As much as I love the standings gain point approach to valuing players, it does have an a couple of inherent weaknesses.
First, it’s dependent upon some form of league history to work. The whole ranking and valuation process is derived from previous standings data! Those starting new leagues, or joining an existing league, don’t have this information available.
Second, assuming you have prior standings to draw from, I’ve always been bothered by the small sample sizes of that data. And I don’t know about you, but something odd always seems to happen in my leagues. One year someone runs away with it, one year it’s a tight race between five teams, one year we add two teams, the next year we contract a team.
What are we to do?!?!
Thank You OnRoto and NFBC
Thankfully, some very generous league hosting sites have made their standings information publicly available or shared it with me! With their help, I think we can put to bed the concerns over lack of league history and small sample sizes. We have MANY leagues to look at now.
The fine folks at OnRoto.com have shared their NL- and AL-only standings data. If you’re not familiar with OnRoto, their goal is to cater to sophisticated fantasy leagues, many of which play by the “old-school” rules required by “long-term players”. They also are willing to fulfill just about any customization request (more on this later!).
I’ve also written several times about NFBC standings data for mixed leagues.
What follows is a close look at the 2016 12-team “only league” data from OnRoto. If you’re curious, you can see the 2015 AL information here and the 2015 NL information here.
Now, let’s take a look at the data!
AL-Only Standings by Category
Here are the average AL statistics within each rotisserie scoring category:
| RK | PTS | AVG | R | HR | RBI | SB | ERA | WHIP | W | K | SV |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 12 | 0.272 | 987 | 291 | 964 | 128 | 3.583 | 1.191 | 94 | 1,311 | 90 |
| 2 | 11 | 0.268 | 945 | 274 | 926 | 115 | 3.753 | 1.227 | 88 | 1,271 | 79 |
| 3 | 10 | 0.266 | 917 | 262 | 894 | 107 | 3.856 | 1.245 | 85 | 1,229 | 72 |
| 4 | 9 | 0.264 | 889 | 254 | 867 | 100 | 3.934 | 1.258 | 82 | 1,194 | 64 |
| 5 | 8 | 0.262 | 867 | 245 | 846 | 94 | 4.014 | 1.271 | 80 | 1,159 | 57 |
| 6 | 7 | 0.260 | 844 | 236 | 823 | 89 | 4.079 | 1.286 | 77 | 1,133 | 52 |
| 7 | 6 | 0.259 | 824 | 227 | 793 | 83 | 4.160 | 1.298 | 74 | 1,108 | 46 |
| 8 | 5 | 0.257 | 804 | 217 | 773 | 78 | 4.225 | 1.310 | 72 | 1,083 | 40 |
| 9 | 4 | 0.255 | 777 | 207 | 747 | 73 | 4.280 | 1.322 | 70 | 1,048 | 36 |
| 10 | 3 | 0.253 | 743 | 195 | 714 | 67 | 4.386 | 1.339 | 66 | 1,005 | 30 |
| 11 | 2 | 0.250 | 711 | 184 | 681 | 61 | 4.525 | 1.360 | 61 | 961 | 21 |
| 12 | 1 | 0.246 | 636 | 162 | 604 | 49 | 4.728 | 1.392 | 55 | 901 | 11 |
To better explain what you’re looking at, a team could have finished in 10th place in the standings but still finished 1st place in the home runs category. That team’s data appears on the “Rank 1” row, not on the “Rank 10” row.
NL-Only Standings by Category
And here are the NL stats:
| RK | PTS | AVG | R | HR | RBI | SB | ERA | WHIP | W | K | SV |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 12 | 0.276 | 950 | 257 | 915 | 164 | 3.411 | 1.183 | 93 | 1,354 | 88 |
| 2 | 11 | 0.272 | 917 | 244 | 879 | 143 | 3.596 | 1.217 | 86 | 1,284 | 76 |
| 3 | 10 | 0.269 | 883 | 231 | 845 | 133 | 3.710 | 1.232 | 82 | 1,234 | 68 |
| 4 | 9 | 0.267 | 863 | 222 | 816 | 122 | 3.810 | 1.253 | 79 | 1,192 | 61 |
| 5 | 8 | 0.264 | 840 | 214 | 798 | 112 | 3.902 | 1.270 | 75 | 1,155 | 54 |
| 6 | 7 | 0.263 | 813 | 206 | 775 | 106 | 3.994 | 1.284 | 73 | 1,125 | 49 |
| 7 | 6 | 0.261 | 787 | 198 | 743 | 99 | 4.080 | 1.297 | 70 | 1,093 | 44 |
| 8 | 5 | 0.259 | 763 | 191 | 718 | 92 | 4.173 | 1.313 | 66 | 1,062 | 37 |
| 9 | 4 | 0.258 | 740 | 184 | 692 | 85 | 4.241 | 1.329 | 63 | 1,026 | 33 |
| 10 | 3 | 0.255 | 703 | 174 | 660 | 78 | 4.351 | 1.347 | 60 | 991 | 27 |
| 11 | 2 | 0.252 | 673 | 160 | 630 | 70 | 4.445 | 1.372 | 55 | 945 | 20 |
| 12 | 1 | 0.249 | 618 | 143 | 570 | 56 | 4.631 | 1.406 | 48 | 826 | 11 |