My 2011 in Fantasy Baseball: Week 4

Sorry for the belated post (for my small handful of regular readers). I was on a mini-vacation to celebrate having my dissertation proposal approved and didn't get to post yesterday. So, without further ado...

Bernie's Bombers (H2H Points)

Standings: 1-2, T-3rd in Cheese (1 GB)

Last Matchup: L, 268-274

MVP of the Matchup: Jered Weaver, 9.0 IP, 6H, 8K, W, CG, 37 pts

Goat of the Matchup: Edwin Jackson, 12.2 IP, 23 H, 5 BB, 11 ER, 6 K, 2 L, -12 pts

The Skinny: That I only lost by six points is amazing, given that I started both Victor Martinez and Logan Morrison for a combined four at-bats last week- both got locked into my weekly lineup and injured during their respective first games. I actually would have won if Zambrano hadn't completely crapped the bed on Sunday to the tune of 6 earned runs and a loss (-2 points); a simple six innings and a no-decision would have been enough. It still counts as a loss in the standings, but a six-point loss with two dead roster spots and four games lost to rain is pretty good. I wasn't even the lowest point-scorer of the week. It reinforces the fact that I have a solid team all around.

Looking Ahead: I need to learn to manage weekly lineups a little better. I knew, for example, that Martinez had strained his groin over the weekend, but it looked like he would play so I put him in. Instead, he aggravated the injury and landed on the DL. I also made quite a few roster moves, two of them being picking up Ryan Roberts and Seth Smith. They are great additions for daily leagues, but I'm realizing that neither is great for weekly leagues given playing-time issues. I also need to figure out how to take weather into account, since I once again lost quite a few games to rain postponements.

Case in point: I decided to pick up Wieters as a replacement catcher. In and of itself, it's a good call- he was the best catcher available by a mile. But this means that this week I have three Orioles in my starting lineup (Roberts and Markakis as well), and with three games in Baltimore and three in Chicago the potential for rainouts in April is pretty high.

I dropped a lot of my spare pitchers to cover for injuries. One of my pickups is Jed Lowrie, who I packaged with Daniel Hudson in a trade for Shaun Marcum. I like Lowrie a lot- he was top-20 in points per plate appearance last year- but his value will never be higher than right now. He's currently 22/51 (.431) with 3 dingers (or one every 17 at-bats). If you think .300 with 20 bombs is a likely final line for him, that means (assuming 550 at-bats) he's going to hit about .287 the rest of the way with one homer every 29.4 at-bats. That's solid production, but it's also about what the season projection is for Stephen Drew. And Lowrie has no track record- he may not do that well, and it's unlikely he'll do better. For his career- irregular playing time and all- he's hit .269, one homer every 34.4 at-bats, with a strikeout every 4.62 at-bats (comparable to Jason "cut down the Ks" Heyward). Maybe he progresses, maybe he gets exposed. But he's no sure thing. And as for Hudson... well, I like Marcum a lot more. Who doesn't?

Cubbie Blues (5x5 Roto)

Standings: 2nd place (74/100 points, 6.5 points back)

Weekly Line: 86/314 (.274), 54 R, 9 HR, 43 RBI, 9 SB, 71.1 IP, 50 H, 24 ER, 27 BB, 59 K, 7 W, 3 Sv, 3.03 ERA, 1.08 WHIP.

MVP of the Week: Ryan Braun, 3 HR, 1 SB, 8 RBI, .414 BA

Goat of the Week: Daniel Hudson, 11.81 ERA, 1.69 WHIP, 3K

The Skinny: Some of my hitters returned to earth this week with Uggla, Butler, Bruce and Tabata all hitting under .200 and another 5 hitting under .250 for the past week. I'm gaining ground, though, with the RBI/HR coming and my ERA/WHIP returning to a normal level. I dropped Brett Gardner for Ryan Roberts (ah, daily leagues), dropped an injured Logan Morrison for Michael Pineda and swapped out Brandon Lyon for Huston Street. The fact that I've so far this season picked up Street, Jaime Garcia, and Stephen Drew (not to mention another four closers at various points) means I'm comfortable dropping almost anyone, since I can get people off waivers fairly easily.

Looking Ahead: Aside from having to manage my starts a little better (I'm on pace for 210 against a 200 cap), I'm just staying the course. I've got more talent on the roster than I know what to do with, and eventually I'll figure out a way to exploit it in a trade.

Cubs Expatriot (H2H Categories)

Standings: 24-4-2, 1st in East

Last Week: 9-0-1; 42/11/43/11/.2628 vs 25/5/25/4/.1978, 75/6/8/2.221/0.974 vs 61/6/1/4.299/1.194

MVP of the Matchup: Brett Anderson, 15.0 IP, 9 H, 2 BB, 1 ER, 14 K, 2 W, 0.60 ERA, 0.73 WHIP

Goat of the Matchup: Daniel Hudson was pretty worthless

The Skinny: I just keep cruising along with this team. After the trade for King Felix I had an extra roster spot, so I used it on a flyer with Grady Sizemore. I also shifted my DL spot from Morrow to V-Mart. I dropped Ryan Franklin to grab Nick Hundley as a replacement catcher and swapped out Erick Aybar for Ian Desmond. Last week I fully embraced the load up on pitchers/bare minimum hitters strategy, and it seems to be working. By simply overloading on pitchers and counting on a few anchors (Weaver, Felix, maybe Marcum and the relievers) I can keep my WHIP/ERA safe while piling on Ks/Ws/Svs.

Looking Ahead: I don't have a single bench spot for a hitter, and as risky as that feels I'm by-and-large running away with things so far. I'm still middle of the pack in HR/RBI, and so I may need to change that at some point, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. I've built up a 7.5 game cushion in my division, and if I have a few more eight to ten win weeks I can wrap things up before the all-star break. There's so much pitching left on the waiver wire- Storen, Lyon, Boggs, Gregg, Rauch, Burnett for closers; more starters than I can name- that I can afford to make another pitching-centric trade and beef up my roster even more. I don't need to do this yet, but it's clear the option is there. I can't just coast, since there are playoffs, but getting in doesn't look like a problem barring a catastrophic rash of injuries.

Cubbie Blues (7x7 Roto)

Standings: 6th place (73.5/140, 29 pts back)

Weekly Line: 75/282 (.266), 48 R, 12 2B, 11 HR, 29 RBI, 51 K, 8 SB; 70.0 IP, 70 H, 26 BB, 30 ER, 10 HRA, 55 K, 5 QS, 4 W, 3 Sv, 3.86 ERA, 1.37 WHIP.

MVP of the Week: Jose Bautista, .529 BA, 5 HR

Goat of the Week: Billy Butler, .182 BA, 6K

The Skinny: I'm actually doing OK right now. My power numbers aren't great, but they're serviceable. Meanwhile, my pitching numbers are bad, but improving. Part of the issue is that I have the fewest starts in the league, so my counting numbers are bad and my rates are disproportionately affected by bad outings. But a staff with Cain and Marcum is a good start.

Looking Ahead: I'm staying the course for now, filling needs as they arise. I think this is more the time for waiver-wire magic than an outright overhaul. I was in a similar position last year with my roto league, and pulled off a 1st place finish.

A quick note

I've noticed a few people work their way to this blog by searching for "daily pitcher rankings." It was initially my idea to do this, but it's too time-consuming an endeavor given that I have a dissertation to write and a wedding to plan.

I hope to develop some kind of pitcher ranking system, but it will take some time to work out. In the meantime, I'll keep on with analysis that's less involved on a day-in, day-out level (but no less insightful or statistically rigorous).

In Love with the NL

Chances are you've heard or been told that, all else being equal, you should target a National League pitcher. I've heard it a thousand times, and it makes some intuitive sense. There's no designated hitter in the NL, and that spot is replaced by a pitcher. That itself should make things easier. There's also the opinion- and I have no idea if the data backs this up, or if there even is data- that NL lineups favor defense in general, and have a tendency to trade offense because of it (essentially, no NL team would put David Ortiz at 1st base like the Sox did for half of 2004).

But it's one thing for an assertion to sound good, and another thing for the data to back it up. I've been curious about this for some time, so

I did a little digging. I used my standard pitching data set- all starters who threw at least 100 innings in a season from 2006 to 2010. I assigned each pitcher a designation of "NL" as a binary variable- a "0" if the pitcher spent the season in the AL, and "1" if the pitcher spent the season in the NL. Pitchers who were traded between leagues were ignored (this happened roughly 30 times out of 300 pitcher-seasons); if they were traded but stayed in the same league they were still included.

I took a look at all potential fantasy-relevant stats here: Wins, Losses, ERA, WHIP, Ks, Fantasy points (with and without W-L record) and VUM (my aggregate roto value measure). I did a simple mean comparison (independent t-test, for those who care) for those stats, divided by AL or NL.

This may surprise you, but the only stat that was affected by a pitcher's league was wins. Losses, ERA, WHIP, etc., were all essentially the same. And even in the case of wins, the difference was only about .67 per season. AND the difference favored the AL. It breaks down like this:

Not a whole lot of difference there. Any given year, it doesn't really matter what league a pitcher is in. You should draft a good pitcher, and not necessarily an AL or NL pitcher.

OK, full confession. There is one crucial oversight with this analysis. This treats every season by every pitcher as an independent event. The assumption is that, essentially, who a pitcher is has no bearing on performance. (For example) Each of Roy Halladay's seasons from 2006 to 2010 is treated as a discrete event, and might as well have been 2009 stats for five different pitchers as far as the analysis is concerned. This is, as the Brits might say, twaddle.

There are several ways to handle this. I chose to give each pitcher an ID number and run a MANOVA (multiple analysis of variance). I used ID as a fixed factor and NL/AL as a random factor. Essentially, the analysis controls for the fact that dependent variables might be related, assumes that who a pitcher is (i.e. his ability/skill set) doesn't change, and that the league a pitcher is in is essentially random.

What we find is, unsurprisingly, who a pitcher is matters. A large amount of the variance is accounted for simply by a pitcher's skill set. But once that is controlled for, whether or not a pitcher is in the NL matters. It matters for everything- all relevant 5x5 stats, and any aggregate measure thereof (points or VUM). For any given pitcher, it is preferable from a fantasy standpoint that he plays in the NL.

So what does this all mean?

It means that your #1 concern in targeting a pitcher should be who that pitcher is. A good pitcher is a good pitcher, so target a good pitcher. However, if a pitcher changes leagues, then a move to the NL should raise his value while a move to the AL should lower it. Similarly, if you have two comparably-skilled pitchers, each in a different league, the NL pitcher is to be slightly preferred.

Basically, it's better to have Justin Verlander than Clayton Richard. But if Richard gets traded to the AL, he's worth less. If Verlander gets traded to the NL, he's worth more. And if the choice is between Lincecum and Sabathia, Lincecum is slightly preferable.

My 2011 in Fantasy Baseball: Week 3

An up-and-down and altogether frustrating week....

Bernie's Bombers (H2H points)

Standings: 1-1, T-2nd in Cheese

Last Matchup: L, 285-310

MVP of the Matchup: Jhoulys Chacin, 9.0 IP, 6H, 2BB, 0ER, 7K, CG, SO, W, 38 pts

Goat of the Matchup: Rain delays. I lost 6 batter-games to rainouts, which may well have been the margin of victory for my opponent since none were made up this week as double-headers. If I had to pick a player, though, it's Tim Hudson (6.0 IP, 7H, 2BB, 5ER, 2K, L, -2 pts).

The Skinny: I lost quite a few points to rain delays, and that put me in a hole I never quite dug out from. I did make a mistake benching Drew for Tejada, but I wanted one more week to ensure Drew would stay healthy. Markakis/Victorino/McCutchen all had down weeks, and benching one of them for Span instead would have helped. Those two moves would have been enough to overcome the rainouts, of which my opponent only had one. Well, hindsight is 20/20 and all that. This week introduced me to a lot of the uncertainty inherent in setting weekly lineups- I also started Edwin Jackson because he was predicted to have two starts, but the ChiSox ended up starting Humber instead of skipping him. Looking at the scoreboard, it looks like 300 points in a week is the gold standard for a better-than-average shot at winning.

Looking Ahead: I've got a bunch of potential 2-start pitchers this week in Tim Hudson, Liriano, Zambrano, and Edwin Jackson. I'm on the fence about Liriano- his start against the Royals was a fluke, since it's hard to give up 5 earned runs in an inning when the ball never gets behind anyone. On the other hand, that defense isn't going to change anytime soon. The O's and the Tribe look like good medicine though, so I'll probably stick with him. The other debate is whether to start Zambrano or slot him into an RP spot- I'm leaning towards the latter until Boston starts winning enough to give Paplebon save opportunities.

There's also a question about what to do with Victor Martinez. He tweaked his groin and already missed a game, but he's mostly a DH so I don't think he'll miss much time for it. I only get 5 games from Cano, but I think I'll still start him. Markakis sits until his bat heats up some; he was drafted because he's a high-average doubles hitter and if he's not doing that he's not getting points. So it looks like a lineup of V-Mart/Butler/Cano/Beltre/Drew/McCutchen/Victorino/Span/Morrison/Roberts, with Weaver/Liriano/T Hudson/Jackson/Chacin/Zambrano/Perez pitching. My opponent this week is my friend Alex, who's having to start Hundley at catcher instead of Mauer. His only two-starter is Kuroda, so I should do OK with this one unless Liriano really gets knocked around and my bats go ice-cold. I picked up Ogando this week, dropping Peavy to clear out the DL for Zimmerman. I don't need him, so I'm debating dropping him for Lowrie in anticipation of increased playing time. The 2B eligibility would make Roberts (or Cano for the right price) moveable, and the SS qualification would allow me to drop Tejada.

Cubbie Blues (5x5 roto)

Standings: 4th place (63.5/100, 9 back)

Weekly Line: 64/261 (.245 BA), 38 R, 9 HR, 27 RBI, 9 SB, 54 IP, 54 H, 21 ER, 21 BB, 47 K, 2W, 7 Sv, 3.50 ERA, 1.39 WHIP

MVP of the Week: Either Jay Bruce (7/20, 6R, 2HR, 3RBI) or Logan Morrison (6/19, 3R, 2HR, 5RBI, 1SB)

Goat of the Week: Either Brett Gardner (1/13, 1R) or the aforementioned Tim Hudson

The Skinny: Well, Mauer went down. I should have seen that coming. I had to replace him with Russell Martin, though Arencibia, Avila and Buck are all out there as well. I somehow managed to gain both points and ground on first place while dropping in the standings, but that can't happen every week. I continue to find myself in a big WHIP hole, and I need more K/W per start. I'm also clearly going to need to pick up RBI, so I may have to pick up a 4/5/6 hitter since most of my guys hit 1-4 in the order. My BA plummeted this week, but it was also an off week for a lot of people. .245 is about as bad a week as I can have with this lineup.

In more mundane news, I dropped Nishioka to move Mauer to the DL and picked up Russell Martin so I have a catcher. I also dropped Buchholz for Jaime Garcia(!), swapped out League's mediocre save opportunities for a suddenly-OK Lyon at closer, and dropped WHIP-killer Dempster for Sam Fuld. I don't need more SB, and I like Dempster, but I want to run up SB early in the season.

Looking Ahead: I still need to make a move with one of my infielders. A Gonzales/Uggla/Prado/Drew/Rollins/Walker/Butler is one person too many, given the quality of all of them. Hopefully I can get a pitcher out of the deal (Drew-for-Kuroda might be OK). Fuld essentially replaces Gardner; they're both SB guys but Fuld is hitting right now and Gardner can't buy time on first base. I'm not too concerned with the week-to-week of a roto league, especially in April, since there's plenty of time for things to even out. I should come out on top in the long run.

Cubs Expatriot (H2H categories)

Standings: 15-4-1, 1st in East

Last Matchup: 5-4-1 (50R/6HR/24RBI/9SB/.2915 vs 38/8/34/1/.2500; 45K/4W/4Sv/4.797 ERA/1.203 WHIP vs. 52/3/4/3.676/1.211)

MVP of the Matchup: Either Daniel Hudson (10Ks) or Chipper Jones (6/16, 4R, 2HR, 6RBI)

Goat of the Matchup: Liriano again 5.0 IP, 8H, 1BB, 7ER, 4K, 12.60 ERA, 1.80 WHIP

The Skinny: I got into an ERA/WHIP hole with Liriano and couldn't quite dig myself out, at least not with ERA. I ended up having to stream Lowe/Floyd/Pineda/Ogando over the weekend on the theory that I was already losing ERA/WHIP/K/W, and so I couldn't get hurt (only helped). It worked for two of them (a combined 24.1 IP, 22 H, 9BB, 14 ER, 13 K, 5.178 ERA, 1.274 WHIP, 2 W). But really, I was fortunate my opponent started Bumgarner twice. I'm clearly having trouble getting RBI in this league, too.

I dropped an injured Furcal to pick up Peralta, but ended up punting the SS position to stream pitchers by the weekend. I also dropped Jordan Zimmerman as part of that effort. I can get him or someone better back. I also dropped the shaky Ryan Franklin to pick up David Murphy and his increased playing time, and used an open roster spot to take a flyer on Sizemore.

I also consummated my first trade on any team this season, sending Hiroki Kuroda (whom I got off waivers) and Andre Ethier off for Felix Hernandez. I would rather have traded two pitchers to make this happen, but I couldn't. In any event, I have plenty of OF depth without Ethier (Braun, BJ Upton, Tabata, Rasmus, Pierre, Murphy, Sizemore), though I'll miss the average and RBI a little. I didn't entirely follow my early-season trading rules, but I did enough that I'm OK with it. I wanted to pick up a pitcher I could keep on my roster who was better than Marcum, and I ended up getting a new #1 pitcher. With a top-3 of Felix/Weaver/Marcum, I should be in good shape for pitching. That I didn't have to compromise my hitting too much to do it helps a lot.

Looking Ahead: I still have a surplus of pitching, but not as much as before. I have Felix/Weaver/Marcum as permanents, and Liriano/D Hudson could fit the bill as well. My last two spots are Pineda and Ogando, one of whom will get dropped for Morrow and the other can be a streaming spot. On top of that, I still have four closers with Lyon now sitting on waivers after being dropped as part of the trade. I may drop Ogando for him, but I'm not sure if hoarding closers is the best strategy right now.

Aybar comes off the DL this week, and though SS production is mostly gravy it will help. What I need are RBI, so we'll see what I can do about that. My next opponent has a lot of power, plus two starts each from Halladay, Zambrano, Correia, Wood and potentially Lewis. My only two-starters are Liriano and Marcum, so this will be a tough one. I'll likely take average/steals, he may well take HR/RBI, runs is a toss-up. The pitching will depend on how well I stream, but I should at least take saves (he's only got Marmol and Feliz). I predict another 5-4-1 kind of week.

Cubbie Blues (7x7 roto)

Standings: 9th place (72/140, 33 pts back)

Weekly Line: 89/282 (.316 BA), 42 R, 18 2B, 11 HR, 39 RBI, 52 K, 12 SB; 32.2 IP, 37 H, 9 BB, 17 ER, 1 HR, 19 K, 2 QS, 2 W, 4.68 ERA, 1.41 WHIP.

MVP of the Week: Oddly enough, probably Aaron Hill (7/19, 3 R, 2 2B, 0 HR, 2 RBI, 4 K, 3 SB).

Goat of the Week: Liriano or Gardner. Take your pick.

The Skinny: So is Aaron Hill this year's Zobrist? Last year Zobrist had nowhere near the power he was supposed to have, but he ran a ton, struck out a bit, and had a mediocre average (until it tanked in the last month). To date, Hill is hitting .246 with 11 K and no bombs, but also has five steals. Which is to say, one fewer than Jose Reyes.

In other news, I am a fool for thinking Hamilton would stay healthy. I tried to see if I could move him for seventy-five cents on the dollar, but the best offer I got was I send Hamilton/Butler/Gardner for Ortiz/Zobrist/Carlos Pena. Given that it's a keeper league, I'd rather hold onto Hamilton, especially since replacing Butler with Pena drops my average from that roster spot in half. In the meantime, I added red-hot Johnny Gomes, who didn't come through for me last year, and dropped Cuddyer for Desmond Jennings. I'm treading water right now anyway, so I might as well stash him and keep him.

Looking Ahead: Well, there's Jennings. I'm mostly treading water- I was in 4th place for all of a few hours at one point, but any gains like that are quickly undone. I'm just trying to continue to put a better roster together and hope something pans out.

One More Time....

Being too tired to grade papers this morning, I decided in the spur of the moment to join one more 10-team 5x5 roto league that just had its draft this morning. I did this because a) as I said, I was too tired to grade having woken up at 3am without falling back asleep, b) I wanted to see how an in-season draft might unfold, and c) I wanted to try out VUM rankings as a draft strategy, something I didn't have at my disposal during my last roto draft.

The results were interesting. Injured players fell a lot, of course. Some rankings changed based on in-season injuries, etc., in interesting ways- Matt Holliday showed up at #75 in the draft window! Good early performers were overvalued, but not as much as I might thought. And the hot young commodities (Britton, Herrera) were often chosen over more established stars. Since I have the time, here's a long-form draft recap. I got my favorite pick- #10 in the first round- and used my VUM rankings to guide my picks for the most part, after adjusting for injuries and such.

My team is "Ron Santo's Black Cat," after the famous feline that precipitated the collapse of the 1969 Cubs and made the Miracle Mets possible. I'll be adding this team to the "My 2011 in Fantasy" posts, because those weren't already long enough or anything. My choices are italicized.

Round 1

Tulowitzki, Pujols, Halladay, Hanley Ramirez, Votto, Crawford, A-Rod, Braun, Longoria, Miguel Cabrera

I thought Tulowitzki was an odd choice at #1, though not horrible. If he plays 150+ games this season and doesn't have a brutal cold streak, I can (kinda) defend the pick. He could well outperform Han-Ram. Halladay was questionable here because of the depth of pitching, and A-Rod may or may not be worth this pick. I also thought Braun at 8 was a steal. Cabrera was the top rated player on my board at this point.

Round 2

Adrian Gonzales, Cano, Kemp, Howard, Teixeira, Fielder, CarGo, Lincecum, Cruz, Wright

I then grabbed Gonzales on the wrap-around not only because he was the next-highest rated player, but the pick helps solidify batting average/power/RBI early on. I mean, I can easily play both, and with Pujols and Votto off the board too I thought I could cause a run on 1B. This seems a little high to take Howard/Tex/Fielder (just a little), but that's what I wanted to make happen. Can't argue with Kemp/Cruz/CarGo the way they've been playing

Round 3

Jered Weaver, Pedroia, Felix Hernandez, Youkilis, Reyes, Cliff Lee, Kershaw, Justin Upton, Hamilton, Jon Lester

I actually think Weaver is worth being picked about here relative to the other pitchers. The same guy drafted Hamilton and Longoria, but he wasn't in the room. I don't know who joins a draft and bails immediately. I wanted a pitcher in the first five rounds to anchor my staff, and with the clear early run on pitching I needed to do it with this pick or the next. Given who was left, Lester seemed like the best choice. I don't think you need to take pitching in the first three rounds, but sometimes you have to adjust to how other people are drafting. If pitching is going early, then you have to get yours.

Round 4

Jose Bautista, Ryan Zimmerman, Haren, Josh Johnson, Choo, Verlander, Kinsler, Uggla, Konerko, Weeks

I thought about taking Holliday (I was looking for him), but foolishly waited thinking his #75 ranking (which would preclude him from coming up in the draft window) would help him last until my next pick. Not quite. I ended up taking Bautista to solidify my power base along with some 3B/OF flexibility. This meant any power beyond this point is gravy- I should already have nearly 120 bombs. The positional runs at this point intrigued me: we had one on first, then one on pitching, and now one on 2B. It's pretty early for Uggla and Weeks, but Kinsler might be an inspired choice here.

Round 5

Holliday, Rasmus, Werth, Sabathia, Mariano Rivera, Mauer, Ichiro Suzuki, McCutchen, Beltre

And down goes Holliday. C'est la vie. Mo Rivera is an eyebrow-raiser here, as is Mauer and his bi-lateral leg weakness- not that catchers are hard on their legs or anything. It's too early for Rasmus, too, though he's certainly worth a pick in just a few rounds given how he's been playing. Beltre gives me another solid option at 3B, and should provide some more RBI. I would also trade him straight-up for another 3B from Mr. "I-didn't-come-to-the-draft-and-have-Longoria-and-Zimmerman," assuming he bothers to show up between now and October.

Round 6

Hunter Pence, Heyward, Phillips, Berkman, Hanson, McCann, Cain, Victor Martinez, Sandoval, Butler

This might have been my first mistake, though Pence was one of the four or five highest-rated players left. He never seems like an enticing option to me, but I wanted to stick with my strategy. Sandoval and Berkman are real head-scratchers, and this sort of thing makes me want to stick to private leagues. I continue to let other people take catchers, since they all rank so low using VUM. I'll let someone else take Cain with the 57th pick, though I was hoping to snag him with one of my next ones. I remain unimpressed with how everyone is drafting- no really stellar picks besides Braun at 8, Holliday at 41, and the no-brainer of Pujols at 2.

Round 7

Neftali Feliz, Rollins, Posey, Ethier, Bell, Rios, Asdrubal Cabrera, Aramis Ramirez, Carpenter, BJ Upton

Someone likes Cabrera's hot start a little too much. This is about where i expected closers to start going, even though I wouldn't do it. I like Ethier here as well. BJ Upton is once again my highest-rated player available, and I hope the power/speed is enough to take his .265 average.

Round 8

Jacoby Ellsbury, Utley, Street, Oswalt, Jimenez, Marmol, Michael Young, Bruce, Kendrick, Chacin.

As much as I like Chacin, and as much as he helped my points team last night with a shutout, I can't defend taking him here. Meanwhile, the run on closers continues, and I laugh and bide my time. Kendrick jumps up way too much; even if he keeps this up he's not worth the pick. I regret taking Ellsbury- I don't think he was one of my top 10 players left- but I thought I could wait on them and I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to wait on other stolen-base guys.

Round 9

Russell Martin, Victorino, Price, Carlos Santana, Pierre, Jeter, Wilson, Alexei Ramirez, Morneau, Chris Young

Between Upton and Young, I now have two versions of the same player and have probably used up any batting average cushion I have. Still, 20/20 is nice and I may be able to move some power later because of it. Russell Martin may end up a top-6 catcher after the Mauer injury, but come on. Just because he might be the best catcher left doesn't mean he has to go here. The Pierre pick illustrates why I took Ellsbury- I would rather have Pierre in round 10/11, but if I can't get him there I really have to reach for speed. As it turned out, that would have been the case.

Round 10

Martin Prado, Latos, Broxton, Chris Perez, Greinke, Bourn, Gallardo, Andrus, Quentin, Tabata

Another overvalued start in Tabata. I like him to be a top-50 OF, and maybe top-40. But a top-75 hitter is another issue entirely. Maybe next year, but not this year. Tabata is on two of my teams, and he may help me win them, but that's because I took him in the 20's. Prado is a bit of a panic move, but I wanted some average back, the flexibility (2B/3B/OF) helps, and I thought I could wait on the guys I had above him. I liked other 2B better, and with the earlier run (eight off the board already) I was sure I would get someone else later on. Less so with Prado.

Rounds 11/12

Logan Morrison, Castro, Zobrist, Delmon Young, Stephen Drew, Stanton, Valverde, Jaime Garcia, Hamels, Soria, Scherzer, Kendrys Morales, Harang, Matt Harrison, Liriano, Gio Gonzales, Rajai Davis, Polanco, Edwin Jackson, Beckham.

I jump for joy when Soria falls to round 11. Not bad. I start taking pitching, because a) I only have Lester up to now, and b) eventually, the rest of them are going to run out of Aaron Harangs and Matt Harrisons to take. I like Logan Morrison too, but not this early. There's adjusting after the season starts, and there's overreacting.

Rounds 13/14

Napoli, Nunez, Tim Hudson, Cordero, Kimbrel, Hart, Hunter, Masterson, Granderson, Marcum, Gardner, Wandy Rodriguez, Romero, Cahill, McGehee, Abreau, Paplebon, Huff, Gaby Sanchez, Stubbs.

I actually like Granderson, McGehee, Huff, and Stubbs here. But when there's enough reaching early on, others have to fall and I can only take so many of them. Like Shaun Marcum. If Marcum finishes worse than Masterson, Harrison, Harang, Jackson, and Chacin, I'll eat my hat. Gardner allows me to stop looking for steals, if he ever manages to get on base again. I don't really like him, but he bats leadoff for the Yankees and runs. Somehow, this always convinces me to take him on my category teams right around here.

Rounds 15/16

Alfonso Soriano, Narveson, Dickey, Billingsley, Roberts, Kelly Johnson, Walker, Betemit, Lilly, Aaron Hill, Kuroda, Francisco Rodriguez, Fowler, Beckett, Lind, Fuld, Markakis, Ogando, Fuentes.

Again with the early-season love. Narveson? Ogando? Fuld? The run on third-tier second basemen forces me to take Hill here- I was hoping for one of Roberts/Johnson/Walker with these picks.

Rounds 17/18/19

Gomes, Hanrahan, Ortiz, Shields, Freese, Nathan, Axford, Putz, Anderson, Jonathan Sanchez, Ian Desmond, Wells, Bloomquist, Carlos Lee, Alvarez, Gordon, Figgins, Adam Jones, Yuenel Escobar, John Danks, Reynolds, Drabek, Pagan, Moreland, Britton, Buchholz, Crisp, Burnett, Soto, Andrew Bailey

The run on relievers forced me to take the injured Bailey, but I waited on him after Hanrahan/Nathan/Axford/Putz all went. He'll have the job once he returns. I don't like Sanchez or Desmond too much, but Sanchez was the best pitcher available and Desmond the best SS, and I needed an SS. I start to wonder if this is a keeper league, with Drabek/Moreland/Britton all going here.

Rounds 20/21/22

Daniel Hudson, Furcal, Ike Davis, Francoeur, LaRoche, Arroyo, Franklin, Colby Lewis, Myers, Farnsworth, Montero, Lowe, Hellickson, Span, Wade Davis, Morrow, Guerrero, Avila, Stewart, Brandon Lyon, Erick Aybar, Nolasco, Theriot, Walden, Pena, Coghlan, Jordan Zimmerman, Sizemore, De La Rosa, Holland

Crap! I forgot about Walden. I should have taken him earlier. Still, I like Hudson, and Lyon seems to have righted himself and will give me cheap saves in the 21st round. I pick up Aybar in case Desmond justifies my lack of faith, I also only have one SS-eligible. At this point, I'm clearly waiting on a catcher.

Rounds 23/24/25

Rauch, Byrd, Swisher, Escobar, Zambrano, Hughes, Herrera, Storen, Bumgarner, Wieters, CJ Wilson, Derrek Lee, Gregg, Beltran, Sean Rodriguez, Johan Santana, Wood, Bay, Ruiz, Ervin Santana, Ben Francisco, Tomlin, Snider, Aviles, Dempster, Cuddyer, Posada, Headly, Scott, Contreras

There's no such thing as a bad pick this late, though Hughes comes close. I finally take Wieters in case some bastard decides he wants a second catcher in the late rounds, and it was either him or Kurt Suzuki. Wilson is a value pitcher this late, and Contreras will get me saves until Lidge comes back. I wanted to take a late-round flyer on Herrera somewhere in here, but got beaten to it. Someone didn't get the news that Posada died three years ago.

Overall, I'm not entirely pleased with this roster, but I did use my VUM rankings for the first 18-20 rounds, which was the point of it all. My roster looks like this:

C: Wieters

1B: Cabrera

2B: Prado

3B: Bautista

SS: Desmond

MI: Hill

CI: Adrian Gonzales

OF: Pence, BJ Upton, Ellsbury, Chris Young, Gardner

Util: Beltre

BE: Aybar

SP: Lester, Scherzer, Marcum, Kuroda, Sanchez, Daniel Hudson, CJ Wilson

RP: Soria, Lyon, Contreras

DL: Bailey

I should do OK. Somehow, ESPN has decided they know how I would have played the season to now and put me in 6th place, as if I really would have started 21 games to this point. That irks me, especially since it's put me in a retroactive ERA/WHIP hole. I have to trust that the rest of the season will pan out, since that's how I drafted. Game on.

Setting Lineups in Daily Leagues

There's always the temptation to play matchups in daily leagues. And to the extent you possess correct additional information (such as batter-vs-pitcher stats) it helps. But it is possible to overdo this kind of guessing. And, generally speaking, your best bet is to play your best players any given day.

This post is about to get a little wonky, so stay with me. I'll try and walk through this as simply and clearly as possible.

Let's simplify the situation: we'll say it's a 5x5 roto league, and a player can have either a good day or a bad day. We'll call a good day when a player contributes to two or more statistics (nets a run, RBI, home run, steal, or raises your team average) and a bad day when he fails to do so. We'll use a binary outcome measure, so a good day has a value of 1 and a bad day a value of 0.

Further, we'll simplify the situation to a choice of two players. Player A has a good day 60% of the time, and Player B has a good day 50% of the time. That means, any given day, Player A has an expected value of .6 (60% of 1) and Player B an expected value of .5- this is what you'd expect, on average, starting either player on any given day.

In a vacuum, Player A is better. Playing him any given day is a better move than using Player B. But 40% of the time, Player A gets you nothing. On those days, it might be better to use Player B. But how often would you have to be right to switch players day by day, rather than simply stick with player A? How often do you have to guess correctly to have a season value better than .6?

First off, let's assume the success of each player is independent- Player A's good days don't have any effect on whether or not Player B has a good day. In that case, 30% of the time it doesn't matter who you play, since both Player A and Player B will have good days (0.6*0.5=0.3). And 20% of the time, it doesn't matter because both Player A and Player B will have bad days (0.4*0.5=0.2; one minus the probability of a good day for each player, or 1-0.6 for A and 1-0.5 for B). The remaining 50% of the time, only one of Player A and Player B will have good days.

[Before we continue, I need to define an expected payoff. An expected payoff is simply the sum of the quantity of an outcome multiplied by the probability that outcome will happen for all outcomes. For example, let's say you have a raffle of 100 tickets, and you buy one for a dollar. The prize for the ticket drawn is $200. That means if your ticket is drawn, you net $199 ($200-$1) and if not, you simply lose one dollar. There's a 1% chance your ticket is the one out of one hundred that wins (1/100=.01). The other 99% of the outcomes, you don't win anything (1-.01=.99). The expected payoff for the raffle is then .01($199)+.99(-$1)= $1. So you can expect each one dollar ticket to net you roughly one dollar. If you think this through, that makes sense. If you bought all 100 tickets, you'd spend $100 but be guaranteed the $200 prize, so for each dollar you spend you get that plus one more dollar back. Hence, the expected payoff is $1.]

Continuing with the problem at hand, for half of the days in question your payoff is 0.3. The remaining 50% of the games, you have to guess right often enough to exceed a total expected value of 0.6 (which is what you would get just playing Player A every day). That means you have to get at least an additional 0.3 out of the remaining 50% of games.

Since you have to get an expected .3 points out of 50% of the games, the ratio is .3/.5, or 60%. You have to guess right 60% of the time on the remaining half of the games just to break even. If you have enough information to tilt the odds that far in your favor, then bully for you. But chances are, you don't. In that case, you are going to guess right closer to 50% of the time, in which case your expected payoff for that half of games is 0.25. That means, if you try to switch players based on matchups, your expected payoff for a season is 0.55, which is significantly worse than the 0.6 you'd get just starting player A every day.

These numbers get more extreme the bigger the difference between the two players. If player A had a success rate of 80%, then 40% of the time they both have good days and 10% of the time they both have bad days (giving you 0.4 for half the games). For the remaining half, you'd then have to guess right 80% of the time by the same math. If player A has a success rate of 80% and Player B has a success rate of 40%, then 32% of the time they both have good days and 12% of the time they both have bad days. In that case, you would be guessing on the remaining 56% of the games. To get all the way up to .8, you'd have to guess right 86% of the time for the remaining 56% of games. If you're only going to guess right 50% of the time, then your total payoff for those remaining games is .28, leaving you with a payoff of 0.5.

OK, that's a lot of numbers. I get it. It might be hard to follow. There's a lot of probability theory inherent in this analysis- expected payoffs, etc. But the basic idea is this- if you have two players, you generally speaking have to be better, and often much better, than 50% right on your start/sit decisions to have a meaningful increase in production from playing matchups to make it a better strategy than simply starting the better of the two players. The better one of the players is, or the bigger the discrepancy between the two players, the harder it gets to improve upon simply playing the better player every day.

Setting a weekly lineup in a points league

In many (I would say manly) H2H leagues, you have to set a weekly lineup. This is always frustrating and, even in the best cases, a bit of a guessing game. You have to decide who is going to be most productive that week, and if there are any reasons you may need to pre-emptively sit a player.

As a case in point, I had to decide yesterday before there were any updates whether to start or sit Ryan Zimmerman. He was listed as day-to-day with an abdominal muscle strain, but it was an open question as to whether or not he'd play at all or hit the DL. I sat him, and that turned out to be the right move.

In general, I preach caution with injuries when weekly lineups are involved. There are three possibilities when there isn't much information. Either a) the player is fine and plays all games, with or without some cost to production due to the injury, b) he plays a few games but less than the full compliment, either because he's held out for a few games or he aggravates the injury, or c) he's held out the entire week and possibly placed on the DL. In all of these scenarios, with the exception of a best-case a-scenario, there is some lost production. So generally, I prefer to sit the player.

But even without such frustrations, the decision to start/sit a player for a given week can be a tough one outside of the obvious studs. Fortunately, points leagues lend themselves to some easy analysis, as long as you make a fe

w assumptions. Here's how I do it.

I make a list of all my players in excel, one for each matchup (e.g. one line for player x against the first team he plays, another for the second, etc.). I list the number of games against each opponent as well, and then create a space for every outcome assigned a point (e.g. hits, walks, strikeouts, etc). I then head over to Baseball Reference and search each player, and get his results versus a current team's pitching staff. I then plug in all the numbers given at the aggregate line at the bottom, as well as a few extras (plate appearances, at-bats, and OPS mainly).

After all that is done, I set up a formula that calculates the number of points from the aggregate line. There is some bias- you can't add in runs or steals this way- but you can either mentally adjust for that, or ignore it. I ignore it, but that's because in my H2H points league I largely ignored players whose value is greatly influenced by steals. In any event, this bias is the same for all players.

After that, there are two more steps. I divide total points by plate appearances against the pitching staff to get points per PA. I then multiply th

at by the expected number of plate appearances per week, which is number of games times average number of plate appearances per game. This number depends on where they hit in the lineup, so I also make a note of where in the order a player tends to bat. Plate appearances per game varies a little year-to-year, so digging for current data is a chore. I use the data from 2008, which is a little outdated, but again you're applying the same bias to all players (so all your projections are off by the same amount, give or take). I use this site from fantasy baseball sherpa, but if you have more recent data I recommend that instead (the numbers are PA per season, so divide by 162). So you have (xPts/PA)*(Games)*(PA/Game), which gives you an estimated number of points for the matchup. You then add together all the lines for the same player, and you're done. You pick the best expected point totals to fill out your lineup.

When doing this, I also make a note as to whether or not a certain player does particularly well/poorly against certain pitchers, and check to see if those pitchers are expected to start during the matchup as well. I don't take those numbers out necessarily, since there's often some on-the-fly adjustments to a rotation (see the uncertainty about whether or not the White Sox will use fifth starter Humber this week or skip him because of the off day), but I do make a note of it. Personally, I use Tristan Cockcroft's Fantasy Forecaster over at ESPN. If a player looks like he's going to get a favorable/unfavorable matchup, I make a mental adjustment.

This is a lot, so it would probably help if I gave an example. This week, I was deciding between starting Logan Morrison and Denard Span in one of my OF spots. First up, I look at Morrison's numbers. He has three games each against the Braves and Phillies. So I head over to baseball reference and look up Morrison's numbers versus Atlanta:

It's not a big sample, but he has 25 PA, 4 hits, 1 double, 1 HR, 1 RBI, 2 BB, and 6K for a .588 OPS. Plugging that into my league's points formula yields ten points, which divided by 25 plate appearances gives 0.4 points per plate appearance. Since he's batting around the middle of the order, that's 4.25 PA per game. The final line is (0.4 points/PA)*(3 games)*(4.25 PA/game) is an estimated 5.1 points for the matchup. I also make a note that he'll likely face Hanson, against whom he has good numbers, and Hudson, whom he doesn't. I then repeat this process for his games against the Phillies, noting he faces Blanton/Hamels/Oswalt, all pitchers he fares well against. That works out to an estimated 11.41 points, with four favorable matchups and one unfavorable.

I then move on to Denard Span. He has two games against the Royals and four against the Rays. His numbers against those teams work out to an estimated 12.1 points for the week using the same basic math, adjusting for a) number of games, and b) the fact that Span hits leadoff. There's no notes on the Royals matchup, since he doesn't have extreme numbers against either Hochevar or Davies. Against the Rays, he's horrible versus Price and OK versus Niemann, with nothing notable about Davis or Hellickson. That's 1 moderately favorable matchup and one bad matchup.

The points work out pretty similar, with Span expected to score roughly 6% more against the teams they face generically. This makes me lean a little towards Span. However, since they have an equal number of unfavorable matchups but Morrison has more favorable ones, I end up going with Morrison since he's more likely to outperform the prediction.

It's a time-consuming process, but well worth doing once per week. Obviously, you're going to start your studs every week. But around the margins- deciding who will be the 4th OF or how to cover for someone you need to take out- it helps immensely. This week, after deciding to sit Zimmerman (necessitating Beltre at 3B), it gave me a quick and easy reference to decide who should be my UTIL player- Roberts (19.34), Span (12.1), or Drew (16.23). Roberts won out pretty easily. The same calculus also made it easier to decide whether to be conservative with Drew (16.23) and sit him for Tejada (19.37), since Drew is a candidate to re-aggrivate his strain. Since Tejada has the better matchup anyway, Tejada won out.

My 2011 in Fantasy Baseball: Week 2

I've spent this week seeing if I can pry Longoria loose in a few of my leagues from an impatient owner. So far, no luck. Anyway, here's the latest from my four main leagues:

Bernie's Bombers (H2H Points)

Standings: 1-0, T-1st in Cheese Division (The LM is from Milwaukee)

Last Matchup: W, 573-419

MVP of the Matchup: Three starts from Jered Weaver certainly doesn't hurt: 20.2 IP, 9H, 9BB, 27K, 2 ER, 3W, 0L, 85 Points. If we want to account for that, Billy Butler and Shane Victorino each netted 51 points apiece with a combined 28/69, 15 R, 5 2B, 1 3B, 3 HR, 13 RBI, 8 BB, 8 K, 2 SB.

Goat of the Matchup: Francisco Liriano. 9.1 IP, 8H, 8BB, 8ER, 8K, 0W, 2L, -2 points

The Skinny: The RP-eligible starter experiment didn't work as well as I'd thought it might, with Stauffer (0 pts) and Zambrano (19 pts) being outdone by Paplebon (16 pts) and Perez (34 pts). The better combo would hav been Zambrano and Perez, but I was scared off by the number of good starts my opponent was going to get. It didn't matter either way, but it's a good lesson to learn.

I made a few transactions for the next matchup. Since Bay is behind schedule in his rehab I dropped him for Russell Martin and his hot hand, since rostering two catchers worked OK for me last year. I ended up turning right around and dropping him for Kyle Drabek since I like his start this week vs. the Mariners. I also picked up Edwin Jackson, since it looks like he'll start twice against the Angels and A's. I'm concerned about his consistency, but he's been looking good so far and it's not like I'll end up regretting dropping Stauffer for anybody right now.

I've been offered a few trades, but nothing worth taking yet. I thought I'd try and pry loose an injured Longoria by offering up Beltre and Paplebon, but no dice. I've been going back and forth with the owner of Bernie Lomax on a few ideas. First, he wanted Cano for Weeks/Ike Davis/Volquez, but that doesn't interest me. I offered up Beltre, Daniel Hudson, and Paplebon for Adrian Gonzales and Joakim Soria, though I didn't really need Soria. I knew I was offering too little for too much, but I did it anyway. Sometimes these lowball offers work. He came back Mark Reynolds and Ike Davis in exchange for Zimmerman, but I abhor Mark Reynolds in all but 5x5 leagues, and even then I don't like him. I built my roster carefully, and with small active rosters and weekly lineups I don't need to do too much tweaking right now. The only players he has that I really want are A-Gon, Fielder, Gallardo, Soria, and Neftali Feliz- they are the only people who could regularly crack my active lineup.

Looking Ahead: My next matchup is at 103 Years Isn't That Long (a fellow Cubs Fan). He's going to get two good starts out of Marcum (@Pit, @Was) and perhaps two good ones from Brett Myers (CHC, SD). He's also got 7 games apiece from Miguel Cabrera and Matt Holliday, but Furcal might not play much. He only got 422 points last time, so I'm not too worried. I've only got 7 games from one player (V-Mart) and one 2-start pitcher (E-Jax), but overall my week looks good. I'm waiting to see if I have to bench Zimmerman, since he's day-to-day with an abdominal strain, the same injury that kept Stephen Drew out for a week. Otherwise, I'm going VMart/Butler/Cano/Beltre/Drew/McCutchen/Victorino/Markakis/Logan Morrison/Brian Roberts for hitters, benching Span since it looks like a bad week for him. For pitchers, I'm going Weaver (@CWS), Tim Hudson (FLA), E-Jax (OAK, LAA), Drabek (@SEA), Paplebon and Perez. The last spot comes down to Liriano (KC), Chacin (CHC), or Daniel Hudson (SF). The OPS numbers say Liriano, but Chacin has the better SWIP against his opponent.

Cubbie Blues (5x5 Roto)

Standings: 2nd place (65 points out of 100, 11.5 back)

Weekly Line: 87/311 (.280), 37 R, 10 HR, 40 RBI, 9 SB, 55.1 IP, 47 K, 3 W, 4 Sv, 2.77 ERA, 1.12 WHIP

MVP of the Week: Probably Ryan Braun (12/34, 10 R, 4 HR, 8 RBI, .353 BA), though Tabata (13/38, 11 R, 2 HR, 2 RBI, 5 SB, .342 BA) has been justifying my preseason man-love.

Goat of the Week: A tossup between Coghlan (1/12, zeroes across the board), Brandon Lyon (2.1 IP, 1K, 1 Sv, 11.57 ERA, 3.43 WHIP).

The Skinny: Here's another league where I've been trying to pry loose Longoria, offering up Rollins/Jonathan Sanchez/Buchholz for Longoria/Huff/Grienke, since I have the room for injured players and the depth to make this work. I also tried to pry loose Kershaw for Scherzer and a closer, but that trade was pocket-vetoed. I dropped Coghlan for League in an effort to continue stocking up on closers, and swapped out Lyon for Walden. Lyon will likely be there anyway if I need him back, but if Walden's really closing he's the superior choice (especially since I bet Lyon has a short leash). Stephen Drew also hit the wire, so I picked him up and dropped Beckett. Last night's outing not withstanding (I wouldn't have run him out there anyway), I need to see more to keep him. There's plenty of pitching available in leagues like this.

Looking Ahead: My pitching is improved, though that first week put me in a pretty big WHIP/ERA hole. I only gained a point in each in spite of the 2.77/1.12 week. We'll see where I am with that after this week (Verlander TEX/@OAK, T Hudson FLA), though I'm losing faith in Dempster and may not start him @HOU. The lineup is weak, but he also has a .832 OPS against and is absolutely owned by everyone not named Bill Hall. I'm already on pace for 215 starts against a 200 start cap, so I can afford to be choosy for a bit. Meanwhile, I'm still looking to capitalize on my abundance of hitting if I can find a trade that I like. I know, I don't like to make April trades usually. But with Uggla/Prado/Drew/Rollins/Walker/Butler/A-Gon competing for six spots and a killer outfield set of Braun/McCutchen/Bruce/Gardner/Tabata/Morrison, I can trade for a second front-line starter without losing much production. Besides, right now my bench is almost all pitching with Verlander, Scherzer, T Hudson, D Hudson, Sanchez, Buchholz, Dempster starting and Cordero, Nunez, League and Walden closing. None of these are real drop candidates, but I'm not in love with the last three starters or any of my closers. I won't trade them just to be rid of them- it's a workable roster- but it leaves me in a good position to consolidate. There's enough pitching available on waivers (Jaime Garcia, the injured Cueto and Matusz, and plenty of young talent) that I can flip some pitcher/hitter combo for another top-flight bat or front line starter and have plenty I can replace the pitcher with.

Cubs Fans Fantasy Baseball (H2H category)

Standings: 10-0-0, 1st in West, 0 Games Back

Last Matchup: 10-0-0 (74 runs/16 HR/58 RBI/12 SB/.3144 BA vs. 49/8/46/10/.2733; 96 K/6 W/11 Sv/3.203 ERA/1.149 WHIP vs. 80/2/6/5.185/1.598).

MVP of the Matchup: Weaver again, though I also have Braun in this one too.

Goat of the Matchup: Probably Youkilis (4/27, 4R, 2 RBI, .148 BA) though Ryan Franklin has been underwhelming as expected (3.2 IP, 2K, 1 SV, 9.82 ERA, 2.18 WHIP).

The Skinny: I said 10-0-0 was never out of the question, and I was right. That was in part due to the matchup, though. I was only 4th overall in HR (5 back), 7th in RBI (11 back), 5th in Wins (2 back), 5th in ERA (.089 back), and only led runs, steals, and saves. But it's H2H and not Roto.

This is another league where I have an abundance of hitting and a ton of pitchers I like but don't love (save Weaver), so I've been trying to swing a trade. I actually have no bench hitters right now. I'm trying to upgrade my Furcal/Aybar tandem at SS, so I initally offered Furcal/Youkilis/Liriano for Tulo and Ellsbury- a pipe dream, but I thought it would start off negotiations. The owner doesn't want to part with Tulo, but countered with me giving him Chipper Jones and Tabata for Loney/Jennings/Beachy. It doesn't do what I want, but it's intriguing enough that I'm still pondering it. I like Tabata, but Jennings will be a prime replacement in June. I don't need Loney or Beachy, but they are intriguing enough as bench players. Meanwhile, I made a godfather offer of Furcal/Youkilis/Franklin/Jordan Zimmerman for Hanley Ramirez and Matt Cain. The guy has Reyes as well (whom I'd take for less value), but his 1B are LaRoche/Lee, he has Ubaldo and Grienke on the DL but no DL spot for them, and his only closer is Hanrahan. His needs and extras match up so well with mine that I should be able to swing something. But so far, no response.

I dropped Coghlan in this league to pick up Marcum and after Pineda's one start I dropped him to pick up Kuroda. I also added Chipper Jones after Aybar hit the DL; this is where Prado's flexibility comes in handy (I slid him from 3B to MI). How those two hit waivers, I don't know. But this gives me a staff of Weaver/Liriano/D Hudson/Kuroda/Marcum/Zimmerman (with Morrow on the DL) starting, and Paplebon/Putz/Street/Franklin/Contreras closing, so I certainly have room to make a move. I need to move some of these pitchers, but I won't trade for 75 cents on the dollar and I won't drop them. I just need to be patient; if I have five closers then the remaining 9 only have 25 among them (2.78 per team), so someone is going to realize they need one at some point.

Looking Ahead: Aside from trying to swing a trade that will get me another top-25 pitcher and hopefully a top-3 SS, I'm sitting pretty. My next matchup went 2-6-2 last week, and I should be able to take 8-10 categories again. His only closer is Brian Wilson, and while he has Lee/Sabathia/Oswalt/Price among his many other starters I feel confident that it won't be quite enough. Sabathia is only OK vs. TEX, Florida can hit Oswalt, and I'm guessing he runs out Shields/Baker/Blackburn more than he should. Moreover, his lineup is pretty bad. The only hitters he has that would absolutely start for my team are Cano, Stephen Drew, and Victorino. He has Rolen at 3B, Soto at C, Ike Davis/Ian Stewart at CI, and Theriot/Scutaro at MI. If I pummel him this week, I might be able to use that to pry loose one of his top four starters using Prado or Youkilis as bait. Something involving Youkilis and Franklin for Lee or Sabathia isn't out of the question.

Fantasy All Stars (7x7 roto)

Standings: 9th place (69.5 points out of 140, 17.5 points back)

Weekly Line: 90/299 (.301), 41 R, 18 2B, 3 HR, 29 RBI, 48 K, 13 SB, 49.0 IP, 2 HRA, 3 QS, 2 W, 4 Sv, 3.67 ERA, 1.27 WHIP.

MVP of the Week: Matt Kemp (14/32, 7 R, 1 HR, 4 2B, 4 RBI, 3K, 6 SB, .438 AVG) beats a stellar Billy Butler (13/33, 7 R, 2 HR, 3 2B, 5 RBI, 3K, 0SB, .394 Avg)

Goat of the Week: Can I interest you in a combined 0/15 from Scott and Cuddyer? Or a .172 average and 9K from Brett Gardner? How about ERAs above 6.50 and WHIPS above 1.50 from Way-Rod, Anibal Sanchez, and Liriano?

The Skinny: I knew I was going to have problems in this league, but the power outage is extreme. I'm in last with 8 HR while the rest of the league is averaging 15.66, and that includes one guy who has 9. Take him out, and the average jumps to 16.5. This also leaves me last in RBI by a lot. My pitching stats are abysmal except for HR allowed, but I also have fewer starts than average. The ratios are killing me- 4.500 ERA and 1.423 WHIP- and I'm not getting QS or W right now. Saves is better than expected thanks to Hanrahan.

I dropped Luke Scott for Alex Gonzalez and then Macier Izturis to deal with some time off for both Aaron Hill and Jose Bautista, neither of which helped. I droped Coghlan to pick up Rauch, hoping he holds on to the closer's job. Since I have a starts cap and an active pitching setup of 4SP/2RP/2 undifferentiated P, those last two spots are best held by relievers anyway. I also dropped Fuentes for Sean Burnett; both will share closing duties but Fuentes flat-out sucks and Burnett doesn't. I also gave up on Anibal Sanchez for the second straight April and picked up Matt Harrison, hoping he pans out. Young starters like Pineda/Britton get picked up in a matter of hours.

Looking Ahead: It's a competitive league, so the waiver wire gets picked clean pretty fast. I'm active, but I usually take a wait-and-see approach- I want to make sure that I'm making a good move and not dropping someone in a panic for a flash in the pan. This may have to change, and I may have to take cheap power where I can get it. In this league, that means Posada or Bill Hall. Jeez. Right now, the best hitters available are probably Stewart/Suzuki/Byrd and the best pitchers are Masterson/Harang/Guthrie/Matusz.

Pitching and Defense, Part I

The thing about pitching is that, except for Rob Deer's three true outcomes (Home Run, Walk, Strikeout) what happens is entirely out of a pitcher's control. This leaves a pitcher's effectiveness, fantasy and otherwise, open to the effects of defense. This opens up fantasy pitching to several lines of analysis, all of which I hope to get into at some point.

In the first part of this series, I want to start with the idea that pitchers who have a sub-par defense behind them have their fantasy stats affected either directly or indirectly. Technically speaking, errors don't contribute much to fantasy performance. It deprives pitchers of an out (if your league counts, for example, innings pitched), but doesn't count directly against WHIP, ERA, Ks, Wins, or Saves. It does, however, put more pressure on the pitcher. It forces the pitcher to throw more pitchers, potentially shortening the outing. It may move a runner into scoring position, or force the pitcher to change from a wind-up to a stretch delivery, or any number of other adjustments that can affect a pitcher later in the inning or game. This can in turn affect ERA (more pitchers = more potential mistakes), WHIP (ditto), Wins (unearned runs = more runs the pitcher's team has to score), etc.

For this analysis, I decided only to focus on the top-50 fantasy pitchers from the last five years as determined by standard fantasy points scoring. Bad defense was defined as any team in the bottom 20% of fielding percentage for the year. Fielding percentage isn't a great fielding metric, but since it is essentially the number of errors over the number of balls in play (subtracted from one) it accounts directly for errors as a percentage of plate appearances that don't result in one of the three true outcomes.

This left us with 250 pitchers, and 39 of them qualified as having a bad defense behind them, or 15.6%. This is less than the expected 20%, but not significantly so. Using a simple student's t-test, I then calculated if these 39 pitchers had significantly different stats from the remaining 211 top-50 starters.

Surprisingly (or perhaps not), no statistics were significantly affected. There was no significant difference in wins, losses, ERA, WHIP, Home Runs Allowed, Fantasy Points, Strikeouts, Walks, Pitchers Thrown, Innings Pitched, OPS against, or Strikeout Rate. Absolutely none of the 20-ish variables I looked at differed based on team fielding percentage.

Now, this was only for the top-50 fantasy starters every year. These are, by and large, elite pitchers. This makes it a non-representative sample- higher strikeout rates, more pitching skill (as opposed to just throwing), etc. The numbers may be different outside the top 50. But there's no reason to shy away from a highly-rated pitcher because of a bad defense.

On trading

The reasons for trading can vary in a few ways. You can trade because you have a surplus, or you can trade because you have a need. Further, that need/surplus can either be at a specific position or (in a roto/category league) at a statistic. It's nice to be able to make a trade because of a surplus, but it's usually wiser to make a trade because of a need. If you're trading for a need, then you have a clear idea of what you need to target. If, for example, you don't have a lot of steals then you know to target a player who steals bases. If you need strikeouts, then you know to trade for a pitcher with a good strikeout rate. Or, alternatively, if you're getting little production from third base, you know to target a third baseman. If you're trading because of a surplus, you're not necessarily starting with a clear idea of what you want to get back. That's a recipe for disaster. You could end up trading a 30-steal player because you think you have enough steals, only to get a .270/80/80/15/10 guy back who isn't going to boost any one category enough to matter. You've given away your surplus for, effectively, nothing. After a bevy of trades last year and only a 50/50 success rate, I've come up with a few guidelines (not quite rules) I like to follow when trading.

1) In general, don't make a trade in April. Patience is a virtue all to absent in fantasy baseball. Those hot and cold starts are coming from a small sample size, and it's generally to early to know if those starts are an anomaly or a trend. For example, the mean batting average right now (end of play on 4/6/11) the average number of at-bats is 19.64 for the top 200 hitters. After rounding up to 20 for the sake of simplicity, someone who's "real" batting average is .300 should have 6 hits by now. However, if he's getting off to a slow start he may only have three hits (.150 average) by this point instead. That's not a significant difference. It's perfectly within the realm of normal variation to have a batting average half of what it "should" be this early in the season; it doesn't even mean he's in a slump. By the same token, someone who "should" hit .265 for the season could have an average of .500 at this point and still be in the realm of normal deviance from his season average. It's simply too soon to tell at this point how players are going to perform. Similarly, we don't know who is going to be injured at this point. You may have what looks like eight viable outfielders, but one centerfield collision and one pitch to the hand could fill up your DL, put a dead spot on your bench, and leave you scrambling to fill out a roster on Monday/Thursday when there are fewer games being played. This is always a risk, but it's especially true early when players haven't had much time to get injured.

There are, I think, two exceptions to this. The first is if you have the opportunity to buy low or sell high on a player. Some owners are impatient or swayed by small sample sizes, and that gives you the opportunity to get what is clearly excess value back in a trade. If someone is so enamored of Rickie Weeks' hot start that he'll fetch you Ichiro Suzuki, do it. For example, I noticed in one league an owner is attempting to remake his pitching staff (he added four new starters, and has no elite pitchers). He's also impatient, having already dropped Stephen Drew. Since I have an excess of pitching, I'm currently attempting to pry away the injured Longoria by dangling extra pitchers and Rollins for Longoria and a little extra. This only works because a) I have excess pitching, b) I'm only offering one of my top four starters, and c) I can replace Rollins with the aforementioned Drew. The other exception is if you purposely came out of the draft with an area of need. If you waited until the 22nd round to take a 3B, then 3B is almost certainly enough of a need to make a move if the opportunity presents itself.

2) When intiating a trade, target a statistic of need. Targeting a statistic allows you to quickly narrow down the players you want. You have to make sure you can start them, of course, but deciding you need steals allows you to set up a list of excellent base-stealers to work from. If they're not on the list, they're not worth considering. If you say "I need an outfielder" instead, you have roughly 100 players whose quality and contributions vary greatly. You may not end up getting what you need in return because you're deciding between Juan Pierre and Mike Stanton.

3) When filling out your end of a trade, pull from a position and not a statistic. The number one influence on fantasy is that you have specific constraints as to who you can play any given day. If you can, it's better to trade from a position where you have more players than you can start, or at least a surplus of players given the constraints. For example, you may be able to play three 3B (3B, CI, Util), but you only need one or two (one for the 3B spot, one for either CI or UTIL). It's going to be difficult for a positional surplus player to crack your lineup often, so trading from there means giving up the least production. If you have four 2B, one of them is likely always on your bench. That's (barring injury) a wasted spot, and can be better used by trading one of those players). Pulling from a statistic can lead to an unexpected shortage. Early last season, it looked like I was going to have surplus power and saves, so I traded those statistics for ones I needed. I ended up scrambling for home runs, and had to take on more batter Ks in the process. I also ended up having to use additional roster spots on temporary closers (such as Jose Contreras) to try and make up saves. It worked, but it meant I couldn't make other in-season adjustments easily.

4) Always walk through the ramifications of a trade. In many (if not most) trades, there will be a significant change to your roster that go beyond the players involved. If you have to drop or add a player to make a trade happen, then that player is effectively part of the deal. This must be accounted for. In one of my leagues I was recently offered Weeks, Ike Davis and Volquez for Robinson Cano (I didn't come close to taking it). In this case, I have to do more than subtract Cano, and add in Weeks/Davis/Volquez. I also have to consider which two players I would have to drop, and whether or not I liked those players more or less than Davis and Volquez. In this particular case, I'd have to consider if Davis was going to be more productive than Butler (my 1B) or Beltre (my Util), and the answer is really neither. In that case, Davis would simply be a bench player, and then I have to consider if I like him more than Brian Roberts (no), Logan Morrison (no), Miguel Tejada (yes, but Stephen Drew is out), or Russell Martin (yes, but I want to hold onto him while he's hot). I then have to go through a similar calculus with Volquez. Similarly, and whether or not there are drop/add/roster change considerations, a trade is always about marginal value. If I trade a .290/90/100/30/5 player for a .300/100/70/10/30 player, I'm not gaining .300/100/70/10/30. I'm gaining .010/10/-30/-20/25. That's the difference between the two players. If I'm trading (for example) Tim Hudson and Hunter Pence for Matt Holliday, I have to consider whether the difference in statistics between Pence and Holliday is worth the difference in statistics between Tim Hudson and whomever I replace him with. The real cost/benefit isn't Holliday's stats, or even Holliday's vs. Pence's, it's the difference between statistics of all the players involved.

SWIP analysis, Part I

I took a quick, back-of-the-envelope look at how SWIP (strikeouts minus walks per inning pitched) stacks up against K:BB ratio, currently the gold standard for control.

(Due Credit: SWIP was devised by the fine people over at Baseballguys.com; link to their posts on it here)

For the firs part of this analysis, I just ran some quick bivariate correlations (only factor in two variables: SWIP or K:BB and the statistic of interest) for both SWIP and K:BB ratio for starting pitchers. I took every starting pitcher who threw at least 100 innings from 2006-2010, looking at each pitcher's season separately. The results are interesting.

First off, SWIP and K:BB correlate fairly well, to the tune of .8192. A high SWIP tends to predict a high K:BB ratio, and vice-versa. This isn't surprising; as Ks increase both SWIP and K:BB increase; as BB increase both SWIP and K:BB decrease. They don't match up perfectly, but matchup well. As such, they are at least in part measuring something similar.

Here's how K:BB ratio varies with several statistics:

Wins: .382

Losses: -.130

Innings Pitched: .352

ERA: -.488

WHIP: -.678

K: .567

BB: -.406

HR/9: -.199

OPS against: -.499

These are some decent correlations. Finding correlations of this magnitude in any data set is really nice. Now here's how SWIP stacks up against those same statistics:

Wins: .398

Losses: -.152

Innings Pitched: .351

ERA: -.565

WHIP: ..690

K: .787

BB: -.116

HR/9: -.256

OPS against: -.616

SWIP predicts all of these statistics better, except for BB (which has more of a direct influence on K:BB ratio than SWIP).

Without inundating you with numbers, SWIP does a better job predicting ground ball/fly ball/line drive rates as well. They all correlate negatively for both, but the absolute magnitude of the correlation is two to three times as large for SWIP as it is for K:BB ratio for each of those.

SWIP is also better than K:BB ratio in predicting fantasy points (.664 vs. .583) and record-independant fantasy points (.729 vs. .627). It predicts value under maximum as well or better for all four major roto categories; this is especially pronounced for, of all stats, strikeouts (a whopping .787 correlation for SWIP, .567 for K:BB). It also better predicts overall starting pitcher VUM (.703 vs. .608).

To put it bluntly, the predictive value of SWIP far exceeds the predictive value of K:BB ratio. K:BB ratio is the Miss Cleo to SWIP's Nostradamus.

I'm not entirely sure about the reason(s) for this. I'm not sure that, as has been posited, that SWIP measures a pitchers control of the strike zone better than K:BB ratio. In fact, I think K:BB ratio is explicitly a measure of controlling the strike zone. Ks increase when the pitcher fools the batter, BBs increase when he cannot do that (whatever those reasons may be). K:BB ratio is then an advantage ratio measuring how many times a pitcher uses the strike zone to fool the hitter over how many times he doesn't. It's easier for high strikeout guys to get a good K:BB ratio, but not necessary. Among the top 50 of the past five years are 2008 Kevin Slowey, 2008 Mike Mussina, 2007 Curt Schilling, 2006 Roy Oswalt, 2006 Jon Lieber, and 2007 Greg Maddux. All of these pitchers had a K/9 rate under 7.00; Maddux's rate was under 4.75! These are all pitchers who are known for pinpoint control and the ability to set up hitters over multiple innings.

Now let's look at these stats as they relate to SWIP. The way I see it, walks are a measure of how many men the pitcher exclusively puts on (less home runs), while Ks are a measure of how many men the pitcher exclusively gets out. SWIP then, is the net advantage the pitcher (and only the pitcher) is responsible for scaled for innings pitched. A pitcher who doesn't get strikeouts and doesn't walk isn't going to have a great SWIP because he's not, in isolation, creating an advantage for the team. The lowest K/9 rate among the top 50 SWIPs in the data set is 7.7, while most of the list is above 8.5 K/9. For a high SWIP, you must strike out batters because, otherwise, you cannot create an advantage in the game.

If K:BB ratio is measuring control and SWIP is measuring advantage then it would make sense SWIP has more predictive value, especially for fantasy. If a pitcher is taking control of the game, then the relevant fantasy stats (depending on the format, IP, K, W, WHIP, ERA, etc) all must be better. If a pitcher is controlling the strike zone, then the same stats are only likely to be better.

For example, Tim Hudson is a control, pitch-to-contact, groundball-inducing pitcher. He has a solid K:BB ratio the three years he's in the data set (2-2.5) but a low SWIP (.284-.352). His fantasy value is highly variable in this time frame; depending on the metric it varies by as much as 40%. Moreover, his worst fantasy year isn't his worst year for either SWIP or K:BB, but the low SWIP is indicative of the possibility for that kind of variation. This is the sort of thing that can happen when, instead of creating an advantage yourself, you must rely on the defense to help you. If you watched Atlanta's 2010 playoff series, you saw how bad that can get. During a similar time frame, Matt Cain has a comparable K:BB ratio but a higher SWIP. Not only is his overall fantasy performance better, but the performance is less variable (more like 30-35%).

I think K:BB ratio and SWIP measure different things. I think SWIP, since it seems to measure the advantage the pitcher is solely responsible for, has better predictive value for real baseball and MUCH better predictive value for fantasy. I'm sticking with SWIP.

Daily Pitcher Rankings 4/4/11

Here's how today's starters shake out:

Jake Arrieta vs. Tigers: .497 OPS against, 0HR, 2BB, 6K in 25 PA

Derek Holland vs. Mariners: .575 OPS against, 0HR, 1BB, 11K in 44 PA

Randy Wells vs. D'Backs: .593 OPS against, 0HR, 0BB, 8K in 27 PA

Erik Bedard vs. Rangers: .767 OPS against, 6HR, 6BB, 20K in 104 PA

Scott Baker vs. Yanks: .855 OPS against, 8HR, 8BB, 25K in 139 PA

Joe Saunders vs. Cubs: .925 OPS against, 3HR, 3BB, 6K in 54 PA

Rick Procello vs. Orioles: .980 OPS against, 2 HR, 6BB, 5K in 45 PA

Kyle Lohse vs. Pirates: 1.143 OPS against, 5HR, 8BB, 13K in 88 PA

Charlie Morton vs. Cards: 1.189 OPS against, 3 HR, 8BB, 10K in 84 PA

Not enough data: Chris Narveson vs. Braves, Brandon Beachy vs. Brewers, Ivan Nova vs. Twins

This is a pretty big stay-away day for pitchers. I'd start Holland, and maybe Arrieta and Wells if I had a little faith. Bedard's numbers are alright, but let's see if the number of batters faced exceeds his number of seasons with a DL stint first. I wouldn't start any of Narveson, Beachy, or Nova, but of the three I'd take the latter. I'd start any and all Cards/Pirates hitters. Though Saunder's numbers against the Cubs look bad, no one's really owned him on the Cubs. Only Byrd and Johnson have more than 3 PAs, and neither of them has looked great (though 2 of Byrd's 4 hits have gone yard). I'd also start my Rangers hitters, since who knows how effective Bedard will be.

My final pitcher rankings for today: Holland, Arrieta, Wells, Nova, Beachy, Bedard, Saunders, Baker, Porcello, Narveson, Lohse, Morton.

My 2011 in Fantasy Baseball: Week 1

Every Monday I'll post an update on how my leagues are going. My first matchups are still ongoing in H2H leagues, so I don't have results for those leagues yet.

The word of the week is apoplexy, as in "my starting pitching has been so horrendous it's given me apoplexy, but my fiance just rolled her eyes when she found me on the floor lifeless."

Bernie's Bombers (H2H points)

Standings: Still 0-0, but I'm winning my first matchup 186-118

Top Scorer: Jered Weaver, 6.1 IP, 2H, 2BB, 0 ER 6K, W (27 points)

Biggest Albatross: Francisco Liriano, 4.1 IP, 4H, 5BB, 4 ER, 3K, L (-4 points)

The Skinny: So far, my pitching has been a little better than expected. Slotting Carlos Zambrano and Tim Stauffer in my RP spots has more or less paid off, netting me 14 points between the two, as opposed to roughly 3 total points from my actual closers so far. Meanwhile, Jered Weaver and Tim Hudson have had solid outings of 27 and 26 points, respectively. The only real negative has been Liriano, who always gets lit up by Toronto. My hitting has been a shade worse than expected, averaging 3.9 points per player per game. The composite line is 31/116 (.267), 2 doubles, 1 triple, 6 bombs, 17 runs, 21 RBI, 12 BB and 17 K. Cano/Beltre/V-Mart have started slow, but they've all gone yard as well.

I got the first trade offer of the season (I'm sure I'll write more on trading soon), Paplebon straight up for James Shields. I like Shields, and closers are worthless in the league, but I though I could get more by exploiting the offerer's need at 2B (currently Omar Infante, he drafted Utley in the 2nd). So I countered with Roberts/Paplebon for Kershaw and Wigginton and his 1B/2B/3B eligibility as a throw-in. I got no response on that, but I'm unsure if I actually need Kershaw. The thing is, I could use him more than either Roberts (blocked by Cano), or Paplebon (sucks). Kershaw, meanwhile, would go into my lineup for good.

cp (5x5 Roto)

Standings: 6th place, 52.5 points

Best Week: Either Adrain Gonzales (5/13, 2R, 3RBI, 1SB) or Tim Hudson (7.0 IP, 3H, 1BB, 1ER, 5K, W).

Biggest Albatross: Everyone on my pitching staff not named Tim Hudson or Justin Verlander

The Skinny: For hitting, I'm low in RBI and Avg, but it's still early and my lineup appears to be producing fairly well. Given some of the pitching faced- Texas, Toronto, Anaheim- and some of the ballparks- Washington and Citi Field- I wouldn't expect great power numbers off the bat. Far worse has been the pitching. Aside from Tim Hudson, all my starters have given up 3 or more earned runs, gone six innings or less, and have a WHIP above 1.2 (except Verlander's 1.17). It's been, in a word, murderous. My K numbers are fine, but I'm doing pretty poorly everywhere else. After 6 starts, my numbers are 2 W, 1 Sv, 5.899 ERA and 1.513 WHIP. I'm not expecting to dominate pitching in this league so much as I expect to get enough pitching. This is pretty bad, though. I have to hope next weeks matchups pan out better, with Verladner @ Bal, Scherzer vs. KC, and maybe T Hudson vs. Phi, Sanchez vs, StL, Dempster vs. Ari and Beckett @ Cle. Also, it would be nice if my closers weren't atrocious, as much as I didn't draft for saves.

Cubs Fans Fantasy Baseball (H2H categories)

Standings: The matchup isn't over, but right now I lead 6-4-0

Best Performer: Either Weaver or Ryan Braun (4/11, 2HR, 5R, 2RBI)

Biggest Albatross: Again, that would be my pitching. Fully half my staff has either an ERA at least 4.50 or a WHIP over 1.33 (or both).

The Skinny: I drafted to dominate pitching, and in spite of (at best) mixed contributions from Contreras, Paplebon, Franklin, Daniel Hudson, Huston Street, and Francisco Liriano I'm up in all pitching categories except strikeouts (and I'm still close). Moreover, I'm up or close behind in four of five hitting categories, with steals being the exception. I can't win every week with pitching this ugly, but if my hitters stay close to this pace (.300 with 1 HR, 6.5 R, 3.5 RBI, and .75 SB per day) I'll be in good shape.

Fantasy All Stars (7x7 roto)

Standings: Last place (61 points)

Best Player: Jose Bautista (5/11, 2 HR, 5R, 2RBI, 2 K, 0 SB).

Biggest Albatross: I'm getting sick of saying Liriano, and Marcum at least got 7 K in his 4.2-inning pounding. So I'll go with Brett Gardner (2/12, 1 R, 1 SB, 5K).

The Skinny: I knew this was going to be a bumpy ride, and shaky pitching will never help that. I didn't even have a start until April 2nd, and if it wasn't for Matt Cain I might have released my entire staff that day. What I've really discovered, though, is my lack of flexibility. When it looked like Hill might miss a start, I realized I didn't have anyone to sub for him. In fact, I have too many people who eligible at OF and/or 1B (12) and way too few eligible anywhere else (5). I like a lot of these players (Moreland, Cuddyer, Coghlan, Scott, Gaby Sanchez, etc), but I need more diversity in positions. I can't or shouldn't drop these guys- I know some are coveted, and "wait and see what shakes loose when I drop them" isn't a good strategy here- so that means I have to try and swing a trade. This is likely going to have to be a quantity-for-quality swap, which is always hard to do. We'll see how this goes.

Starting/Sitting Pitchers

If you're lucky, you have a pitching staff so good that you never have to sit a starter ever. In reality, this never happens. Unless your leaguemates are all enamored of the likes of Edwin Jackson, Scott Baker et al., you're not getting a staff full of top-20 pitchers. Depending on how the draft unfolds, you may not even be able to rely solely on top-40 or top-50 pitchers. And once you dip outside the range of Matt Cain/David Price/Yovanni Gallardo, some pitchers just don't fare well against teams.

When faced such a conundrum, I like to head over to Baseball Reference. You can pull up the hitting statistics that any pitcher gives up to a team of your choosing (e.g. Wandy Rodriguez versus current members of the Pirates). My eyes go straight to one number in this case: OPS.

Checking a pitcher's OPS against encompasses just about everything relevant to fantasy leagues. Hits and walks issued, extra base hits and home runs are all directly accounted for in OPS. Earned runs and strikeouts are indirectly accounted for (though I will look at strikeouts per PA as well). In the case of the former, earned runs require earned runners, which are reflected in OPS. The more batters get on and the more bases they take, the higher OPS. In the case of the latter, batters who strike out lower OPS (though certainly no more than batters who ground out/fly out, but still). Looking at OPS allows you to assess the probability that a pitcher will actually damage your fantasy stats.

The question is then what should you use as a guideline when looking at OPS? At what OPS does a pitcher tip into the danger zone?

First off, you have to decide how to measure the quality of a pitcher's starts. OPS surprisingly does not correlate strongly with wins and losses, so those shouldn't factor in. OPS does, however, correlate with innings pitched, strikeouts, WHIP, and ERA, so those should be accounted for. OPS also correlates with other statistics (such as, not surprisingly, home runs allowed), but strikeouts/WHIP/ERA/Innings Pitched make up the bulk of a pitcher's value, directly or indirectly, in both roto and points leagues. So we'll stick with those.

Now that we've narrowed our focus down to K/WHIP/ERA, we have to figure out how to assign value to them. The easiest way to do this is to take standard fantasy points scoring and create a point value- one point per K, three per inning pitched, minus one per hit or walk and minus two per earned run.

(Incidentally, this gives you a pitcher's record-independant value in points leagues.)

The best next step is to go pitcher by pitcher and count innings pitched, Ks, hits, walks, earned runs and OPS for every team that pitcher faces. But, as you can imagine, this is incredibly time consuming. Even limiting the analysis to the top-40 pitchers, that's approximately 1,200 starts per year of data.

Instead, what we can do is get season data for each pitcher going back five years and calculate their record-independent points and OPS against. This gives a general idea of the relationship of OPS to fantasy performance, and we can interpolate the results to individual matchups. This isn't ideal, of course- I don't think anyone would want to roster a pitcher who has a season OPS against of .900, while any given pitcher might sport such a stat against a particular team- but it's a reasonable approximation.

The last step is to define what an acceptable fantasy performance is. In this case, I would use a mean split. By grouping pitchers on either side of average performance, we can look for an OPS cutoff that denotes a (roughly) 50/50 likelihood of getting a performance worth the active spot.

For this analysis, I gathered data on every starting pitcher who threw at least 100 innings from 2006 to 2010. I then calculated isolated pitcher points with the formula (3*IP)+K-H-BB-(2*ER). This gave us a mean of 246.49 points; for reference, this is roughly equivalent to Tim Hudson's 2008 season or Brett Cecil's season last year.

After defining that as the cutoff for above/below average, we can then see how OPS differs between the two groups. For the bottom half of pitchers, the average OPS against was .795 (ranging from .615 to 1.006). For the top half, the average OPS against was .698 (ranging from .557 to .838). The difference in mean OPS between above and below average performance is also statistically significant.

What this means, essentially, is that any pitcher who has an OPS against below .700 for a matchup is a good bet to start, and any pitcher who has an OPS against above .800 is a good bet to sit. In between .700 and .800, it's something of a gut call.

Here's how the .700-start/.800-sit rule of thumb has fared through the three days of games this season:

Liriano vs. Blue Jays (.956 OPS against): 4.1 IP, 4 H, 5BB, 4 ER, 3K (8.31 ERA, 2.08 WHIP)

Volquez vs. Brewers (.926 OPS against): 6 IP, 7H, 2BB, 5 ER, 5K (7.50 ERA, 1.50 WHIP)

Dempster vs. Pirates (.910 OPS against): 6.2 IP, 6H, 4BB, 6ER, 7K (8.10 ERA, 1.50 WHIP)

Lackey vs. Rangers (.877 OPS against): 3.2 IP, 10H, 2BB, 9ER, 3K (22.09 ERA, 3.27 WHIP)

Hudson vs. Rockies (.541 OPS against): 6.0 IP, 6H, 2BB, 3ER, 5K (4.50 ERA, 1.33 WHIP)

Weaver vs. Royals (.508 OPS against): 6.1 IP, 2H, 2BB, 0 ER, 6K (0.00 ERA, 0.632 WHIP)

Like any good analyst, I won't claim this guideline has perfect predictive power; Ubaldo Jimenez and Matt Cain have an OPS against in the .720-.750 gray area against the D'backs and Dodgers, respectively, but got very different results to the tune of 4 hits, 5 earned runs, and 2 home runs more for Jimenez in the same number of innings. Shields owns a .855 OPS against the Orioles but allowed only six runners and two earned runs in 7.1 innings. But as a general guideline, .700-start/.800-sit is a good rule of thumb.

A few tweaks to VUM

As I was going over some player projections and thinking about VUM, I noticed one major problem with VUM as a statistic: it doesn't take into account floor effects. That is, generally a major league player can only perform so poorly before losing playing time.

This isn't a big deal for Home Runs or Steals. A player can be productive while not every hitting a dinger or swiping a bag (though probably not both). For some statistics, however, this doesn't hold. For example, a player just by dint of having a certain amount of playing time will score runs and accumulate RBI. No player is ever likely to get none of either. Furthermore, a player can only have so bad a batting average- something in the .220 to .240 range, depending on their power output- before they lose playing time. No player worthy of a roster spot is ever going to hit .000; it was a big deal when Carlos Pena only hit .198 last year. Similarly, if your league counts strikeouts, it's difficult not to strike out at least 40-50 times given an ample number of at-bats.

This is an even bigger deal for pitchers, who have two categories with a high floor: WHIP and ERA. It's extremely difficult for a pitcher with a significant number of appearances to have a WHIP under 1.00 or an ERA under 2.50, and even those would be major accomplishments. Likewise, a player who has a WHIP over 1.50 or an ERA approaching 6.00 is in danger of losing playing time, if not an outright release.

What this means is that some stats end up with a disproportionate weight. A batting average of .200 would roughly translate into a VUM of roughly .652; this is equivalent to 25 home runs (depending on the position). As you can imagine, a .200 batting average is not nearly as good as 25 home runs. You draft people because they hit 25 bombs, you avoid people who hit .200.

The solution, which is rather simple, is to account for the minimum production a regular player gets. This leaves you with an excess (or marginal) value under maximum. You do this by simply subtracting the minimum statistic a player gets given a prediction of playing time I'd recommend 400 at-bats and 40 innings pitched (or if there are specific SP/RP spots, 40 IP for relievers and 100 IP for starters). The formula then becomes:

VUM= [2*(x-min(l))]/[max(l)+max(p)-min(l)]

Where x is a player's production for a given category, max(l) is the maximum value for the league, max(p) is the maximum value for a position, and min(l) is the minimum production for the league.

So using the example above, a .200 batting average would have a VUM of 0 (since it's likely the worst value), while 25 home runs is still a VUM of 0.632. That's a much more accurate description of the relative value of the two performances.

Even with these adjustments, VUM still works exactly the same. It's still a percentage of best possible production (scaled slightly for position), and ranges from zero to one. It's still a ratio, it's still additive across categories, etc.

There is one change (that I probably should have made anyway). When looking at negative statistics (such as ERA/WHIP) where lower totals are better, you simply add (1-VUM) instead of subtracting VUM outright. This change means that the aggregate VUM now ranges from zero to the nubmer of categories (e.g. 0-5 in a 5x5 league) rather than from number of negative categories to number of positive categories (e.g. -2 to 3 for pitchers in a 5x5). It also makes pitchers and hitters more easily comparable. So for example (in a 5x5 league), to get a pitcher's aggregate VUM you do the following (all statistics are VUM values):

VUM= K + W + SV + (1-ERA) + (1-WHIP)

And for hitters you do this:

VUM= R + RBI + HR + SB + Avg

This change doesn't shake up positional rankings any, but it does change the overall rankings some. This matters less now that the season has started, but I'll be using this new definition of VUM for in-season roto and H2H category analysis.