A FUNNY STORY
That is an ironic title. You see, yesterday I served as the auctioneer for the first league in which I played fantasy baseball, back in 1982. Many of the same people are playing, a tribute to the addiction that is fantasy baseball. All, of course, are old, but fortunately for us some of their sons are playing now and are incredibly good at keeping things from spiraling out of control when things go wrong.
I was in the auction of the sister league on Saturday, a league that started up in 1986 when other owners wanted in and some owners wanted to play in two leagues. I left the two leagues in 1992 and just rejoined two years ago.
The auctions were to take place in a conference room in a shared workspace place on 29th Street in Manhattan, with a Zoom hookup for three teams that were far out of town and disinclined to travel. Our auctioneer brought a microphone that relayed the room’s sounds so that the Zoomers could hear the bids. They typed their own bids in the chat and the auctioneer moderated between the two. This generally worked well, though in a few instances a bid came in a moment after the auctioneer called out, “Sold!”. By previous agreement, these bids re-opened the bidding.
For the Sunday auction, the Saturday auctioneer brought the mic and I brought a webcam with the idea that we could put the camera facing the bettors and the Zoomers would have something other than my face to look at. The first problem was that the mic and camera both had USB-A male connectors and my computer has female USB-C. Whoops.
But we figured out a solution. Attach the mic to the Saturday auctioneer’s computer hooked up to the Zoom call. We did that and it worked for a while, but then, about an hour in, a rollicking gospel church service started up in the big room across the hall.
For more than two hours there was chanting and testifying and singing, a large group of people singing at the top of their voices, drowning out the mic with robust religious expression. (Kinda like the video.) It was fantastic music and terrific chanting, but the job of running the auction became the job of hearing and retaining all the bits of each auction item and then quickly converting it into spreadsheet data and moving on at the same time it was impossible to not listen to this other strong signal.
We asked them to close their door and they did, but it made no difference. These rooms were not in any way soundproof. Our only salvation was the singers said they would be done at 1 pm, and they were. We breathed a sigh of relief, skipped lunch, pushed on and then more singing arrived at 2 pm!
I had long before switched to my earbuds’ microphone, which didn’t pick up much of the background, but that meant the Zoomers couldn’t hear the bidders in the room. So for more than six hours I called out nearly every bid in the room and in the Zoom. When we were done my voice was very tired. But we weren’t done! There were still about 40 players to auction when the 6 pm witching hour came and the place closed!
Could we pay for extra time? Nope.
We finished it up at 10 pm last night on Zoom. The room was quiet, all but one of the bids came in via the chat (apart from one guy who phoned in, so I had to again call out all the bids), but it was over in about 40 minutes. And when we were done someone said, “That was a lot easier, wasn’t it?”
Everyone agreed. It’s hard to imagine right now doing it live again, but if we can remember back to Saturday maybe we’ll just find a better venue.
ASK ROTOMAN
Hello.
Hypothetically, if you have $38 for 2 starting pitchers, is there an advantage in having an ace at $36 and a lower rotation $2 guy, versus two mid-rotation $18 guys? Granted there are a ton of variables, but is the potential upside of the $18 pitchers more than outweigh the risk of Jacob DeGrom or Gerrit Cole not being able to pitch a full season?
“Injury Averse”
Dear Averse:
Hypothetically, a $38 starter and a $2 starter should produce the same amount of value as two $20 starters. That’s what the dollar values are supposed to do: Convert various contributions into one rationale price. But do they?
I selected two high-earning starters, two low-earning starters, and compared them to four mid-level starters. I just took the first starters I saw, so while this isn’t a scientific selection process there was no cherrypicking. The results say a thing or two about math:
They tie in Wins and Ratio and the mid-level group is a little better than the split group in ERA and Strikeouts. And that’s even though the average earnings to the split side is $2 more than the average earnings of the mid-level group.
If this result was confirmed with a more rigorous selection process it would justify going after the midlevel guys, because they seem to have a small edge, but there are some other things to consider.
First off, there is a difference between what a pitcher earns and what you pay him. In the above pairings, Sandy Alcantara and Alex Manoah were not super expensive pitchers last year, but they were above average. Alcantara was $22, Manoah $26. The market judgment was that these were frontline starters, and they went out and performed like it.
One of the main reasons we pay more for the best pitchers is that the best pitchers are more reliable. You pay for the fact that they don’t get hurt as much as others. They also throw more strikeouts. These are somewhat reliable predictors of being better than average.
The reason we pay in the high teens for some pitchers is that they have talent, but usually have some element that is tarnished enough to ding their price a little. Maybe they don’t have an elite strikeout rate, maybe they are on a bad team, maybe they allow too many fly balls and more home runs, whichever reason fits is one of many possible reasons. Some of this group will go on to have great seasons and get more expensive next year, but some others will get hurt or get figured out and they will lose money. A lot of money it turns out. This group is the one with the biggest overall losses every year, despite having some top performers coming from it.
As for the cheap pitchers, these are the guys nobody sees coming. As discussed in an earlier newsletter, the most pitching profits come from the group of pitchers who cost less than $10, and a lot of that profit comes from pitchers who cost less than $5 or aren’t bought in the auction at all.
So, when we compare the guys who earn $1 and $19 to two guys who earn $20, we get very similar numbers, but the results when you buy pitchers who fit in those cost profiles is going to be different in almost every instance. Over time, over a larger sample size than one year, the mid-level starters should match the up-and-down starters, but in any one season the results are going to turn on how the guys you choose did.
Here’s where I make my pitch. The cost of the $1 starters is negligible and if they don’t work out they can be reserved or released and replaced, ad infinitum, until you find a workable solution, at very little cost.
The same cannot be said for the mid-level starters. If both succeed, you may have a winner, but if one of them fails you lose so much it’s hard to offset and so you end up mediocre. And if both struggle you’re in trouble.
Of course, if your big gun fails you’re in trouble, too. But if your big gun doesn’t fail and you find a cheap contributor you will have that much more in profits, and profits are what makes winners.
You can win by doing anything. There is so much variation in all patterns that bad strategies and no strategies can win sometimes, but it helps to take advantage when you can of the structural nature of player values while you draft and manage your team. I wouldn’t blame you if you decide to go with two mid-level guys, but I hope you can see why there is perhaps more risk but also more reward going high and low.
Competitively,
NEWS SINCE LAST TIME
Anthony Volpe has won the Yankees starting shortstop job after a big spring. Everyone here in New York City is very excited.
Jared Shuster and Dylan Dodd both have starting slots for the Braves in the first week. Both had fantastic springs. Shuster’s spot is more permanent now than Dodd’s. Dodd is filling in for Kyle Wright, who should be back the second week of April.
The Orioles sent Grayson Rodriguez down to start the season after he allowed 12 earned runs in 15.3 spring innings. He struck out 19 but walked 7. He’ll be back.
In other Orioles news, DL Hall was sent down, too. He only threw four spring innings and will be stretched out so he’ll be ready when needed as a starter. He’ll be back, too.
In Arizona Ryne Nelson joins the rotation while Drey Jameson joins the bullpen, working to stay stretched out playing in long relief.
You pronounce the Marlins Cy-Young winning pitcher Sandy Alcantara’s last name: \all-KON-ta-ra\
The probable new closer in Arizona’s last name is pronounced \mick-GUFF\
These are thanks to that neat page at Baseball Reference with the pronunciations of player names found here. Amaze your friends at your draft with your pronunciation savvy!
Of course, the internet disagrees.
Finally, Luke Voit was released by the Brewers last week but the two have reached an agreement on a major league contract. Bye bye Keston Hiura (who will surely land someplace else along with his 41 percent strikeout rate).
In other Brewers news, Brice Turang made the team, Sal Frelick did not. Frelick will be back. I picked up Turang on Saturday so I’m jazzed.
Zach Steinhorn’s first LABR FAAB Report is up. He’ll be writing them all season long. Here’s the link.
The Rotoman Sheet, with hundreds of player comments, projections, and prices can be found by paid subscribers after the paywall. Thanks for considering paying for this drafting leg-up. More information is here.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Rotoman's Guide to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.