answer these questions for us. His scientific approach to fantasy baseball, and his passion for the game make his blog one of my personal favorites. I’d highly recommend tuning into his radio show on Sunday evenings at 7pm est.

Scratching your head trying to come up with an eye catching team name? If so, this resource was created specifically for you.

I compiled a list of over 300 of the funniest and most clever fantasy baseball team names on the web. After some edits and a strict filtering process this is the best 101 found:

 

Radio

1. Roundin’ 3rd

2. Roundin’ the Bases

 

Old/Current ESPN

3. Dibble’s Tribbles

4. Ravech’s Savages

5. Kurkjian’s Workmen

6. Gammon’s Gamers

7. Back Back Back Gone - Chris Berman

 

Team Loyalists

8. Athletic Department - If you own lots of A’s

9. Baltimorioles - …Lots of O’s

10. Bricks & Ivy - …Love Wrigley Field

11. Phillies Blunts - If you’re a Philly Fan & 420 friendly

12. The Green Monsters

13. Waveland Avenue Souvenirs

 

Being Hopeful

14. Career Years

15. Swing For The Fences - Good name for a team with many 3 true outcome players

 

Classic Jokes

16. All Your Bases Are Belong To Us - Ageless internet joke

17. Government Cheese Inspectors - Grew up on this stuff

18. Crotch Bats - SNL skit

 

Just Wrong

19. Helmeted Retards

20. Short Bus Crew

 

Pessimists

21. Destined For Last

22. The Paper Champions - Team that looked good before season started

 

Movies

23. Brokebat Mountain

 

Your Players

24. Stained Sheets

25. Albert Poo Holes

26. A Rod In My Pants

27. Reyes of Light

28. Oliver for Perezident - Mets fans should like this one

29. Orlando Resort and Cabrera

30. Citizen Cain

31. Crunch N Mench

32. Debbie does Odaliz

33. Drew Bastard

34. Foulke You

35. FrEEL the BURNett - If you have both

36. Funky Cold Mussina

37. Gettin’ Figgy Wittit

38. Hip Hip Jorge

39. Honey Nut Ichiros

40. Jeter Peter-Beaters

41. Leave it to the Weavers

42. Leave It to Weaver

43. Lee Harvey Oswalts

44. Marcum Up Knockem Down

45. Mauer Power Please

46. Mench Warmers - Kevin Mench

47. The Happy Halladays

48. The Hungry Howies - Howie Kendrick

49. The Price is Wright

50. X Markakis The Spot

51. Pronkx Bombers - Travis Hafner

52. Sexson the Beach

53. Teixico - Mark Teixeira

54. Duke Nuk’em - Zack Duke

55. Jeff Kent’s Moustache

56. Attention V Mart Shoppers

57. The fAtkins Diet

58. Bull Schmidt

59. Schmidt head

60. Foulke You Guys

61. What the Foulke? - In reference to coming out of retirement

62. Dunn for the Season

63. Dunn for the Year

64. Don’t get mad, get Vlad

65. The Good, the Bad, and Vlad

66. Vlad the Impalar & Co.

67. I Got Wood

68. Morning Wood

 

Power Hitters

69. Frequent Fliers

70. Whammers

 

Raunchy

71. Give it a Yankee

72. Got Two Balls On ‘Em

73. The Panty Sniffers

74. Captain Dick & His Seamen

75. the League of Extraordinary Gerbiling

76. No Glove No Love

77. Off In The Shower - Nobody Beats…

78. The Master Batters

 

Irony

79. Baseball Team - Its in the simplicity

 

Steroids

80. The Backnes - Back acne (steroid symptom)

81. Atrophying Testicles - Definition for atrophying

82. Barry The Roidhead

83. McNamee Injected My Butt

84. Size 10 Hats

85. Stick 2 BarryJuice & ClemenAid

86. The Human Growth Hormones

 

If You Drafted Pitching Heavy

87. Flame Throwers

88. Staff Infection

 

Team Race

89. BuddhaCall - Lots of Asian imports on your team.

90. Dominican Death Squad - Lots of DR on your team.

91. The Dynamic Hispanics - etc

 

Lot of Prospects

92. Minimum wagers - You own many prospects

 

Double Meanings & Wordplay

93. We’ve got the Runs

94. Urine Troubles

95. Hand Gestures

96. Whippersnappers

97. Lastplace Niceguys - Nice guys finish last in fantasy baseball too.

98. ThUnderDogs - The Underdogs + Thunderdogs

99. Karmas’ Bitch

100. Wrecked ‘Em

101. Team Name Generator - If you don’t like anything in the top 100, use this tool.

 

Enjoying this list? Please subscribe here with your email address, or feed reader to receive notification of future fantasy baseball articles published here at Brock for Broglio. It’s private, and spam free.

 

Your Favorite Names

102. Sexson till I’m Dunn

103. Each Hit - Say it out loud…

104. The Flying Oquendos

105. It Byrnes When I Piazza

106. My Balls Ichiro

107. All-Junked-Up

108. Ludicrous Speed - Team poised to win SB category

109. Let My People Bunt

110. Adam’s Eaton Out

111. Jeters Never Prosper

112. Dempster Divers

113. Zach Dukes Of Hazzard

114. Jermaine Tye Dyes

115. What A Putz

116. The Harangatangs

117. Fake Team’s 2008 Best Fantasy Baseball Team Name Winners

 

What are some more of your favorites?

This table represents Average Team Save Opportunities from 2005-2007:

RK	Team	Avg
1	Milwaukee	67.7
2	San Diego	67.7
3	Chicago AL	67.0
4	Washington	65.7
5	San Francisco	64.3
6	Florida	64.0
7	Los Angeles AL	63.7
8	Oakland	63.7
9	Colorado	63.3
10	Philadelphia	63.3
11	Texas	63.0
12	Toronto	62.3
13	Detroit	61.3
14	Seattle	61.3
15	Arizona	60.7
16	Boston	60.7
17	New York AL	60.7
18	Houston	60.3
19	Atlanta	60.0
20	Los Angeles NL	60.0
21	Cleveland	58.7
22	New York NL	57.7
23	Tampa Bay	57.3
24	Cincinnati	56.3
25	Baltimore	56.0
26	St Louis	55.7
27	Kansas City	54.3
28	Minnesota	54.0
29	Pittsburgh	52.7
30	Chicago NL	52.3

The top 10 teams (less the A’s & Angels) have been mostly “.500 ball clubs” over the 3 years represented. There’s good teams at the bottom, middle and top of the table, and excellent teams (Yankees & Sox) couldn’t be more in the middle.

Next time you’re undecided between Closer A, and Closer B, choose based on the Closers’ ability to miss bats not the quality of the team.

The amount of enthusiasm that goes into bashing any major online sports media that dare call themselves "Experts" has always baffled me.

It’s as automatic as death and taxes: If an "Expert" Cheat Sheet, Mock Draft, or Big Board gets linked to from a message board, expect the posters to wring out the work like a moldy wash cloth.

I stand in isolation on this one: but I’ve always found value in their rankings, cheat sheets, and mock drafts. How? I just assess the rankings from the bottom up.

How to Evaluate Pitching Statistics:

Most fantasy baseball veterans already use these pitching statistics and apply them “second hand”. But even the most seasoned veteran might find the tables and ranges I’ve included in this article useful.

One thing I’ve noticed when reading through many fantasy baseball articles, is the lack of in depth information about the statistics mentioned. I created this resource to compliment the great information that’s already widely available on the web. Next time, one of your favorite writers mention these metrics, you’ll know what they mean and how to apply them.

These statistics are skill based outcomes. If you start paying more attention to the following numbers, you’ll improve your pitcher evaluation methodology immediately.

 

1. Strikeouts per 9 innings (K/9)

Out of all pitching stats this one is most stable from year to year. In other words, if a pitcher strikes out 1 batter per inning one season, there’s a good chance it will happen the next: this is great because unlike ERA you have a better understanding of what you’re paying for. A pitcher with a high K/9 is less dependant on luck and defense, and the number directly relates to how deceptive his pitches are. Higher K/9 usually = more effective pitcher.

K/9	Quality
Lower than 5.0	Poor
Between 5-7.0	Average
Above 7.0	Good
Above 9.0	Elite

 

2. Walks per 9 innings (BB/9)

A low BB/9 signifies outstanding control and usually results in keeping opposing batters off the bases. It is important to keep an eye out for pitchers who are elite in this category to boost your teams WHIP: this simple statistic is often overlooked for K/BB ratio but it carries tremendous value standing on its own.

BB/9	Quality
Higher than 3.00	Poor
Between 2.50-3.00	Average
Between 2-2.50	Good
Below 2.0	Elite

 

3. Ground Ball Percentage (GB%)

The theory is simple: pitchers who yield higher ground ball rates reduce the chance of giving up HRs. These types of pitchers are also less susceptible to HR prone ballparks. Like BB/9 and K/9, a pitchers ground ball rate is usually stable from year to year. GB pitchers with low walk rates and high strikeout rates are extremely rare commodities. The best pitchers in the game are simultaneously successful in all 3 of these categories. Felix Hernandez has tremendous upside for this very reason.

GB%	Quality
Below 40%	Poor
40-50%	Average
50-55%	Good
Above 55%	Elite

 

4. Fly Ball Percentage (FB%)

Simply reverse the explanation in #3. In theory you don’t want to own a Fly Ball Pitcher in a ballpark that gives up a lot of home runs. (In later entries we’ll talk more about those ballparks and more importantly how to build a ballpark defensible pitching staff).

FB%	Quality
Above 43%	Poor
35-43%	Average
30-35%	Good
Below 30%	Elite

 

5. Singles allowed per 9 innings (1B/9)

Singles allowed per 9 innings is a skill based outcome according to a study done by the fine Sabermetricians over at MVN. Their study concludes that pitchers have very little control over fly balls that turn into HR’s (which directly goes against many other fantasy baseball sites teachings who use DIPS to evaluate pitchers). I would highly advise you to read the study here.

After probing for more information the author (Pizza Cutter) had these additional comments:

Indeed, it looks as though 1B/PA is a little more skill based than we thought it might be, although it probably has something to do with the fact that strikeouts and walks per PA are very very skill-based and stable.

1B/9 doesn’t come without question marks, but could prove to be very applicable if proven as a skill based outcome. This would be monstrous for fantasy leagues that use the WHIP category. If you have the inclination Retrosheet offers the data in PBP format and it is downloadable for free.

Closing Comments:
All of these statistics are essential when evaluating a pitchers skill level and if utilized properly can help you find “diamonds in the rough” who are overlooked because of bad luck.

The sites in the table below offer statistics 1-4 on a per player and per league basis in a nice organized interface for free.

www.FanGraphs.com	MLB Pitchers
www.FirstInning.com	Minor League Pitchers

As 2008’s magazines, books, and guides become available, I’ll continue to add them to this list. Am I missing something? Let me know in the comments.

I’d highly recommend reading the commentary at the bottom of the page. There’s on going discussion about release dates and alternative purchase sources.

 

2008 Baseball Magazines:

• Rotowire Magazine (Available)
• 2008 CBSSports.com Fantasy Baseball Owners Manual & Draft Guide (Available)
• Fantasy Baseball Guide Pro. Edition (Available at Newsstands - Link is to Blog)
• Fantasy Baseball Index (Available)
• Athlon Sports Baseball Annual (Available at Newsstands)
• Lindy’s MLB Fantasy Guide (Available)
• The Sporting News Fantasy Baseball Guide (Available at Newsstands)
• Fanball.com’s 2008 Guide to Winning Fantasy Baseball (Available)
• Beckett’s Fantasy Baseball Draft Guide by Rotoworld (Available at Newsstands)
• The Sporting News Baseball Yearbook (There are 16 different covers, to get to the other fifteen, change the last digit of the url from 1 to any number between 2 and 16)
• Lindy’s MLB Preview (Available at Newsstands)

2008 Fantasy Baseball Books/Guides:

• Ron Shandler’s Baseball Forecaster
• Bill James Handbook
• The Bill James Goldmine
• Fantasy Baseball Strategy Advanced Methods
• Dominate Your Fantasy Baseball League
• Baseball Prospectus Essential Guide
• Baseball America Prospect Handbook
• The Baseball Prospect Book
• The Hardball Times Baseball Annual

 

 

* I don’t personally endorse any of these products. I’ve listed them here for your convenience. This page will be updated as more information comes in. If you want to be notified automatically you can subscribe here with your email address or feed reader.