KNOW. YOUR. LEAGUE.
As I've said before, and will probably continue to say at least once per week, most fantasy baseball rankings are based on a 5x5 rotisserie scoring system. But many leagues, and quite easily your league if you play seriously (or as seriously as fantasy baseball warrants) do not use the standard five categories; some aren't even rotisserie. If you tally more batter categories than the standard runs/RBI/HR/steals/batting average, then the value of batters change based on what those categories are. If you're in a points league, then points are accrued by methods above and beyond the standard five categories. In non-standard leagues, basing your strategy exclusively on 5x5 rankings and expecting to win is folly. It's like wondering why you're getting pulled over driving through Canada when the sign reads "speed limit 100." You're looking at the wrong damn thing. Canada's on the metric system, and you're only supposed to be going 60 miles per hour.
This is what brings me to Mark Reynolds. Reynolds is just fine for a 5x5 league. His 162-game average for his career is a respectable 90 runs/35 home runs/100 RBI/12 steals/0.242 batting average. The MLB-average batter during that same period of time is roughly 82/15/80/10/0.263 per Baseball Reference (if my math is correct). That makes Reynolds a roughly average contributor in runs and steals, well above average in homers and RBI, and a significant (but not insurmountable) negative in batting average.
[Last year's .198 BA was pretty abysmal, and the signals on that are mixed: his GB/FB ratio dipped and his line-drive percent plummeted along with his BaBip, but he was as good/bad as ever in terms of pitchers per plate appearance, strike percentages, etc.]
Even still, the remaining fantasy numbers are usually fine (if slightly depressed due to the BA). Basically, he's a flawed player worth a mid-round pick and top-10 potential every year at his position for fantasy purposes. If you need power, why not take him?
But that's for standard leagues. True story: I've never played in a league that doesn't count strikeouts as a hitter statistic. True statistic: Reynolds strikes out 221 times per 162 games as opposed to 192 for Ryan Howard, 183 times for Adam Dunn, 171 for Carlos Pena, 168 for BJ Upton, 159 for Dan Uggla, 150 for Matt Kemp, and 130 for Prince Fielder; all of these players are notorious for striking out. Reynolds whiffs far more often than any of them.
If you're playing in a league where you have to manage batter strikeouts, all of a sudden Reynolds isn't just a liability in batting average, he's an albatross for strikeouts too. You have to build a roster that explicitly minimizes strikeouts if you draft Reynolds, or else punt the category.
I played in a roto league that counted strikeouts last year, and among the top half of teams in the standings the fewest strikeouts was 1,058. Reynold's 211 strikeouts was 20% of that total by himself, never mind the other 9 people you had to play daily. The teams that rostered him at any point during the season finished last and sixth in strikeouts; they only played him for 48 and 21 games respectively. If instead, the former team rostered a 3B with similar production but half the strikeouts for just those 48 games, he would have won the league. Reynolds easily cost him 2 roto points in just strikeouts alone. He lost the league (to me) by 1.5 roto points. Lest you think that's impossible to find, half the strikeouts would have meant 106 over last season- still good for a 73rd-place tie and the company of multiple 20+ home run hitters.
OK, maybe you want some math to back it up. Using the Value Under Maximum metric, Reynolds is projected to be the #7 most valuable 3B for the upcoming season in a 5x5 league. I currently play in a 7x7 roto league, with Ks and doubles the extra batting stats. This is one statistic Reynolds is horrible in (Ks) and one he's slightly above-average in (doubles). With these categories added, Reynolds drops all the way down to the #25 third baseman. His VUM is 3.15 (on a 0-5 scale) in a standard roto league, while in my league it's 1.96 (on a -1 to 6 scale). The sheer number of strikeouts renders Reynolds unplayable in my roto league as a regular at even the corner infield spot- assuming the top 10 at 1B & 3B start at those positions (and not CI), he's still #28 on the list of CI-eligible players (#48 overall CI).
Drafting Reynolds in this league is like wearing a "kick me" sign. You're basically ceding first place, if not second and third as well. It's the fantasy equivalent of walking into a car dealership waving a wad of cash and declaring "I need something with wheels RIGHT NOW but I don't know what I want and I don't have the time to do any research or look anywhere else." You're just asking to be taken advantage of.
Incidentally, he went in the 12th round of my roto draft. The team that drafted him already dropped Wandy Rodriguez (his 10th round pick) for David Murphy (who's good, and I like him, but fighting for playing time), if you want to talk other indicators of knowledge. He's also got Adam Dunn (192), Chris Young (156), Jay Bruce (136), Travis Snyder (140), Ian Desmond (114) and Ian Stewart (153) starting; that's a projected 1,113 strikeouts from just under half the lineup. That's 6 of the top-30 strikeout hitters.
Reynolds isn't so hot in points leagues either. Under my BB league scoring system (detailed in the glossary), he's projected to get 394 points. That's a VORP at 3rd base of -0.244, meaning he'll produce at roughly 75.6% the capacity of a replacement-level 3B (521.2 points). That's good for the #25 3B, #181 overall hitter, and #244 overall player. He still went in the 12th round of that draft, at #111 overall. If you want an equivalency for that level of reach (using the method I detailed here), it's about the same cost as taking Ryan Zimmerman or Andrew McCutchen first overall.
In a points league, each strikeout counts against a player by a certain amount, say 1 point. If you know Reynolds is going to strike out 200-ish times, that means he starts off with a value of -200 points (give or take). Eighty walks and 35 homers are just about going to make that up. But what else are you expecting from Reynolds, other than strikeouts, home runs, and walks? He only averages 138 hits per 162 games, and only 65 extra-base hits, more than half of which are the home runs we've already factored out.
Or put it this way: he averages 221 Ks but 276 total bases per 162 games. For most points leagues, that's a net 55 points per 162 games, meaning any extra value comes from runs/RBI (which are significantly team dependent, and he plays for Baltimore), walks, and any quirks in your scoring system (e.g. counting hits on top of total bases).
Reynolds is ranked just outside the top-100 hitters in ESPN's preseason rankings, and with good reason. He's a solid contributor to a 5x5 team. But his flaws run deep enough that if your league isn't 5x5 roto, you have to seriously re-assess his worth. You have to know your league.
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