Everyone has their biases in how they assemble their Fantasy rosters.
Some might go the extra buck to get players from their favorite team. Others favor the up-and-coming young 'uns. Others still might go out of their way to draft players from their alma mater (though my particular affinity for ex-Wolverines Chris Getz, Clayton Richard, Jake Fox and J.J. Putz is strictly coincidental).
However, if you are looking for a more analytical approach to constructing your Fantasy roster, there are two rules of thumb that can set you on the right course. The first rule is to know how deep in the player pool one has to go before Fantasy values become interchangeable. Most owners know that high levels of production are much easier to find among first basemen than among catchers, but how difficult is it to replace borderline players at each position?
As you drill down your player rankings at any position, you will ultimately reach a point known as replacement level. At or below this level, players offer roughly the same level of production, and therefore are largely expendable. Knowing where the replacement level is at for each position -- and how far above that level certain players are -- gives you a better yardstick to measure and compare players at different positions than simply comparing their projected Fantasy Points or category stats.
The second rule of thumb is to use indicators that can provide insight as to whether a player is likely to improve, regress or stabilize. Players surge and slump, but how do you know when these shifts are for real? Indicators that measure the skills that underlie the performance are useful tools for projecting where a player is headed in the short- and long-term future.
To assist you with roster management, we will be featuring two data visualizations throughout the season, beginning in mid-May, that will make it easier to use replacement level and skill indicators to your advantage. We are bringing back our Lucky/Unlucky feature, but this time we'll present it with a visual twist. Also, we will have leaderboards in graphical form for several different indicators, along with some analysis to help you to get the most out of your roster.
Over the next month, I will be highlighting several of the metrics that will be used in these visualizations, explaining what they measure and why they matter for Fantasy. This week, our focus will be on the concept of replacement level and the measures that can be used to gauge it. In the following weeks, we will review some of the skill indicators that will be included in our leaderboard feature, as well as some batted ball metrics (e.g., flyball and ground ball rates) that can be useful in conjunction with skill indicators.
We begin with replacement level, though, because that provides the basis for knowing how valuable a player is in Fantasy. In most formats, for example, David Murphy is a more productive Fantasy player than A.J. Pierzynski, yet he is far less valuable. While Pierzynski is a rung above the typical waiver wire catcher, Murphy will have a hard time landing an outfield spot on active rosters, even in some AL-only leagues. Murphy might post the better stats, but there are plenty of Murphy hit-alikes on reserves and waivers, if you need to replace him.
There are several measures that have been developed to assess replacement level and players' distance from it. There is Runs Above Replacement (RAR), Value Over Replacement Player (VORP) and Wins Above Replacement (WAR), just to name a few. These are useful for assessing what kind of value major league organizations are getting from their players, but they are not especially helpful to most Fantasy owners. Because we typically deal with shallower player pools, a player like Maicer Izturis who is at or below replacement level in many Fantasy formats (he is currently missing from rosters in 71 percent of leagues on CBSSports.com) is well above the replacement level for major league second basemen.
The simplest method for assessing replacement value in your league isn't especially sophisticated, but it's effective nonetheless. Go to your league's Stats page, select a position from the Weekly Scoring column and then choose "Projections" from the Timeframe drop-down menu. The results page ranks all of the players at the position you chose according to their projected Rotisserie Rank or Fantasy Points total. The point on the ranked list where you see the first cluster of free agents is roughly where you will find replacement level. It may be a little higher than that if the least productive players in your league are on a par with the top free agents.
Knowing replacement level is especially helpful when making add/drop decisions. Let's use our 12-team mixed league mock draft league as an example of how this works. A recent scan of the available free agent list revealed that Mark Teahen is without a team. I like his potential to improve his on-base percentage, but is he worth sacrificing another player on my roster? Looking at a ranked list of third basemen on the league's Stats page, I see that Teahen actually exceeds our league's replacement level, which is marked by Edwin Encarnacion and his 380 projected Fantasy Points. Teahen is projected to accumulate 401 Fantasy Points, putting him 21 points over the approximate replacement level.
In identifying the players that I could let go, either because they are on my reserve squad or could be replaced by a reserve, I find that two of them -- J.D. Drew and Chris Perez -- are below the league's replacement level. I think that Drew could outperform his projection if he manages to stay healthy, but I see that there are several closer options that would be acceptable substitutes for Perez.
Before I swap out Perez for Teahen in the Add/Drop process, it's worth looking at another metric for replacement level to see if I am missing out on an even better opportunity. If I had relied strictly on Fantasy Point projections to make a decision, I may have dumped Drew, who is projected to finish just a few points below the league's replacement level. However, his production would be hard to replace if we assume he gets 500 at-bats instead of his projected 431. Runs Created per 27 Outs, or RC/27, which gives us a measure of how much offense a player produces on a per-game basis, offers us a way to assess players whom we think may exceed their playing projections. It turns out that Drew (7.1 RC/27) is far above the replacement-level RC/27 (approximately 5.3 RC/27) for outfielders in this league. Not only that, but another 3B-eligible player, Troy Glaus (6.0 RC/27, not included in initial preseason projections), projects to outperform Teahen (4.7 RC/27) on a per-game basis by a wide margin. If I want to take the risk that Glaus will not exceed his 368 at-bat projection, he would be an even better pickup than Teahen.
Because RC/27 is a metric that can be used to establish replacement level, and it allows for comparisons among players with different playing time projections, we will be including it among our indicator leaderboards. For now, you can reference our preseason RC/27 projections for American League and National League hitters.
Of course, using RC/27 and the concept of replacement level is just the beginning of applying a data-based approach to Fantasy roster management. Next week, we will look at Isolated Power, a key indicator for sizing up a hitter's power skills.
|
|
|
Runs Created per 27 Outs (RC/27) -- An estimate of how many
runs a lineup would produce per 27 outs if a particular player
occupied each spot in the order; ex. the RC/27 for Miguel Cabrera
would predict the productivity of a lineup where Cabrera (or his
statistical equal) batted in all nine spots; created by Bill James Component ERA (ERC) -- An estimate of a what a pitcher's ERA would be if it were based solely on actual pitching performance; created by Bill James GO/AO -- Ground out-fly out ratio GB/FB -- Ground ball-fly ball ratio Batting Average per Balls in Play (BABIP) -- The percentage of balls in play (at bats minus strikeouts and home runs) that are base hits; research by Voros McCracken and others has established that this rate is largely random and has a norm of approximately 30% Isolated Power -- The difference between slugging percentage and batting average; created by Branch Rickey and Allan Roth Walk Rate -- Walks / (at bats + walks) Whiff Rate -- Strikeouts / at bats |
Al Melchior will be providing data-centric advice columns Fantasy owners all season. Click here to send him a question. Please put "Melchior" in the subject field.
