ASK ROTOMAN ONCE
Rotoman!
Congrats on Snell! One down, one to go.
Your comments on Strider were interesting. If you could sign him to a long-term contract how many years would you go.? In our league, we can do that. His salary increases $5 for each year, with a $100 penalty if you want to get out of the contract early. I have him for $6.
What was your thinking on Trevor Rogers?
What did Andrew Abbott go for?
Appreciate your input.
”Pitching Crazy”
Dear PC:
Two to go. I took Clevinger in the reserve rounds as well as Montgomery in the auction.
Abbott went for $4 in Tout, pretty much in line with the other leagues.
Photo: D. Benjamin Miller
My thinking on Trevor Rogers is based on a game I watched him throw against the Mets last week. He looked fantastic, with great movement both up and down in the zone. He only pitched 18 innings in the majors last year, but he was a little dominant and that has carried over to spring training. He was terrific before he got hurt, too, so I decided to take a shot. Not without risk, but not too expensive either.
But now to the interesting question. How long should you extend a young pitcher whose price goes up $5 each year.
Let’s start with the simple part. Let’s say the pitcher’s a $35 pitcher every year going forward. He hasn’t earned that yet, but he’s been close. Subtract his current price from 35 and divide 29 x 5 and you get six with a little rounding up. After six years he’d cost $36. And you probably wouldn’t keep him the year after that.
So six years is the big answer. But that doesn’t factor in the risk that he’ll get injured and require surgery that will cost him a year or two. Nor does it factor in the risk that he might have an off year or two, either because of less severe nagging injuries or bad luck or something else.
I used Stathead, the Baseball Reference query engine, to identify pitchers who earned a similar amount of BR-WAR as Strider in their rookie season.
I then selected 12 to compare their year-by-year FG-WAR totals in a fancy chart.
That’s tough to read, demonstrating that earnings vary from year to year.
FanGraphs also offers a cumulative by age graph that’s a little clearer.
The point, I think, is that unless you’re Verlander or Greinke or to a lesser extent Tim Hudson, your quick start (and Greinke quickly stumbled) for one reason or another will likely flatten out. So, if you think you have rostered an elite arm bound for an elite career, extend him the full six years. But know that even the great Verlander had a down year, when he was 25, and consider how would you feel paying his ever-increasing salary after that.
Greinke had a Strider-like first season, when he was 20, then struggled in year two and left baseball for most of his third year. While Tim Hudson was solid until his seventh year, and wasn’t exactly a disaster then.
We can’t learn anything definitive from this anecdotal information, but that first noisy chart gets at the main point. A pitcher’s career is never smooth, so while the potential rewards of locking Strider up for five or six years are appealing, it’s easy to overlook the damage a down year does.
In fact, the best reason for locking him up long-term is because it will make it more cost-effective to use the $100 buyout to get out from under the bad contract if he goes South.
So, $11 this year is a bargain and it’s well worth committing to 2025 at $16, as well. I’m nervous about him, so I think I’d leave it there. If he’s great the next two years, someone is going to spend beaucoup dollars for him in 2026. But I wouldn’t blame you if you rolled the dice one more time at $21. If he fails and your team is competitive, use the buyout to dump him, and if your team isn’t competitive, save your C-note and build for 2027.
In other words, take it all in stride, but be sure to keep looking forward, not up.
Sincerely,
Struwwelpeter
ASK ROTOMAN AGAIN
Dear Peter:
I have my draft Thursday night (the 21st). We don't do it by league; it's simply all players. We also don't bid for players. We simply snake-draft 24 players per team. I probably don't know how to use your site properly, but can you tell me if you have ratings that are not separated by league? Also, do you have the ability for me to program the 12 categories of our league (OBP, R, H, HR, RBI, SB ... W, Sv, ERA, Whip, K, QS) and have ratings programmed for me?
“Hanging Kingpin”
Dear Kingpin:
Thanks for subscribing.
To turn any of the spreadsheets separated by league into a mixed-league spreadsheet, highlight both leagues and sort, and they will shuffle together.
As a so-called annual subscriber, if you register (for free) over at PattonandCo.com and let me know what email you used, I will comp you a membership there. You’ll be able to download the pattonandco.com player spreadsheet in the subscriber downloads section there. It has all the same info the spreadsheet here has, and Alex’s formulas for each category built in.
Alas, it doesn’t have OBP as a category, so you would have to rejigger BA. Or maybe keep BA as a proxy for H and rejigger a new column using OBP. All the info you need to do that is in the sheet.
Alas again, I don’t project quality starts, I don’t know anyone who does, so they’re not in there. But thinking about how to add them led me to a different place.
You’re short of time. Our spreadsheets and the Draft at a Glance lists don’t work with a couple of your categories, but there shouldn’t be big differences. When you’re at 10 categories the most important categories are at-bats and innings pitched. Your league’s 12 categories reward at-bats even more strongly. Go through your hitter list and add a few dollars to those with a lot of hits and take it away from those who don’t have as many projected.
Then you’ll need to bump up the pitchers expected to get a lot of QSes. I’m looking at you, Framber Valdez. And bump down those who don’t. Come on down, Jordan Lyles.
The median number of QS last year was 17 among qualified starters. Here are those who did better:
and here are those who did worse:
When you get done adjusting, re-sort, and you should have a pretty good draft set customized for your league format. What matters more than pricing the projections is adjusting the bids to reflect your evaluation, especially with the novel categories.
Perhaps most crucial is the fact that there are such a few pitchers who throw more than the median quality starts. It’s going to take some attention and perhaps moving a starter or two even higher to get one or two of the top ones.
Another important consideration is knowing how the ADP and Ranking generators on your draft site works. Do they represent the characteristics of your league’s scoring system? Or are they generic? Unless they represent your league’s choices, you will have a strong advantage if you tailor the rankings to reflect your league rules.
Then, if you have time, you can run the Auction Calculator at Fangraphs. It will let you specify your league’s scoring cats and size to give prices for the draft pool. It also factors in position scarcity, which is a problem for deep leagues, but if you’re a 12 or 15-team league drawing from the whole player pool you might like it. Set the budget as 65 percent hitting, and 35 percent pitching unless in your experience your league differs from that. It’s worth checking your league history if you don’t know.
Since the output will use your categories, you may find discrepancies between the list you made and Fangraph’s. Those are the places to look a little more closely at your assumptions. You’ll be tempted to believe the hard numbers, but they are based on projections that have broad error bars. Your feel for your league will often be more right.
And that’s how to make a draft list. For auction lists, use the altered prices.
Sincerely,
Rotoman
ROTOMAN’S FANTASY GUIDE 2024 UPDATE
Here’s a special sheet for folks who bought Rotoman’s Fantasy Guide 2024. A Google Sheet updated through March 14.
It’s password-protected. The password is the last word in the Ronald Acuña Jr. profile. Lower case. There will be an updated version through March 21st, probably posted on the 22nd.
If you want to make edits save it with a different name.
The Editor’s Letter and Why We Did Pages for Rotoman’s Guide, which are missing in the printed Guide.
Members here at the Substack have an updated spreadsheet linked after the paywall. Paid subscribers, even for one month, get access to that one.
FOR SALE
Rotoman’s Fantasy Baseball Guide 2024, softcover, $20, Kindle, $10.
Rotoman’s Fantasy Baseball Guide 2024, PDF, $12.
Ron Shandler’s Fantasy Expert, hardcover, $25, Kindle, $12. I wrote the foreword.
Les Leopold’s Wall Street’s War on Workers, hardcover, $25, Kindle, $23. I did a lot of the data work and some editing.
HOUSEKEEPING
When Will I See You Again Dept.: Update tomorrow, so I’ll be answering reader questions and responding to the news.
I’ve posted the Historical Top Players by Position for 2021-2023 charts after the Paywall.
Thanks for your comments, questions, arguments, and news.
Thanks for sharing this with your friends and competitors.
Your paid subscriptions and purchases support this work. Thanks. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, please consider it. Sign up for monthly and you will pay for one month before I shut down in April.
Sincerely,
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