OK, I got a comment today from "Wade Bloggs" of Phreakin' Phils asking which Phillies player I thought had the greatest fantasy value. My first instinct is to reply that, obviously, it's Bobby Abreu, but I figured maybe I should run the numbers first...
First, what I did was create a spreadsheet of projections for every major league player using a composite of three forecasting systems: Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA, Tangotiger's Marcel and BaseballThinkFactory's ZiPS (actually, I only used all 3 systems for the hitters -- I got lazy with the pitchers and just used PECOTA). The spreadsheet has projections for a number of statistical categories, but for this exercise, I just used the traditional 5x5 used in many fantasy leagues -- Runs, Home Runs, RBI, Stolen Bases and Batting average for hitters and ERA, Wins, Saves, Strikeouts and WHIP (Walks plus Hits per Inning Pitched). I then calculated the mean and standard deviation for each category. From this, I could figure out how many standard deviations from the mean a given player was in each category. I then summed the standard deviations in all 5 categories* and came up with a "score" for each player. Here are the numbers for each Phillies player:
Name PA R Rd HR HRd RBI RBId SB SBd AVG AVGd Score Abreu, Bob 654 101 2.5 24 1.7 93 2.1 25 2.9 .300 1.9 11.1 Bell, David 500 61 0.4 14 0.4 66 0.8 1 -0.7 .260 -0.2 0.7 Burrell, Pat 539 68 0.8 24 1.8 81 1.5 1 -0.7 .254 -0.5 2.9 Byrd, Marlon 464 70 0.9 9 -0.3 48 -0.1 6 0.1 .268 0.2 0.7 Howard, Ryan 363 49 -0.2 17 0.8 55 0.2 2 -0.7 .259 -0.3 0.0 Lieberthal, M. 497 57 0.2 14 0.4 65 0.8 1 -0.8 .281 0.9 1.5 Lofton, Kenny 401 65 0.6 6 -0.7 36 -0.7 14 1.2 .271 0.4 0.8 Michaels, Jason 325 44 -0.4 10 -0.2 40 -0.5 2 -0.5 .276 0.6 -1.0 Perez, Tomas 254 33 -1.0 6 -0.7 31 -0.9 1 -0.8 .251 -0.7 -4.1 Polanco, P. 551 76 1.2 14 0.4 60 0.5 8 0.3 .291 1.4 3.8 Pratt, Todd 175 23 -1.6 4 -0.9 25 -1.2 1 -0.7 .256 -0.4 -4.9 Rollins, Jimmy 677 98 2.3 13 0.2 68 0.9 25 2.9 .280 0.8 7.1 Thome, Jim 579 91 2.0 39 3.9 107 2.8 0 -0.8 .270 0.3 8.1 Utley, Chase 412 59 0.3 14 0.4 68 0.9 6 0.0 .270 0.3 2.0
Player IP ERA ERAd W Wd SV SVd K Kd WHIP WHIPd Score Adams, Terry 70 4.37 0.2 4 -0.4 0 -1.0 49 -0.5 1.50 -0.7 -2.5 Cormier, Rheal 40 4.04 0.7 2 -1.0 0 -1.0 27 -1.1 1.43 -0.1 -2.4 Floyd, Gavin 120 4.84 -0.5 7 0.4 0 x 87 0.4 1.48 -0.5 -0.2 Fultz, Aaron 50 4.70 -0.3 2 -1.0 0 -1.0 38 -0.8 1.48 -0.6 -3.6 Geary, Geoff 55 4.44 0.1 3 -0.7 0 -1.0 43 -0.7 1.40 0.1 -2.2 Lidle, Cory 165 4.62 -0.2 10 1.3 0 x 95 0.6 1.36 0.4 2.1 Lieber, Jon 170 4.39 0.2 11 1.5 0 x 104 0.8 1.28 1.1 3.6 Madson, Ryan 90 3.86 1.0 5 -0.1 2 -0.9 70 0.0 1.29 1.0 1.0 Myers, Brett 160 4.40 0.2 10 1.3 0 x 113 1.0 1.40 0.1 2.6 Padilla, V. 135 4.18 0.5 9 1.0 0 x 94 0.6 1.34 0.6 2.7 Telemaco, A. 55 4.53 0.0 3 -0.7 0 -1.0 37 -0.8 1.35 0.6 -2.0 Wagner, Billy 55 2.54 3.1 4 -0.4 37 1.3 55 -0.4 1.00 3.5 7.0 Wolf, Randy 150 4.21 0.5 10 1.3 0 x 106 0.9 1.30 0.9 3.5 Worrell, Tim 60 3.69 1.3 4 -0.4 4 -0.8 44 -0.6 1.35 0.5 0.0
* When calculating the mean and standard deviation for pitcher's Saves, I used only the pitchers that were projected to have at least one save. Also, starting pitchers were not penalized for a lack of saves.
So, according to my numbers, here are the ten most valuable Phillies players in a traditional 5x5 fantasy league:
Name Score Abreu, Bob 11.1 Thome, Jim 8.1 Rollins, Jimmy 7.1 Wagner, Billy 7.0 Polanco, P. 3.8 Lieber, Jon 3.6 Wolf, Randy 3.5 Burrell, Pat 2.9 Padilla, V. 2.7 Myers, Brett 2.6
Some notes:
- It's interesting to see Polanco up there at #5 even though he probably won't be starting. I've got Utley as being half as valuable (but only getting 75% the PAs) and Bell only 25% as valuable. Hmm.
- These rankings don't take into account the issue of positional scarcity -- for example, it's possible that Rollins could be more valuable than Thome, since it's harder to find value at shortstop than it is first base.
- The numbers for the Phillies 3 biggest prospects (Howard, Floyd and Madson) are pretty negative -- I'd expect at least one of them to far exceed their projection this season
So, Wade Bloggs, does that answer your question?
Hmm, looks like it's about time for my usual once-monthly post. Heh. Seriously, though, lately I've been engrossed in just about all things Baseball except the Phillies -- see, it's fantasy baseball draft season, which means it's time to catch up on what the 29 other teams in baseball have been doing over the past few months. I'm in 4 leagues this year and I've had two drafts so far, both of which have been pretty easy (an 8-team league and a 14-team league). My two remaining drafts (tonight and Sunday evening) are 20-team leagues, so they should be a little trickier.
So, yeah, once those drafts are over I've got some decisions to make about this weblog, the biggest of which is whether or not to keep doing it. I feel sort of bad about doing a half-assed job over the past few months and I'd rather just not do it at all than do a crummy job with it, you know? I mean, I look at a site like A Citizen's Blog and I know I could never put that amount of work into this weblog. Of course, this site has always been more about my opinions than doing big comprehensive interviews, so I probably shouldn't try to compare.
I dunno, maybe once baseball season starts and I get back into the routine of watching and listening to games, my mood about this weblog might change and I might get some of my motivation back. We'll see.
Oh, I might redesign the page a bit too. I still like the whole retro powder-blue-and-maroon thing, but I think things could use a little more polish.