Investing & Maybe Fantasy Baseball

“It’s better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.” ~ John Maynard Keynes

After playing fantasy baseball seriously for the past six years I’ve learned Mr. Keynes is one hundred percent correct. Odds are if you think Mike Trout will hit 40 home runs and he ends up with 42 or 38 your projection didn’t negatively affect your ability to win.

However, if you projected 30 and hits more 38 or more than your projection did hurt you. Every season there are players who put up fantastic numbers no one saw coming (I’m looking at you Peter Alonso and Tim Anderson). When you’re evaluating 300-400 players there will always be players you miss on. The key to winning is to be roughly right on more players than your competition. (I’ve found 65-70% in accuracy is the sweet spot for 12-team mixed leagues.) When I do my projections I ask myself if the 2020 season was played 100 times what would the average performance be for every player. That way, I have a great chance of being roughly right than precisely wrong.

Last season there were a record number of home runs hit in the Majors (11% more than the next highest year) and in Triple-A (57.4% increase compared to 2018). Both leagues played with a brand-new baseball. Major League Baseball commissioned an independent study to try to understand why the uptick happened.

The study said carry contributed to 60% of the home run increase and launch conditions to 40%. And a statistically significant link exists between the height of the seams on balls and the amount of drag they produce.

Last year there were 6,776 home runs. The next highest was 6,105 in 2017. The difference between the two is 671 home runs. Therefore, 403 of the home runs (60% x 671) was due to the changes in the baseball and 268 home runs (40% x 671) was due to launch angle.

As of December 15, I’m assuming changes will be made to the baseball and if that happens, we should see more home runs in 2020 than 2017. Therefore, all my projections will assume the home run environment decreases about 6%. I came to the number by removing by adding 6,105 and 268. Now, my assumption/projection may be incorrect but if I assume that rate for every player it shouldn’t negatively hurt. If I project Joey Gallo to hit 41 home runs and he hits 44; no big deal.

Since home runs should be really high again it depresses the values of power-only players like Gallo, Khris Davis, Jorge Soler and Nelson Cruz).

This part two of my season recap. (You can see part one here.) For those of who don’t know, every year I write a recap of each of my leagues. This process is masterbatory because the only one who gets any benefit and/or knowledge from this is me.

In this league I didn’t come close to doing as well. To see my recap after the draft and the players I drafted please go here. I will assume you have this knowledge when I provide my analysis.

After the draft I projected the following Hitting Statistics:
Forecast: .267 Avg/ 334 HRs/ 1,198 RBI/ 1,153 Runs/ 164 SBs
Actual: .267 Avg/ 387 HRs/ 1,165 RBI/ 1,213 Runs/ 105 SBs

Pitching Stats:
Forecast: 3.72 ERA/1.21 WHIP/ 1,499 Ks/ 98 W/ 68 Saves
Actual: 4.24 ERA/ 1.29 WHIP/ 1,410 Ks/ 78 W/ 78 Saves

Overall Takeaways From 2019 & 2020

Starters are throwing less innings, getting fewer wins and are striking out more batters. Screenshots below. Now, you’re probably thinking teams are using the opener’s much more now and that is dragging down the numbers. That is true and I need to do more digging on this, but from owning a lot of number three and four starters this year I have noticed very often my guys only five or six innings this year. This is very anecdotal, but these trends suggest it’s even more important to get a top 5-10 starting pitcher in drafts. This season I didn’t draft a top starter; this was intentional as I wanted to find pitching off the waiver wire and I thought I could find “sleepers” later in drafts.

Now, you’re probably thinking teams are using the opener’s much more now and that is dragging down the numbers. That is true and I need to do more digging on this, but from owning a lot of number three and four starters this year I have noticed very often my guys only five or six innings this year. This is very anecdotal, but these trends suggest it’s even more important to get a top 5-10 starting pitcher in drafts. This season I didn’t draft a top starter; this was intentional as I wanted to find pitching off the waiver wire and I thought I could find “sleepers” later in drafts.

Takeaways From My Season

Despite having similar rosters with my other team, the performance in this league was far less. I really needed Trea Turner to steal 50 bases; he missed time after getting hit by a pitch, but even when he came back he didn’t steal that much.If Dave Martinez, the Nationals head coach, comes back I don’t see Turner stealing more than 40 bases next year.

I thought Andrew Benintendi would hit second or leadoff and he would hit 18 home runs, 20 steals with 100 runs, 88 RBI and a .280 batting average. He didn’t come close to that projection at all, but the underlying statistics suggest he got unlucky with the power. His contact rates took a turn for the worse, which may limit his batting average upside. He’ll be 25 next season and I think he’ll be underrated in drafts.

I got unlucky with my closers. David Robertson threw a couple of innings. The Pirates were a bad team, which limited save opportunities. I did pick up Hector Nerris, but I got unlucky with the saves department.

The one positive was I picked up Matt Olson off the waiver wire. What was surprising was no one wanted him. At the time of the waiver wire auction it was reported he was going to play in the Majors in about a week. Despite missing 35 games he finished 12th among first basemen on ESPNs Player Rater.

The basic reason why my team failed was due to my inability to find pitching off the waiver wire, putting the majority of my stolen base hopes in one player, and getting unlucky.

Random Thought

NFBC has a wide range of buy-in leagues from $125 to $15,000. There is one $10,000 and another $15,000 buy-in leagues. Both leagues are 15-team mixed leagues with the same rules. The drafts occurred in Las Vegas. Despite the large buy-in’s there were many people who played in both leagues. Below are screenshots of the standings of both leagues. Do you see anything interesting?

Derek Pierson came in first and 13th while kc char came in first and 10th. In 15-team leagues the performance can vary much more than shallower leagues, but still it’s a pretty wide discrepancy in performance. You can view the drafts of both leagues here. Lastly, the drafts occurred on back-to-back days.

Obviously we’re dealing with a small sample so there is a caveat to all this, but I think there is something to be learned here. You’ll notice the rosters were somewhat similar. One owner had seven players in common (23% of the roster) and the other owner with 11 in common (37%). Most of the duplicate players were in the middle rounds, which suggest the players they drafted, in their owners’ eyes, were undervalued.

When I look at their drafts there were a lot of misses. There were players on both winning rosters that didn’t live up to their draft day value. But the primary reason why they won was they found tremendous value in the middle-to-late rounds (below).

For example, kc char drafted: Nelson Cruz, Yasmani Grandal, Ketel Marte, Jeff McNeil, Jeff Samardzija, Anthony Descalfani, and Lance Lynn.

Another example; Derek drafted: Clayton Kershaw, Hyun-Jin Ryu, Will Smith, Trey Mancini, Kevin Kiermaier, Dakota Hudson, and Sonny Gray.

The biggest takeaway, for me, is to always find value with every pick. You’re going to swing and miss on some picks. It’s okay to swing and miss in the middle rounds and later, but it’s important that your first 1-4 picks work out.

If you find value then you’ll be in a better place to compete. Or in other words, find players who drafted in the middle-to-late rounds that perform like a top 40 pick. That said, and this is the most important takeaway, even when you get more value you never know how much more or less value you’ll get from each player. This is where luck comes into play. For example, literally no one saw a 28/28 season for Wil Myers in 2016 or that Blake Snell would have a Cy Young season in 2018. Anyone who says they knew they were going to perform like that is full of shit. If they truly believed that they wouldn’t have been drafted in round 20.

Yesterday (September 29) was the last day of the regular season, which means it was the end of the fantasy baseball season. Every year I write a recap of each of my leagues. This process is masterbatory because the only one who gets any benefit and/or knowledge from this is me.

I have great news. I won this league! To see my recap after the draft and the players I drafted please go here. I will assume you have this knowledge when I provide my analysis.

After the draft I projected the following Hitting Statistics:
Forecast: .268 Avg/ 327 HRs/ 1,163 RBI/ 1,150 Runs/ 156 SBs
Actual: .271 Avg/ 365 HRs/ 1,179 RBI/ 1,249 Runs/ 137 SBs

Pitching Stats:
Forecast: 3.61 ERA/1.22 WHIP/ 1,360 Ks/ 86 W/ 109 Saves
Actual: 4.07 ERA/ 1.26 WHIP/ 1,390 Ks/ 77 W/ 103 Saves

Overall Takeaways From 2019 & 2020

Reliable stolen bases and saves are going to be extremely scare and important in 2020. I was listening to the 2019 recap of The Fantasy Focus and Tristan H. Cockcroft said saves in 2019 were 25% more important than previous years. I haven’t done my own analysis yet, but that number feels right. Saves were down this year and half of the teams finished the year with less than a .500 record.

(A quick aside: Teams were bad for many reasons, but there are two primary reasons for this. 1) Teams are rewarded for losing. Draft pick compensation pools are larger for worser teams. So if a team has the worst record they’re allowed to spend more in next year’s draft. 2) Teams have learned they don’t have to invest on the Major League roster to make money. Joe Sheehan has written about this for years. The cliff notes is he consistently rags on the owners of the Pirates, Royals and Jeffrey Loria, the previous owner of the Marlins for consistently putting profits ahead of win. That they are pocketing their TV money and making a profit, even when their teams are good and they have an opportunity to make a playoff push.)

Back to saves. Next year it’s going to be important to draft a reliable closer. You’re going to want someone who will be the closer as long as he’s healthy such as: Kirby Yates, Aroldis Chapman, Kenley Jansen, Roberto Osuna and etc. If you don’t draft a reliable closer you may have to punt the category and I’m not a big fan of punting.

From 2013-2018 the league averaged 2,583 stolen bases. This year we only had 2,281–the last time it was that low was 1973 (I didn’t count the strike years of 1981 and 1994). The guys who provide 30 stolen bases with 10 home runs will be worth much more than in years past.

The interesting dilemma fantasy owners will have is whether you want to consolidate the majority of your stolen bases in one player. For example, it’s going to be fascinating what people do with Adalberto Mondesí. If he plays in 150 games you’ll have about 50% of your stolen bases locked up, but if he gets hurt he may sink your ability to compete in the stolen base category.

I can see stolen bases decreasing even further. A lot of the top base stealers: Starling Marte, Elvis Andrus, Tommy Pham will all be 31 and 32 years old in 2020. And who knows if Christian Yelich will continue to steal bases after hurting his knee a week before the season ended. My hunch is Ronald Acuna will be the number one pick in Roto leagues with Trea Turner being a top 12 pick.

Home runs. Entering the season I thought we would see about the same numbers of home runs we saw in 2016. It wouldn’t be as much as 2017, but there would still be a lot of home runs. Well, shit. The powers that be decided to change the baseball and we saw the most home runs ever. As of right now, I have no idea if the baseball will change in 2020, but I’m going to assume the League hits 6,400 home runs next year, which is an average of 2017, the most home runs ever at the time, and 2019. The takeaway is home runs will far less valuable than any other time before. A 30 home run player in 2012 has the same value as a 40 home run player in 2020. Players like Mallex Smith, Joey Gallo and Rougned Odor all become less valuable next year. (I don’t believe Gallo is a .250 hitter).

Takeaways From My Season

I won my league so I’m obviously pleased with the outcome. I didn’t think my three closer strategy would work, but I picked Mike Minor early in the season and he was a defacto ace for most of the season. I also picked up Frankie Montas, but the rest of my bulk innings came from starters with ERAs in the low 4’s (Rick Procello, Chris Bassit, Anthony DeSclafani, Zach Eflin and Griffin Canning). I did as well as I did because my closers enabled me to finish first in saves, which allow the other pitching categories to under perform.

I didn’t have that many injuries to my offense. I lagged in home runs because I suffered injuries to Aaron Judge and Gregory Polanco. I only had seven guys give more than 500 at-bats–all of which over performed their ADPs (Bregman, Andrus, Grandal, Merrifield, Devers, Rosario and Starling Marte). What’s funny is some of them did things I didn’t expect from them. For example Andrus stole 31 bases while Merrifield only stole 20. At the beginning of the season I thought the stolen base totals would be reversed. That’s why luck will always be the invisible hand in fantasy baseball.

Overall, draft extra depth at offense. When I first started playing at NFBC I would load up my bench with high-risk, high-upside pitching. This strategy quickly didn’t work because if I suffered an injury to my offense the pool of replacements was low.

In draft, if you two players are equal, take the player with multiple eligibility. During the course of a long season the position flexibility allows to broaden your search on the waiver wire for hitters.

You win leagues by finding undervalued players in draft and the waiver wire. I drafted Devers in the 10th round; Christian Vazquez off waivers; Mike Minor off waivers; Frankie Montas off waivers; Andrus in the 14th round; Miguel Sano off waviers.

Also, it’s just as important to not swing and miss in the early rounds. For example, Merrifield in the 3rd; Marte in the 4th; Eddie Rosario in the 6th; Liam Hendricks (as my handcuff to Blake Treinen); Yasmani Grandal in the 9th.

Most importantly, it’s a fine line between being patient and knowing when to change your evaluation on a player. For example: Devers’ first month of the season was brutal. He didn’t have any home runs and was batting 7th in the lineup. I looked at his hard contact rates and I strongly believed he was getting unlucky.

Another example is Wellington Castillo. He started off slowly, but his underlying numbers were not very good and he was no long being used as the primary catcher. After one month I dropped him and picked up Vazquez, who ended up finishing second on ESPNs Player Rater for catchers (luck on my part).

Drafts will not be perfect. If you look at my draft you’ll see a lot of players who under performed, but most of those picks in the middle rounds. That indicates that even if you swing and miss, it’s okay to do so in the middle rounds. I used to believe drafting was 70% of the reason for success, but now I firmly believe its 45% draft, 40% roster management and 15% luck.