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The
Value of Knowing Your League and League Rules There’s always some guy in your league who tries to trade you Alex Sanchez for Brian Giles, and most of the league just says…huh? In this brief article we will attempt to show you just how important it is for you to be aware not of the NAME of the player, but what his production really is in the categories that your league counts. In PART I we will give an example
of this issue as it relates to OFFENSE. Now we can debate the validity of whether or not these are the stats that should be counted (see: http://www.drafthelp.com/MLB_Guest_StealValue.htm), but in most traditional leagues they are the ones that do count, so they are the ones we will discuss here. The problem that most people get into is that they let the name/reputation of a player dictate their decisions when it comes to trade time. I mean who would in their right mind trade Barry Bonds for Ichiro Suzuki right? Well, lets take a look at that very question. We will offer two scenarios with one team having Bonds, the other Ichiro (based on their 2003 stats). We will then take each team and add to their star player the stats of Rich Aurilia to see just how that team have faired. The results might surprise you.
* Bold indicates leading
figure Out of our five main categories we have Ichiro/Aurilia (I/A) winning SB and tying in runs, while we have Bonds/Aurilia (B/A) winning BA, HR, RBI. Case closed right with B/A winning 3 categories to one (with a tie in runs). But is the disparity really that large? The average and RBI differences really are pretty minimal, and runs are exactly equal. Other salient points to consider: I/A has a four to one edge in SB, while B/A has a 2 to 1 edge in HR, but before we get to that issue lets discuss the batting average category. You might be asking how is the average category so close? Well, this is something we fantasy players often run into…that’s the overestimation of a gaudy stats effect on our overall totals. Bonds beat Ichiro in average by 29 points, but he also had only 390 at bats to Ichiro’s 679…that’s damn near a difference of 300 at bats which helps to mitigate the difference between the two. This means that Bonds higher average just doesn’t take place in enough at bats to really distance himself from Ichiro’s lower average. What if your league counted hits? Bond’s average would be virtually meaningless since his 133 hits trail Ichiro’s 212 by 79. Even if your league doesn’t count hits, Ichiro’s massive advantage in at bats almost allows I/A to catch B/A in BA and we don’t get any points for individual totals, it’s the team totals that matter. Before we leave this discussion we would be remiss if we didn’t mention the value of the steal. The steal is ultra important in fantasy circles in that it is the most difficult offensive category to fill. In fact, there were 5,207 HR’s hit last year but only 2,573 steals meaning that for every stolen base there were 2 HR’s (and you thought HR’s were hard to come by). Following this two to one ratio of HR’s to SB’s, we could say that the 27 SB advantage for I/A means that B/A would have to finish with a 54 HR advantage to equal out the disparity in steals. Since in our comparison I/A loses the HR category by only 32, we could actually say that in context I/A actually has a great enough advantage in stolen bases to overcome their defeat in the HR category. So maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to discount, at least the notion, that an Ichiro for Bonds trade might have been equitable. In closing you need to know your league. If you were in a league that also counted in addition to the 5x5 stats something like OBP, there is no way you would make this trade. Why? Bonds had a .529 OBP in 550 Plate Appearances (PA). Ichiro, in comparison, had and OBP of .352 in 725 PA (in this case Ichiro’s PA total would be extremely detrimental in comparison to Bonds). If your league counted OPS, the disparity would be so great that this trade might become laughable: 1.278 for Bonds, .788 for Ichiro. The moral of this story is know thy league… it might help you pull off a trade that others deem ridiculous. So at mid-season when the other owners decry you for your idiotic trade of Bonds for Ichiro just dismiss their insults because you might just be the one hoisting the trophy and toasting yourself at your year end beer fest. Ray Flowers can be reached with comments/questions or suggestions at: ballyard44@yahoo.com
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