ASK ROTOMAN
Hi!
I play in a 5X5 league...BA, Runs, HR, RBI, SB… Wins, Saves, ERA, Ks, Ratio. I’ve been trying to convince the rest of the league to go to OBP instead of BA so that walks are counted as a positive for a hitter since it counts against the pitcher. I cannot get the league to go along. 10 teams, NL only, auction. What methods of madness can I use to convince them that this is the better way to go? Any & all advice gladly accepted!
Many thanks,
"Be the Change”
Dear Change:
Getting diehards to move forward is hard, even when the proposed change is not radical and demonstrably more appropriate.
I say more appropriate because “better” is emotionally charged, and it isn’t strictly true. I play in the American Dream League, the league started in 1981 by members of the original Rotisserie League who wanted to play AL-only. Some of the owners in the ADL have been in the league for 42 years. Diehards. I’ve not been able to get them to switch from BA to OBP, and it’s okay. BA is fine.
What it isn’t is more appropriate, for the exact reason you say. We count walks against pitchers, shouldn’t we count them for hitters? Of course, we should.
But for Rotisserie Originalists, the argument goes that if we’ve played this way for 42 or 32 or 22 or 12 or however many years and it was good enough for Glenn Waggoner, why should we change now. I would say, though this is a dull way to put it, that we should change it because it is more appropriate. A walk should count for the batter, in part because it counts against a pitcher.
When we switched from BA to OBP in Tout Wars many years ago, some people said: “You’re a demonstration league, why are you adopting rules that most people don’t play with.” Our answer was, “We’re a demonstration league, when a change is so clearcut and right, it would be irresponsible for us not to make it. We demonstrate, let others follow along.”
Many have, but others have not, and I won’t make the argument that they should because OBP is better. Or, as Anna Delvey would say, Bettah! OBP is not VIP. What it does is bettah reflect the baseball value of future MVPs, like Juan Soto.
Going into last season, Soto had a career batting average of .301 and a career OBP of .432. He walked a little less than 19 percent of his at-bats. He also had a career BABIP of .330. Fantasy players who rostered him were expected to benefit from his batting average and overall batting skills. That’s what they paid for.
But things didn’t go well for Soto last year. He batted only .242 and his BABIP was just .249. His expected batting average was .266. Not great for him, but clearly more representative of his talent. Batting average is a variant measure, fluctuating because of what the batter does, what the defense does, and subject to a fair amount of luck that modulates between them. Most tellingly about Soto’s offensive talents, in spite of his slumpish season with the bat, Soto upped his walk rate to 20.3 percent, so his OBP was .401, down .031 points, much more representative of his skills than his .242 batting average was.
On top of that inequity, not counting bases on balls means that not only is a walk not as good as a hit, but because a walk isn’t counted as an at-bat walks reduce the influence a player’s batting average has on a fantasy team’s batting average. That means Soto’s .313 average in 2021, applied to only 502 at-bats because he walked 145(!) times, was worth less than Vlad Guerrero’s .311 batting average in 604 at-bats (he walked only(!) 86 times). The same applies the other way, too, as Soto’s bad batting average in 2022 hurt less than it would have if he didn’t walk so much.
When we switched to OBP from BA in Tout Wars, some of the Touts argued that BA’s variance was a feature, not a bug. The fact that bad hitters can have a good batting average does mean that you don’t have to pay as much attention to BA as to the other offensive categories, which opens up a variety of strategies. But adopting OBP doesn’t eliminate the variance, it just tempers it by including the measure of a much more stable hitting skill that batters control.
As to what madness you should inflict on your league-mates to get them to adopt this sensible change?
I suggest treading lightly, maybe starting by talking to last year’s Soto owner about how his investment would have held up better in an OBP league.
At your league rules meeting you could roguishly suggest changing WHIP to OPP BA, so that it aligned with the hitting side and watch them argue against that.
But mostly I’d avoid saying the change will make the game better. Make the appropriate case. After you finally get the change made, after a year or two of playing with OBP instead of BA, the diehards will realize that the game seems entirely normal. Only a hitter’s offensive contribution will be better reflected in the game you play. As it should be.
Sincerely
A CALL TO OTHER ARMS
Yesterday we looked at the universe of Aces. These are the pitchers fantasy teams are paying to anchor their pitching staffs and they are generally the pitchers who have the best chance of being excellent year after year.
Not that that is strictly true. It wasn’t that long ago that Lucas Giolito was an Ace, but that’s kind of the point. He performed like an Ace, we grew to trust that he was an Ace, and then we got burned when his situation changed. The fantasy herd is not always going to get it right, but we are right to trust that they are going to point to the best pitchers most of the time. And that the best pitchers will usually be the more reliable high-performing pitchers.
And then there’re all the other pitchers. The consensus about them is much less consensical. Some like these guys but they walk too many. Some like these other guys but they don’t strike out enough hitters. Some like those guys but they play on bad teams and/or in bad parks for pitchers. These and those guys are the pitchers whose prices can range anywhere from $6 to $19 in AL or NL-only leagues, and their performances can vary just as much. They are not consistent.
Last year there were 94 pitchers who cost between $6 and $19. They cost a total of $1,045 and returned a total of $458. That’s not a good return. But maybe you’re thinking that the $6 to $9 pitchers take the blame for his. Well, the $10 to $19 pitchers, all 57 of them, cost $783 and earned $399. That’s a little better, but still stark, especially since a guy named Verlander, baseball’s highest-earning pitcher in 2022, is in this group.
But I have relievers in that list. If I take them out the $10 to $19 guys number 46, they cost $640 and they earn $367. Better, by a little, but still not on average an investment you want to make. Some did make\ a profit.
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