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While I intuit, John Benson keeps detailed records.
A very good primer on valuations.
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Fantasy baseball and football with a bias towards 4X4 AL- and NL-only and PPR formats.
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How much is Jorge Posada worth in your league? New Yorkers might guess, perhaps correctly, that their hometown hero will sell for at least $20 in their hometown league, and might therefore guess, incorrectly, that Posada is actually worth $20.
When we say "value," we are not talking about what a player will sell for on draft day; we are trying to predict what the player will actually be worth over the course of the season. Actually predicting what a player will sell for is a useful art that involves local prejudices, the expected flow of emotions during an auction and various other forms of irrationality. Predicting what a player will actually be worth is a cold and dispassionate exercise which, when done well, is bounded on all sides by tight rationalities.
The most common question I get about my published dollar values on Sporting News and johnbenson.com is not really a question at all, but more of an objection. It goes something like this: How can you say that Carlos Delgado (or Paul Konerko) is worth only $23 when everyone knows that he will sell for $25 to $30 or more in every standard league?
The answer to this question begins with the concept, illustrated by the Posada example, that what a player sells for can be unrelated to what the player is actually worth, or even what most people think he's worth.
It takes only two bidders to drive up the price of a particular player in an auction. Especially early, when everyone has plenty of money and open roster slots, if there are two owners who think that Delgado (or Konerko) is worth $35, then the price will be at least $35. It could even be $40 if the two bidders become emotional about getting their guy. It doesn't matter that 10 other bidders have dropped out and/or don't think Delgado is worth even $30. Prices are not determined by consensus or voting.
Just as my values are not predictions of what players will sell for, these buys aren't recommendations about what you should bid. Expected values and smart bids derive from two different methods and serve different purposes. Just as some players surely will sell for more than my expected value, many other players will sell for less than my expected value.
For instance, I think Luis Matos will perform like a $9 or $10 outfielder in 2006 in a standard AL Rotisserie League. I could be wrong. Matos might get traded, benched or injured, or just not play well enough to be worth $9 in 2006.
Put aside the question of whether I am right or wrong, and let's focus solely that I actually think he will be worth $9. Does that mean I should plan to bid $9 for him, or that I think others ought to bid $9 for him? No!
My idea of an intelligent bid for a player is almost always different from what I think the player will be worth. I think Matos will commonly be available for $6 or less. Much of Matos' value comes from stolen bases, a category that doesn't engender much enthusiasm. And Matos was injured in 2005 and didn't play a full season. In fact, he has never had more than 439 at-bats in a big-league season. My $9 value is based on the belief that he will get about 500 at-bats in 2006. Most people are wary and wouldn't bid even $5 for him. I would bid $6, or maybe $7. But I will not bid up to the full value of what I expect Matos to produce in 2006. I will regard him as a sleeper or possible bargain. If I bid $9 or $10, he no longer would be a "bargain."
The best questions about my predicted 2006 values are: Where do they come from? And how are they calculated? To answer such questions fully would require the space of a small book or, more precisely, two books. There is a long answer to those questions in the books "Rotisserie Baseball" Volumes I and II, by Randall Baron and me. Volume I describes the method from top to bottom. Volume II shows the arithmetic for valuing one whole player population for a single year. Following is a short overview.
Valuations for 2006 must begin with projected 2006 stats. Simply recording a value may be a faster method to value a player, but that method is inaccurate and probably weighs the "expected sale price" more than you want.
Your valuation method, whether you follow my recipe or your own, should spread the allotted amount of money to the right number of players with the help of your 2006 projections. When you get done, there are ways to test whether your method is rational. My method passes all of the "tests" below. In fact, it is founded upon them:
1. You must account for all of the money in the auction. If you have a 12-team league with a salary budget of $260 per team, your values must add up to $3,120. Small differences don't matter much, but if your values add up to a number that is off by 5 percent or more, you have a problem in your method.
2. You must end up with the correct number of hitters and pitchers having a positive value. In the 12-team-league example, with 14 active hitters and nine active pitchers per team, you want to end up with 168 hitters and 108 pitchers with a value of $1 or more. If you have only 150 hitters or 90 pitchers worth $1 or more, your auction might not go too smoothly. Likewise if you have 190 hitters and 140 pitchers with positive value.
3. The last hitter and last pitcher needed for your league must be worth $1. In the 12-owner example, no one is going to bid $2 for the 168th hitter or 108th pitcher because there can't be anyone bidding against him (no one else would have a roster slot open). It is OK, even good, to have a few extras worth $1, so you can have a group to select from. It is not good to have a shortage of players worth $1 or more.
4. The last player taken at each position must be worth $1. You can't value only 17 catchers worth $1 or more if your league requires two catchers per team with 12 teams, for the same reasons mentioned above. The 24th catcher must be worth at least $1.
5. You must make a decision about how much money to allocate, in total for your whole league, to hitting and pitching. I like 65/35 because that is the actual average split chosen collectively by bidders in leagues worldwide every year since 1988. That doesn't mean 65/35 is right, but 90 percent of owners allocate from 60-70 percent of their league salary budget to hitting each year.
Note that we are talking about league totals, not team totals. In a league that splits its total league money 65/35 for hitting/pitching, there can and will be individual owners who spend anywhere from 40-90 percent of their team salary on hitting. Accepting 65/35 for league valuation arithmetic has almost nothing to do with choosing how to spend your own team salary. After allocating 35% of all league value to pitching, if the bidders in your league let many of the top pitchers go too cheap, you may spend only 20 percent of your team money on pitching and still be using favorable values. How to value your league player population and how to spend your team salary budget are two separate questions.
If you think about it, 50 percent of all value comes from the pitching categories (in a standard 4x4 or 5x5 league, anyway). Why not allocate half of all value to pitching? The short answer is "risk." As Bill James told us almost 20 years ago, there is no reliable way to predict how a pitcher is going to perform in the coming season. We can say with some certainty, "... these ten pitchers should be better than those ten pitchers ..." But to be certain about a pitcher is not something you want to bet your house on.
There is more than one rational way to calculate values. I like my basic method because it uses only addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, and can therefore be duplicated by anybody at any time. There is no "black box," no mystery. People can get my book, follow my method, and get the same answers. Yes, I have used fancier methods with more complex mathematics, and they have some validity, but the values of individual players consistently end up within $1 or $2 of the values obtained using the simpler method. And those are the extreme cases.
This basic method -- to spread the right amount of money to the right number of players -- when done rationally, will leave you with a rational set of values. But (as noted above so extensively) these values are not recommended bids. Bidding is always highly contextual. Intelligent bids must reflect an understanding of draft inflation, optimal bidding and auction budgeting.
Draft Inflation
In all leagues except those that start from scratch every year, freeze/retention lists will create the effect known as draft inflation. When owners keep top stars at low salaries, the quantity of player value removed from the auction will exceed the quantity of salary money removed from the auction. Look at the freeze lists in your own league, or guess what they will look like. When you see the likes of Chone Figgins for $12, Jose Reyes for $15, Grady Sizemore for $15, David Wright for $12, Huston Street for $5, and Derrick Turnbow for $3, you can see the disparity between value and salary.
Take a 12-team league with $260 per team. There will be $3,120 of player value and $3,120 of salary money in the auction pool. Now factor in the freeze lists. Suppose your league has frozen players with a total value of $1,200 and total salaries of $900. The total quantity of money remaining in your auction is $3,120 minus $900, or $2,220. The total amount of player value remaining in your auction is $3,120 minus $1,200, or $1,920. If you isolate the total money available and the total value of players remaining to be bid on, the ratio (2,220/1,920) means an inflation of 1.156 or (as more commonly stated) 15.6 percent. All the players with positive value really are worth 15 percent more in the auction.
Inflation rates can range from zero or negative (when owners freeze lots of excessive-salary players just because they like them) to 80 percent or even 100 percent (when freeze lists are a majority of the team makeup). So a $20 player might be worth anywhere from $19 to $40 in a particular year. If you merely guess what your league's inflation rate is, rather than doing the arithmetic to calculate it, your bids may be way off -- too high or much too low -- without you being aware of it. Do the arithmetic. Calculate your league's inflation rate before the bidding begins.
Optimal bidding
If you look at the roster of any winning team, you will notice two types of players: plenty of low-priced bargain players, and plenty of high-value stars. You must get your fair share of bargains and also big stars in order to win.
Optimal bidding is a method to help you get your fair share of the bargains. The idea is simple. For the many players worth between $5 to $25 you simply refuse to bid up to full calculated value. You pick an arbitrary stopping point such as 70-80 percent of actual calculated value. For example, if a player has a calculated value of $15 (using your preferred method), and if your league has an inflation rate of 33% that year, then your unstated expectation is that this player is worth $20 in this auction this year. If you have determined to stop bidding at 80 percent of expected value, then you won't go higher than $16 for this player. Chances are, you won't get this player for $16 because someone else will bid higher. But if you stick with the method, player after player and round after round, a few of these bargains will fall your way. And often they will fall for much less than your 80 percent stopping point.
Auction budgeting
Auction budgeting is a method to help you get your fair share of big stars. It is also a method to prevent you from ending an auction with unspent money. The method is simple. You make a shopping list, a list of players you hope to acquire in your auction. And you estimate the price you expect you will have to pay. If you do it right, your budget will be close to the actual amount of money you have available to spend.
Especially when you have a strong freeze list and plenty of money to spend, you must be prepared to overpay for key players in order to win. When Greg Maddux was in his prime, I often paid $50 or more for him, even when my own published values said he was worth only $30. I never regretted it. And I did the same thing with Barry Bonds and other big stars: Just pay whatever it takes to get the best.
Clearly, calculated values are not the same thing as recommended bids. But knowing whether you're paying above the calculated values and why is the primary thing. These methods are not random or whimsical; they are cold and calculating. I let my Forecast/Draft software do all the number-crunching and keeping track of players taken and money spent during the auction because I want to have my mind free for making big decisions. While it is possible to have a good auction using only paper and pencil to prepare and track events during the auction, it sure is much easier with good computer software.
Yes, there is a lot to keep track of -- calculated values, inflation, optimal bidding and budgeting - but the published values are just a starting point.
John Benson, president of Diamond Analytics Corporation, has written dozens of books and hundreds of essays on baseball scouting, forecasting, and valuation. His works, including Benson's Draft Software, can be found at johnbenson.com. You can e-mail him at john@johnbenson.com; please put "Sporting News" in the subject header.
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