Smart Elsewhere #8 – Fantasy Baseball Crackerjacks

You probably have gathered by now that I am not here offer much player analysis, sleeper talk, or draft breakdowns.  There is so much great information out there that I couldn’t possibly keep up (I have my nose too far buried in spreadsheets to write much).

Yet I do realize that spreadsheets and projections and conceptual talk I focus on can only take you so far.  At the end of the day, in-depth analysis, player profiles, rankings breakdowns, and draft prep information is extremely important to your success.

I can’t offer this myself.

But I do work with Fantasy Baseball Crackerjacks and they provide A TON of this high quality information.

My Role at Fantasy Baseball Crackerjacks

I used the methods documented here on SFBB to develop the projections used at Fantasy Baseball Crackerjacks.  I even write the occasional player profile, analysis, and strategy piece.  I’m very proud to be a part of the work they do at the site.  We just released the positional rankings and projections this week (see links below) and the other writers at the site pour out tons of interesting content.

Thanks For Reading

Stay smart!

How Do I Calculate SGP for Slugging Percentage?

Now that we’ve tackled calculating standings gain points for OBP, let’s give slugging percentage a try.

Again, special thanks are in order for reader Matt who also filled out the “What It Takes To Win Your League Calculator” with the last four years of history for the SLG category in his league.  You can see the data for ten teams listed below.

SLG_Standings_Gain_Points

How Many SLG Percentage Points Move You Up One Spot In The Standings?

Over the last four years, an average of .469 won the category and an average of .429 finished 10th.

.469 – .429 = .040 total spread between 10 teams

We have the data for 10 teams, meaning there are 9 spots you can move up in the standings by moving from .429 to .469 in team SLG.

.040 / 9 = .00444

On average, increasing your team SLG by .00444 points will result in you climbing one spot in the standings.

But I Play In A 12-Team League, Can I Use This Figure?

If you have an established league history with historic standings available to you, you can always calculate this yourself based upon your league’s specific history.

I don’t have specific evidence to support this, but I would venture a guess that limiting your SGP calculations to the top 10 out of 12 teams might be more beneficial than using all 12 teams.  This would minimize or eliminate the effect of teams that lose competitiveness or that tank the season.

What Formula Do I Use To Calculate The SGP For A Given Player?

Recall from Part 5 of the “Create Your Own Rankings” series, that you determine the SGP for a ratio stat, like SLG, by removing the effect an average player has on an average team, and then inserting the player you are ranking into the equation. Continue reading “How Do I Calculate SGP for Slugging Percentage?”

How Do I Calculate SGP for OBP?

I frequently get asked how to calculate standings gain points for the OBP category.  In this post I’ll give you an example of how to perform this calculation .

Full disclosure:  I don’t play in any OBP leagues.  

I know, I know.  You just lost a ton of respect for me and you’re considering leaving the site.  But I’m here to serve, so let’s figure this out together.

Before we begin, special thanks are in order for reader Matt who graciously agreed to fill out the “What It Takes To Win Your League Calculator” with the last four years of history for the OBP category in his league.  You can see the data for ten teams listed below.

Standings_Gain_Points_OBP

How Many OBP Points Move You Up One Spot In The Standings?

Over the last four years, an average of .356 won the category and an average of .335 finished 10th.

.356 – .335 = .021 total spread between 10 teams

We have the data for 10 teams, meaning there are 9 spots you can move up in the standings by moving from .335 to .356 in team OBP.

.021 / 9 = .00233

On average, increasing your team OBP by .0023 points will result in you climbing one spot in the standings.

But I Play In A 12-Team League, Can I Use This Figure?

If you have an established league history with historic standings available to you, you can always calculate this yourself based upon your league’s specific history.

I don’t have specific evidence to support this, but I would venture a guess that limiting your SGP calculations to the top 10 out of 12 teams might be more beneficial than using all 12 teams.  This would minimize or eliminate the effect of teams that lose competitiveness or that tank the season.

What Formula Do I Use To Calculate The SGP For A Given Player?

Recall from Part 5 of the “Create Your Own Rankings” series, that you determine the SGP for a ratio stat, like OBP, by removing the effect an average player has on an average team, and then inserting the player you are ranking into the equation. Continue reading “How Do I Calculate SGP for OBP?”

Taking Your Draft Spreadsheet To The Next Level

In this post I’ll show you how you can take a boring black and white spreadsheet and convert it into a visually meaningful piece of art in less than 10 minutes.

An important factor in being a skilled drafter is the ability to remain cool and calm in pressure situations. There may also be opportunities to intimidate some of your opponents during the draft, to give them the impression that you are highly prepared and ultimately familiar with the player pool and your own drafting strategy.

Nothing can accomplish these things better than a fancy color-coded spreadsheet.

There may be an element of hyperbole in that statement. But we have all been there. It’s late in the draft, you’ve already wasted 60 of your 90 second allotted time and you’ve just made the decision that you need to draft a second basemen with some power but that won’t kill you in batting average. Or you need a pitcher with good strikeout totals that won’t kill you in WHIP. Or some obscure shortstop is thrown out for bid in the auction and you can’t remember if he will help you with reaching your target goal in stolen bases.

Enter Conditional Formatting in Excel

Conditional Formatting in Excel allows you to give visual meaning to a mass of boring looking numbers that can be hard to interpret all at once.  Let’s face it, while looking at the spreadsheet example in the image below it is not easy to quickly make sense of the numbers.

Conditional_Formatting_Example

But if I take this same area and apply a few of the different conditional formatting rules to it, you can much more quickly make sense of what you are seeing:

Conditional_Formatting_Example2

In the “RSGP” column I have applied a rule in which you select two colors.  One color represents the highest value in the data selected and the other color represents the lowest value in the data selected.  I chose a standard green color for the highest value and white for the lowest.  Excel then automatically provides shades between white and green to each player’s “RSGP” based upon its value relative to all the other players in the list.  Whether you agree with me or not, I’m down on Billy Hamilton’s ability to stick at lead off for the entire year, and his run projection is the lowest of anyone captured in the screenshot.  So he’s the closest to white.  While Votto has the highest “RSGP” in this small group of players, so he’s shaded closest to green.

The “HRSGP” column has a rule using three colors.  Green is still used for the values that are greatest in this column.  Red is used for the lowest values,  And Yellow is used for values near the 50th percentile of the group.  Again, Excel automatically shades ever player’s value according to this set of instructions.  You simply select the three colors and Excel does the rest.  Here you can see Billy Hamilton is projected to be very low in “HRSGP”, while Jay Bruce and Chris Davis are much higher.  These two illustrate an important concept too.  I have Bruce projected to hit fewer home runs than Chris Davis, but Bruce comes out with a higher “HRSGP” based upon the positional replacement level adjustment under the SGP method.

The “RBISGP” is using data bars to depict the value of each player’s RBI compared to the group.  Not to keep piling on Billy Hamilton’s lack of hitting prowess, but you see he has a red bar pointing to the left, in his “RBISGP” column.  This indicates the magnitude to which his RBI projections are below 0.00 SGP.  Jay Bruce, right above him, has a very strong RBI projection and a blue shaded bar depicts this.

Conditional_Formatting_Example3

This Seems Way Too Complicated

It’s really not.  You can add this to your draft spreadsheet in under 10 minutes.

Things To Consider Before We Start

In the step-by-step instructions below, I apply conditional formatting to a player’s standings gain point (SGP) figure for each individual category (e.g. HR, BA, R, etc).  I choose to do this because after following the “Create Your Own Fantasy Baseball Rankings” approach, the final SGP figure for any player includes an adjustment for replacement level at the position.  This means that 15 HR from a 2B are valued more than 15 HR from a 1B.

The other benefit of applying the formatting to the SGP columns is that rate states like BA, ERA, and WHIP will be weighted appropriately.  An OF that might hit .300 but only get 200 PAs isn’t really helpful to our team BA.

There is an argument to be made that you would want to apply conditional formatting to a player’s raw statistics instead of the SGP figure.  After all, if you’re trying to draft players in order to reach a targeted goal (like 250 HR), you might be more interested in a 1B projected to hit 18 than the C projected for 17, even though those 17 from the C are more “valuable”.

Anyways, that’s beyond the scope of this post.  I’m just here to add fancy colors to your spreadsheet right now.  Just know that you can do this using a player’s raw projections even if you haven’t worked through the “Create Your Own Fantasy Baseball Rankings” series.

Step-By-Step Instructions

Continue reading “Taking Your Draft Spreadsheet To The Next Level”

Now That Football Is Officially Over…

WARNING:  This post was originally made prior to the 2014 MLB season.  The Projecting X Spreadsheet Template has since been improved!  For more information, please go to smartfantasybaseball.com/bundle.

If you’re looking for a project that will prepare you for the upcoming season and teach you how to create your own fantasy baseball projections, look no further.

I’ve created two videos that demonstrate Mike Podhorzer’s “Projecting X” and the additional materials I have created to go along with it.

First, some practical examples of how easy it is to update your own formula-driven Excel projections:

Second, a close up look of all that is included in “the bundle”:

Like what you see? Interested in supporting this site? Please click here.

What Is The Ideal Spending Allocation Between Pitchers and Hitters?

This topic came up recently and a number of well-respected fantasy experts discussed and debated the topic.  I’m not here to rehash what they said, but hopefully to offer some points I didn’t see made in the discussions.

If you want to catch up on exactly what has previously been said:

Before Twitter, we didn’t have this kind of access into theoretical discussions about fantasy baseball.  It’s great to see this kind of back-and-forth and hashing out of ideas from a knowledgeable and respected group of fantasy writers.  So what can I offer to this?

Cherry Picking

I will pull two specific tweets out of the discussion.  Let’s start with this one from Kreutzer:

A lot of explanations were thrown out to explain the popular 70-30 hitter allocation, but I think this makes the most sense. Kreutzer gives very specific figures in Part 1 of his explanation of this topic, and specifically mentions that the average return on investment for all hitters in expert leagues was 88% (or a loss of 12%). For pitchers the return was 32% (or a loss of 68%).  Keep this in mind.  We’ll come back to these figures later.

In Part 2 he discusses the concept of “free loot”, or valuable fantasy stats that were not drafted but find their way onto rosters in your league during the year.

Alright, I’m starting to understand the reason for hitters to be allocated more money.  Why try to buy pitching stats during the draft if value from pitchers is difficult to predict accurately and if I can just wait until the season starts to pick up valuable players on from the free agent pool anyways.

But Is 70-30 “Correct”? Continue reading “What Is The Ideal Spending Allocation Between Pitchers and Hitters?”