Category Archives: Prices

Handling a Pitcher’s Slow Start

Rereading my post over at Shandler Park today, I was struck that it might be useful to look at the outcomes for pitchers last year who started the season off badly. That is, they had a bad April. But when I started looking at the spreadsheet my first impulse was (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…)

Mixed League Free Loot: A look at 2013 Tout Wars Mixed Auction

When putting together the recent series about how many stats the teams of last year’s NL Tout Wars league added after the auction, it occurred to me that I’ve never seen the same issue looked at for mixed leagues. So, I ran the hypothetical standings for last year’s Tout Wars (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…)

Top 10 Most Misunderstood Fantasy Baseball Concepts: #3. Saves and Steals

We obsess about Saves and Steals. The Closers chart is a staple of fantasy baseball sites, and while no one lusts after one-dimensional speed guys, like Rajai Davis, our special roto-sense keeps us on the lookout for these hidden gems who can help us make a move in steals. But (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…)

Basics: How To Convert The Guide’s $ Values to Smaller Leagues, step-by-step

So, you have a set of dollar values in hand, like the dollar values from the Fantasy Baseball Guide 2014 (use the promocode rotoman2014 to get a dollar off). But you don’t play in a 12-team AL or NL only league. How do you translate those prices to your league? First (more…)

Basics: The Theory of Converting $ Values to Smaller Leagues

In The Fantasy Baseball Guide 2014 (at newsstands now! and online at thefantasysportsguide.com, use the coupon rotoman2014 to save) we publish Bid Values for what is roughly a set of players I anticipate will have only league draft day value. Because we go to press before many free agents have (more…)

Roto: Putting Together A Perfect Pitching Staff

We know that most roto leagues spend about 31 percent of their total budget on pitching. The reasons for this are debated, and discussed in this recent story. And in Part 2.  But if leagues spend $968 on pitching, an average of $81 per team, what is the best way (more…)

$ Return By Position in 2013

I thought it would be interesting to take a look at what we paid for each position last year, and what the guys we bought earned. This is back of the envelope stuff, in part because of the relatively small samples at each position, plus the vagaries of position elgibility. (more…)