In the post that follows, I’ll share standings gain points (SGP) factors for the NFBC Main Event, NFBC Draft Championship, and NFBC Online Championship for each of the last five years (2012-2016). But I’ve got to lay some groundwork before we get there…
Raw vs. Relative
While the discussion is a bit lengthy, I think this article discussing “raw” and “relative” SGP contains one of the most significant realizations I’ve had in fantasy baseball.
The quick and dirty explanation of this realization is that it is not only the raw SGP factors (or denominators) that drive player value calculations. The relationship, or relative value, between the SGP factors is also meaningful. Not only that, but looking exclusively at raw factors can be misleading, as it is difficult to see these relationships.
To illustrate, here are two example sets of raw SGP factors for a league:
| League | BA | R | HR | RBI | SB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 15-team NFBC Main Event | 0.00161 | 13.751 | 5.533 | 15.115 | 6.228 |
| 2016 15-team NFBC Main Event | 0.00150 | 15.366 | 6.561 | 16.838 | 6.375 |
I refer to these as raw factors because they’re calculated using the standard process prescribed by SGP. A calculation is made for each scoring category and those numbers are then fed into the process that’s used to rank or assign dollar values to players.
Looking again at the table of raw data above, you might think, “Wow, what happened in the last three years that caused those significant changes in the SGP factors?”
You might even start spewing some narrative about the changing landscape of baseball, the rise in strikeouts, and the power surge MLB experienced last season.
But before you start that process, let’s take a look at those same sets of SGP factors, after they’ve been converted into relative form:
| League | BA | R | HR | RBI | SB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 15-team NFBC Main Event | 0.00011 | 0.90976 | 0.36609 | 1.00000 | 0.41202 |
| 2016 15-team NFBC Main Event | 0.00009 | 0.91256 | 0.38963 | 1.00000 | 0.37862 |
The numbers still fluctuate. And if you run the math, from 2013 to 2016 the categories changed about 10%, on average, in both the raw and relative calculations. But seeing the factors in relative form really gives me a lot more confidence in my calculations.
I was always wondering if I screwed up my calculations before making this realization. “Could RBI really have changed that much?”
To be clear, I did not develop this way of looking at the numbers. I made the realization after reading “Winning Fantasy Baseball” by Larry Schechter. Although I didn’t invent this approach, I continue to share it because I think a lot of folks are confused by the raw numbers and this confusion leads to decreased confidence in the SGP approach.