I’ve been getting out of my comfort zone of late and have recorded several podcasts since the 2021 season ended. Read below for details on the various podcasts and how to listen.
Justin Mason’s TGFBI Podcast (October 5, 2021)
I was lucky and fortunate enough to win the TGFBI overall championship, out of 435 fantasy baseball analysts. Justin guides me through an interview breaking down my draft, in-season moves, and strategies I used to win the prize.
Launch Angle Podcast with Jeff Zimmerman, Rob Silver, and Van Lee (December 11, 2021)
I joined Jeff, Rob, and Van to discuss the release of the 2022 edition of The Process, as well as to do some ADP player analysis. You’ll get a little peak into my brain and how I go about analyzing a player’s draft price.
On the Wire Podcast with Adam Howe, Kevin Hastings, and Jeff Zimmerman (December 26, 2021)
This was a fun one. We spend much more time talking about The Process, strategy, advice, and how I think about topics like SGP, using projections, and analyzing late-late-late-round players in a format like the NFBC Draft Champions.
This year’s edition of The Process is now available!
About the Book
A very thorough and detailed write-up of what’s included in the book is available here. At a high level, this book is everything Jeff Zimmerman and I know about how to play rotisserie baseball (and even points leagues). Regardless your level of experience, I guarantee it includes pages and pages of unique ideas, research, and data you have never seen before. We continue to pour our new ideas, new research, and recent realizations into it. The e-book is 265 pages and includes 58 additional pages of appendices full of projections, statistics, and helpful information.
The paperback edition of the book can be purchased from Amazon.com by clicking here.
Keep reading for details on all that was added to this 2020 edition, but my favorite addition is a detailed study that performed on the 2018 NFBC Main Event, including all the player adds, player drops, and final standings of all 34 leagues and 510 teams. The study sought to confirm if the advice and strategies in the book can be observed and corroborated in the actions of the game’s best managers. The NFBC Main Event, with its $1,700 buy in, prestigious name, and overall competition aspect, offers the best laboratory to study this.
That new study delves into many topics:
How much does draft position affect the chances of winning a league?
Do better owners just accrue more playing time? Or are their players also accumulating more stats per AB and per IP? How much more?
How many free agent transactions do the best teams make?
How do these better owners spread their transactions throughout the season?
How do these better owners allocate their FAAB spending?
What bidding patterns can be observed from winning teams?
How do these owners allocate transactions between hitters and pitchers?
How often do these owners acquire two-start pitchers? Closers?
How much season-long value do these owners acquire and drop during the season?
How much weekly value do these owners acquire and drop during the season?
For example, here’s a table of data in the section analyzing how owners finish in the standings and the amount of moves spent on closer speculation.
Closer acquisitions in the 2018 NFBC Main Event.
A Personal Note
I’m really proud of this book. Or shall I say, this annual publication that we’ve started. But the intent to have annual editions creates a significant challenge. The book’s main strength is its long-term nature. Much of what we discuss are fundamental concepts to success at rotisserie baseball. Those ideas are not going to change much from year-to-year. It’s certainly going to be a test to keep the book relevant and worthy of your time and money. We understand that.
I am confident we can do this. Afterall, I’ve been writing on this site for several years now, exclusively with a long-term slant to my analysis. I don’t have much time to write. So I choose to focus my efforts doing research, writing instructions, and building tools that will have long-term benefits. I simply don’t have time to devote to writing short-term pieces that will be irrelevant within weeks or even days. Despite blogging for several years and having written a handful of books, I still feel as though we’re finding new ways to play and think about rotisserie baseball. I see no shortage of strategy-related questions to research.
You can see this in the topics we expanded in this year’s book. Among the higher-level strategy questions approached in this year’s book are:
Are rookies more volatile than established hitters? Does a rookie’s upside offset the possible downside? Do rookie projections differ from the projections of MLB regulars?
How much does a player’s previous levels of fantasy-production affect their future performance? Do these players offer a higher return on investment than those that have never before attained a given production level?
What are the key differences owners should know about the SGP and z-score player valuation models? Where are these systems similar?
How does the cost of closers during the draft compare to their cost in free agency (FAAB)? How does the cost of starting pitchers differ?
How much value should multi-position eligibility add to a player’s valuation? (Note: This topic was included last year, but we expanded our thoughts)
Having studied how weekly values appear in 12-team leagues during the 2017 season, how much did things change in 2018? How does the appearance of weekly values change in a 15-team league?
What do average weekly statistics lines look like for players? For example, what does a $30-35 weekly hitter line look like? What do valuable weekly pitcher statistics look like?
What strategies and behaviors can we observe from the NFBC’s amazing data (standings, adds, drops, etc.)? What behaviors lead to success? What beliefs about how to best play rotisserie baseball can we confirm by studying this data?
On top of all this, Jeff and I continue to evolve the way we play the game and we share those changes and decisions with you. Here are the new discussions of strategies, tips, and tools included this year:
We co-owned a team together this season. We share what we learned from this experience, both during the draft and in-season. Our general recommendation is that partnering is very helpful, especially for leagues where there is a grind of weekly transactions.
To that end, we outline the weekly FAAB process we went through together on that shared league. Having a consistent weekly routine is the key to uncovering valuable players and to avoiding under- or over-bidding. We share the process that works for us.
We outline the specific tools we use to identify FAAB targets and two-start pitchers. We also share the process we go through for setting lineups and finding important last-minute MLB news.
We explored different approaches to dealing with catchers this past season. We share the results of those strategies.
We share a FAAB binning strategy that helps owners stay disciplined about overbidding and maintaining a healthy weekly budget.
Do you have to read through the entire book hunting for what’s new? No! We kept track for you. You can see a full list of changes and jump right to the updated content. Here’s what that list looks like.
Please Click the ‘Buy Now’ Button Below to Purchase the e-Book for $17.99
After clicking the “Buy Now” button, you’ll be taken through an online checkout process using PayPal. There is also an option to pay with a debit or credit card. After completing the purchase, a link to download the PDF book will immediately be e-mailed to you. You can read the PDF on any mobile device, PC, or tablet.
Or Click Below to Buy the Paperback Edition at Amazon for $22.99
I partnered Jeff Zimmerman (Fangraphs, Rotowire, Fantrax, multiple-time Tout Wars Champ) to write this comprehensive e-book guide (PDF) that outlines the start-to-finish process we go through during a fantasy baseball season. Please click here to buy The Process e-book.
How to Win Your League
The book is a chronological guide through the fantasy baseball season, with the main goal being to help you win your league. The topics covered are:
Use of Projections
How to Adjust Projections
How to Convert Projections to Values/Rankings
How to Adjust Values and Rankings
Draft & Auction Preparation
Draft & Auction Strategy
In-season Management & Strategy
End-of-season Management & Strategy
Wrapping Up the Season
Player valuation and how it is determined are big themes in the book.
As you read through that list, you may be thinking, “I already know that topic,” or, “What more could be said about that?” But that is what I’m most proud of. I think we managed to provide unique perspective, insights, and studies that have not been seen before.
If you’re not an experienced owner and you’re looking for a place to start, The Process can help you too. It is a comprehensive guide, but we also present shortcuts and alternate ways of doing things. You can pick and choose the topics or areas in which you want to expand your game. Adding one or two new strategies or tactics to your own process each season is a great way to improve over time.
I’m also very proud of the way we were able to weave in a lot of theory, so owners are not just presented with a way of doing things, but can also understand the “why”, so it can be applied to similar situations in the future.
Cognitive biases and other decision-making concepts are also sprinkled throughout the book. We believe this combination of process, theory, and decision-making tactics makes The Process a unique tool for fantasy owners.
Tell Me More About What’s Included
One of the more interesting studies included in the book is around the concept of weekly player values. Much of the research and decision-making fantasy owners do centers around annual valuations for players. Yet outside of draft and hold leagues, we don’t make decisions on an annual time horizon. Most owners must make decisions on a weekly or even daily basis. A study of weekly player valuations sheds light on how well we capture value in the preseason, what kinds of players create weekly value, and when new value appears during the season.
This table is one of many in a study of how well fantasy owners do at capturing weekly hitter and pitcher value.
The book also includes average standings data and standings gain points calculations for many popular league variations. Save hours of time having to calculate these yourself!
Example AL-Only OBP Average League Standings Data
This data is provided for the following league types:
15-team, Standard League (14 hitters, 9 pitchers)
15-team, 1-Catcher League (2 utility hitters)
15-team, OBP League (instead of batting average>
15-team, Draft and Hold League (no in-season pickups)
12-team, Standard League
12-team, OBP League
12-team, AL-only Standard League
12-team, NL-only Standard League
12-team, AL-only OBP League
12-team, NL-only OBP League
What Do Others Have to Say?
You don’t just have to take my word for it. Some of the minds I most respect in the fantasy baseball community have taken the time to read the book and offer their feedback (Rob Silver, Rudy Gamble, Eno Sarris, Mike Podhorzer, Mike Gianella). You can see what they had to say here.
Please Click the ‘Buy Now’ Button Below to Purchase the e-Book for $17.99
After clicking the “Buy Now” button, you’ll be taken through an online checkout process using PayPal. There is also an option to pay with a debit or credit card. After completing the purchase, a link to download the PDF book will immediately be e-mailed to you. You can read the PDF on any mobile device, PC, or tablet.
Click here to see a list of participants The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational. I’m in League 13.
I recently participated in my The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational (TGFBI) draft, which, if you’re a Twitter user and follow anyone in the fantasy baseball landscape, you could not have avoided. I do want to share with you some observations I had during the draft, but similar to my other writings, the goal here is to give some actionable advice (even if you’re reading this in the future) and not get too hung up on my team and specific players.
The Context
The invitational is made of 13 separate 15-team leagues. Each of these leagues will compete like any traditional rotisserie league and crown a champion within that league. The twist is that there is also an overall competition across the 13 leagues, whereby all 195 teams are competing in one massive rotisserie competition to crown an overall champion (similar to how the NFBC works). The one person that emerges atop 194 other experts can surely claim to be one of the best fantasy baseball players around.
This is the inaugural year of the competition, but it’s such an innovative idea that there’s no shortage of well-known folks competing. You can see the full list of participants here.
I’m participating in League #13. I happen to be the last name on the roster of the last league! What does that tell you, ha! You can see the draft results here. I was picking from the fifth spot.
My Feelings Going Into the Draft
While I’m obsessed with fantasy baseball, I really don’t view myself as anything special in this arena. Sure, I’ve MacGyver’ed up some neat spreadsheet tools over the years. But I don’t view my preparation process as anything special. I DON’T DO ANYTHING YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF BEFORE. I’m not holding back any secret tricks of the trade.
And because I don’t do anything special, I was nervous as hell heading into this draft. I joked a few paragraphs back about being the last name on the last league. I don’t really know if that’s indicative of anything, but even if it is, I get it! I don’t even think I’ve written five legitimate articles in the past two years. It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the lowest output of any participant involved. Meanwhile, many of the others are busting their backs to write articles and create podcasts on an aggressive and regular schedule.
These guys and gals are painstakingly combing over StatCast data, spin rates, hard hit rates, launch angles, swinging strike rates, and more… Meanwhile, I pretty much just let them do the work, read their articles, listen to their podcasts, plop some projections into a spreadsheet, make some manual adjustments, and I’m ready to rock with a comprehensive list of players and expected earnings dollar values.
Alright. Enough about me. Let’s try to make this useful. I apologize if some of what follows comes across as inflammatory or soap-boxy. Not everything can be sugar-coated. Here are my top lessons learned and observations after participating in this draft.
#1 – Exploit the League Rules
I really, really, really didn’t want to start with this one. It’s what EVERY SINGLE introduction to fantasy sports article ever written in the history of the world has started with.
So you would have expected that every one of the 195 participants would have done this, right?
But guess what??? I’m speculating, but I’d bet less than half of the TGFBI participants gave the rules a worthwhile look (I do realize saying “the TGFBI” is probably redundant, but it looks too weird not to do it). They probably assumed we were playing by prototypical standard rules and just checked to determine if we were using batting average or on-base percentage. But there are two rules we are playing by that are not exactly “standard” and each was something that I think needed to be known going into the draft. These two rules should have affected your behavior in the draft, and possibly in a significant way. Those two rules are:
Starting rosters include only one catcher but two utility spots
Rosters allow for five reserves and up to five DL spots for injured players
Pretty simple stuff, but small differences in rules, like starting one catcher instead of two, can have a significant effect on player valuation.
Why does this matter? In a 15-team league, I show the effect of going from two starting catchers to one as having around a $10 swing in value! That is an ENORMOUS detail (Note: the values in the image reflect the change from 2 C & 1 UTIL to 1 C & 2 UTIL, not just the move to 1 C).
The fact that this change is so significant surprises some people. But these are the same objective calculations that tell me Mike Trout, Trea Turner, Jose Altuve, Chris Sale, Clayton Kershaw, and Max Scherzer should be the highest valued players for the 2018 season. This isn’t speculation or “feel” about how to adjust for position scarcity. If you want to read more about the reason for this, here’s an illustrated example I put together from a few years ago.
As some of the faster drafting leagues started to get into the second and third rounds, we saw the big name catchers start to go. Then word quickly spread over Twitter, “This is a one-catcher league.” The effect quickly kicked in and the catchers starting plummeting. I’m a little disappointed this had to spread like a juicy rumor. I’d have expected everyone to know this going in.
I also suspect that many folks were worried the rules allowed for five reserve spots and no recourse for injured players. I believe this is how NFBC leagues and Fantrax leagues that allow for transactions operate (e.g. NFBC Main Event). I don’t have hard evidence to support this claim, but it just seemed like injured players like Michael Brantley, Michael Conforto, Jimmy Nelson, and Alex Reyes were going later than they should have been. My guess is they’d have been pushed up draft boards aggressively had everyone known this.
Small tip here. I don’t mind pushing up these injured players when you have a realistic way of replacing them that won’t burden you (force you to keep dead weight on your roster). Not only do you secure a talented player at a discount, you get the added benefit of being able to take chances on the waiver wire early in the season, when the odds are higher that you’ll be able to find a hidden gem.
My takeaway here is to not take anything in the rules for granted. Comb over them. Think about what the wrinkles in the rules might allow or incentivize you to do. Tailor your rankings and calculate your dollar values with these rules in mind. And don’t assume your enemies are doing the same. This can be an edge.
#2 – Use Dollar Values Tailored to Those League Rules to Make Decisions
My stance on this is simple and straightforward. If you’re not drafting with a set of projection-based dollar values in mind, you can do better.
I don’t care if you calculate them yourself, if you use the Fangraphs auction value calculator or the Rotowire custom dollar values, or if you buy a piece of software that does it for you… You’re not optimizing your chances of winning if you’re not drafting from values. You need a framework for comparing two hitters to each other, for comparing a hitter to a pitcher, and for making educated decisions. This is what dollar values do! Without dollar values, you’re being subjective. You’re letting biases creep into your decision making.
I don’t know exactly how every analyst drafts, but based on following folks on Twitter, reading certain sites, and discussions I’ve had with people, I’m pretty certain these folks all do value-based drafting:
In this post I’ll show you how to link live average draft position information from the web into your draft spreadsheet. Every time you open your rankings file it will pull down updated ADP information. Bam!
How We’re Going To Do This
We will use a powerful feature of Excel called web querying to pull in the ADP information aggregated by FantasyPros.com (please note, I’m an affiliate of Fantasy Pros). The web query will suck up that table of ADP information and bring it directly into Excel for us to then VLOOKUP into our existing “Hitter Ranks” and “Pitcher Ranks” tabs.
Fantasy Pros has the best ADP information I’ve found on the web. They have the most sources in one place and it appears to be updated regularly.
Assumptions
I am assuming that you’ve followed my Standings Gain Points or Points-League Ranking series and are already starting with a spreadsheet that is based off one of those (you don’t have to have those exact spreadsheets, but something similar).
Excel Functions and Concepts Used in this Post
Web Query
As you can probably imagine, the power of the web query is that it automatically updates the data in your Excel file without you having to do ANYTHING after the initial setup.
Web queries are created from the “Data” tab on the Excel Ribbon, under the “Get External Data” icon grouping. There are several ways to get data from outside sources into Excel, we will be using the “From Web” button.
One “weakness” I have found in web queries is that they cannot work with “tables” in Excel. You cannot pull a web query in as the data of a table. If you’re a big follower of this site you know that’s a bit of an issue for me because I use tables all the time. Thankfully this doesn’t prevent us from doing things, I just point it out because you might wonder why I set things up the way I do in the instructions below.
Find
The FIND function searches within a specified cell for a string of text that you provide. If the FIND function locates the string, it will return the character position where the string starts at.
I know, you’re thinking “What the heck does that even mean?”. Here’s an example. Let’s say we have the text “Mike Trout (LAA)” in a cell and every player in our whole spreadsheet follows that format. If we want to pull out each player’s team we will need to start by figuring out where the team name starts in that cell. And we can’t just say it will always start at the 13th character each time when we have players like this hanging around MLB.
Instead we can use the FIND formula to intelligently determine where that opening parenthesis is for each player (it starts at 12 for Trout and 23 for Salty).
This formula requires two inputs:
FIND(Find_text, Within_text)
Find_text – This is the string of text you are searching for and keep in mind it is case-sensitive. You would wrap the string you are searching for in quotation marks. So in our example above, to look for the opening parenthesis you would enter “(” here. Or if you’re trying to be slightly more precise, you could enter ” (“, a space before the parenthesis.
Within_text – This is the text you want to search WITHIN. This can be a cell number.
Left
The LEFT function gives you the leftmost number of characters in a text string. You also get to specify the number of characters to specify.
For example, if you have a text string of “Mike Trout (LAA)” and you ask for the 10 leftmost characters in that string, you would get “Mike Trout” back.
This formula requires two inputs:
LEFT(Text, Num_chars)
Text – This is the text string you want the leftmost characters from.
Num_chars – This is the number of characters you want from the string. This can be a hard entered number (e.g. 10) or it can be a formula itself that results in a number.
Combining Functions Together
We can do something pretty powerful by combining the FIND and LEFT functions together. I’ve been hinting at it with this “Mike Trout (LAA)” example. Recall from above that the LEFT function wants to know our text string (“Mike Trout (LAA)”) and the number of characters on the left to pull from that string.
Assume that cell B2 has a value of “Mike Trout (LAA)”. Instead of using this formula:
LEFT(B2, 10)
We can use this:
LEFT(B2, FIND(" (",B2)-1)
The FIND(" (",B2)-1 part of the formula returns a 10 (if you don’t subtract the one it returns an 11), and “Mike Trout” has 10 characters in it (including the space). By using this combination of functions we don’t have to type in a “10” for Mike Trout and a “21” for Saltalamacchia.
Important Prerequisite
Before you’re able to proceed with the instructions below you must make sure the PLAYERIDMAP in the file you’re working with was updated after February 21st, 2015. I added a column to the Player ID Map called “FANTPROSNAME” that is necessary for the steps below to work.
Instructions for updating your PLAYERIDMAP can be found here. Completing the update should only take five minutes or so.
I don’t like Alex Rios. I’m not sure if it’s because he used to go by the name Alexis. Or maybe I owned him in 2009 when he hit .247. Or maybe I bought into some hype telling me he would hit 30 HR in a given season and he stuck me with 17 instead.
Regardless. I might be coming around on Mr. Rios. Here’s why…
You’ve Got Mail
Remember when Meg Ryan was famous? Anyways, I recently got an e-mail from a reader wondering if he should keep Jose Bautista, Justin Upton, or Alex Rios.
When I see a question like this, my first reaction is to eliminate the low hanging fruit. So I wiped Rios out of the equation and started to think about Bautista and Upton.
Then I opened up my early 2014 projections:
Player
H-RANK
SGP
AVG
R
HR
RBI
SB
Rios
11
5.03
.280
78
18
81
33
Upton
39
3.53
.269
97
26
73
12
Bautista
60
2.70
.264
82
28
78
7
My Ranking Formulas Have To Be Wrong
My immediate reaction was that my ranking formulas had to be wrong. Rios couldn’t be so significantly better than Upton and Bautista. Or could he?
After all, Rios was the 9th ranked hitter on ESPN’s 2013 Player Rater (heck, he was 6th in 2012!). Upton was 48th. And Bautista was 59th. All of those rankings look incredibly in line with my preseason rankings. Maybe they are right.
If The Ranking Is Right, Then My Projections Have To Be Wrong
I’ve only done one pass through my projections as of the time of this post in early January 2014 (learn to make your own projections here). Maybe I need to take a closer look at Rios and downgrade some of those stats. Maybe I’m too favorable. My projections are exclusively based on a player’s last three seasons. So let’s take a look:
So my .280, 78R, 18 HR, 81 RBI doesn’t look unreasonable. If anything, the counting numbers of R and RBI might be low when you consider he played most of his games last season for the AL’s worst team offense (CHW) to now having a full season in an above average offense from last year that is arguably even better (TEX).
I started on this endeavor thinking I needed to bump down his projections (more on this later… this is a crappy way of thinking), and now I’m convinced he’ll probably score more R and have more RBI? Heading in the wrong direction here.
It All Comes Down To Stolen Bases
Rios gets the bulk of his value from stolen bases. So even if his R and RBI increase a touch, it’s not going to significantly affect things.
The key question to answer is can we really expect the 33 projected steals from a soon to be 33-year old aging outfielder?
I don’t want the point of this article to be exactly how I projected Rios’ SB totals, so I’m not going to go into great detail. But when you consider the following facts, 33 is not unreasonable:
TEX led MLB in stolen base attempts (195 TEX, 147 CHW)
TEX was second in stolen bases (149 TEX, 105 CHW)
TEX was seventh in SB% (76% TEX, 71% CHW)
Rios had 17 SBA in 47 games for TEX last season (roughly on pace for 51 SBA for a full season)
Rios has a SB% of 80% the last three seasons, a rate which would give him about 40 SB in 51 SBA
So even if he slows his pace and begins to get caught more, there is cushion in that projection of 33.
For Argument’s Sake, What If We Project 20 SB
If the rest of his stat line remains the same and the projection of 33 SB falls to 20, his ranking adjusts from the 11th best hitter to 36! He’s still ahead of Upton!
It’s Early, But Where Is Rios Being Drafted?
Rios is currently going 34th overall, with Bautista going 40th, and Upton going 43rd. I obviously have to familiarize myself more with this ADP information. I should not have dismissed Rios out of hand the way I did.
Alex Rios, Jose Bautista, and Justin Upton NFBC ADP as of January 11, 2014 courtesy of Stats.com
Let’s Learn From This
This whole exercise demonstrates two important lessons.
First, this is a perfect demonstration on how to find value by making your own rankings and projections. Remember, Rios came out as the 11th best hitter in my projections! He’s being drafted 34th overall!
This is not to say that you have to agree with my assessments of Rios. But if you go to a top 200 list at popular fantasy websites, you will probably see Rios ranked in the 30s or 40s. If you run your own projections and realize he comes out at 11, you have FANTASY GOLD on your hands. You can take a player in the 3rd or 4th round that you think will return 1st round value! I hate to repeat myself, but this is exactly why you need to be get your hands dirty and make your own rankings and projections.
Second, it was an awful mistake for me to look at my ranking and want to search for ways to downgrade Rios. I spent hours of time developing my own projections using proven methods and then running objective mathematical formulas to calculate each player’s value from those projections. The ranking is what it is. The projected stats are what they are. And they are calculating a very strong ranking.
It’s not wrong to double-check and possibly adjust your projections. But that’s not really what I tried to do. I don’t like Rios. I know this. I was purposefully considering a decrease in his projected stats just so he would fall in the rankings to where I thought he “should be”. That’s a mistake.
Just because he comes out ranked 11th doesn’t mean I need to draft him 11th. That’s the value of good ADP information and planning your draft out ahead of time (knowing you might be able to wait until the 3rd round).
“The Process”, My Latest Book, with Jeff Zimmerman
The 2024 edition of The Process, by Jeff Zimmerman and Tanner Bell, is now available! Click here to read what folks like John Pausma, Phil Dussault, Eno Sarris, Clay Link, Rob Silver, Rudy Gamble, and others have to say about the book.
The Process is your one-stop resource for better drafting, in-season management, and developing strategies to become a better manager. The book is loaded with unique studies, tips, and strategies you won't find anywhere else. Click here for more details.
