Category Archives: Basics

Deriving Dollar Values from Mock Drafts

This past week I participated in two NL-only roto mock drafts. Yes, drafts. The beauty of a draft is that there is only one path to the promised land. Select the best player available for your team, from the next 12 players to be taken. A 12-team NL-only draft should (more…)

The FanGraphs Auction Calculator

FanGraphs posted a fantasy auction calculator today, or maybe they posted it yesterday. I found it today. Enter your league parameters and it will give you dollar values for the players your league will be buying. That’s the promise. One cool feature is you can bookmark the URL of your league (more…)

End of Season Roto Prices for 2014.

These are 5×5 BA prices for a 24 team mixed league. The top 336 hitters have positive value, as do the top 216 pitchers. These are the prices you would pay if you were having a retrospective draft, buying the 2014 stats today. These are first pass prices. They have (more…)

INTRODUCTION: I’m A Loser

A couple of years ago I received a call from the accomplished and winning fantasy baseball player, Larry Schechter, who had it in mind to write a book that told all he knew about Winning Fantasy Baseball. Those last three words became the title of his widely reviewed and warmly (more…)

LINK: Month X Month Pitcher Volatility

Last year I started calculating month x month 5×5 values, in large part to see how much the plus-value pools of hitters and pitchers varied from month to month. When Ron Shandler debuted his monthly games last July there was another application for this information. Ron has published a piece (more…)

Top 10 Most Misunderstood Fantasy Baseball Misconceptions: Leading Indicators

When I think of a Leading Indicator I think of something that changes ahead of a change in results. Like when a player reports to spring training in the best shape of his life. Kidding, at least some of the time. One of the first of these I looked at (more…)

Park Factors and Handedness 2013

I’ve been meaning to take a look at special Park Factor situations. Park factors are of interest, of course, because they help us understand which ballparks are easier to hit in (and worse for pitchers) or easiest to pitch in (and worse for hitters). Take the stats of a team and (more…)

Comparing a Mixed Auction to a Mixed Draft

I’ve always counseled that a draft list should be ordered by auction prices, but also pointed out that in a draft you don’t have the opportunity to get any player you need if you have the money to spend. Timing is key in the draft game. So that each pick (more…)

BASICS: How To Calculate Draft Inflation

A reader asked about this at Ask Rotoman today. The link gives you his question and the full answer. Here’re the basics: In a keeper league (4×4 or 5×5 doesn’t matter), where inexpensive players are carried over from one year to the next, you need to adjust the startup prices (more…)

BASICS: How To Value A Counting Category

An Ask Rotoman reader asked how to value some of the new categories his league is adopting. Rather than cruft up the answer to his post with technical stuff, I’m laying the basic steps out here for reference. All quantitative categories that value more work the same way, though it (more…)