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Base Advances
Fantasy Strategy Ideas from the Guru

In the Ballpark
June 4, 1999

Ball Park Dreams bases each player's price on his developing statistical performance. Looking at the stats tables, prices generally appear to center around the 10 BPP/EG/$million level. But I thought it was a good time to review the data graphically to see how tightly the visual evidence supports this apparent relationship.

The chart below shows the scatterplot as of June 3rd. I've included the top 100 pitchers (ranked by total points) and the top 200 hitters. The color scheme differs for pitchers vs. hitters.

Ball Park Dreams Price vs. Productivity
Price vs. BPP/EG as of 6/3/99

So what's this show?

The relationship for hitters seems to be pretty well defined. The points cluster around a line with a slope of 10 BPP/EG per $1 million. However, pitchers seem to be more scattered.

About a dozen players are "off the chart". These are generally high performers whose price increases have been limited by the $2.5 million cap.

If I express the ratios using actual games played rather than eligible games (see below), the hitting data looks even more tightly defined. This isn't surprising, since a hitter's price changes only following a game played. Because of this, platoon players tend to be priced high relative to everyday players. The fit for starting pitchers also seems to improve, though not as much as for hitters. (Note that I've divided the pitcher BPP/AG averages by 5 in order to keep the scale comparable vs. hitters. This adjustment doesn't work very well for relievers, however.)

Ball Park Dreams Price vs. Productivity
Price vs. BPP/AG (using actual games played) as of 6/3/99
(Pitcher BPP/AG averages are divided by 5)

As was the case with Smallworld pricing, the best relative values seem to be among the lower priced pitchers. For hitters, it appears that you generally get what you paid for, and the best strategy is buy "everyday" hitters whose performance you expect to improve. But for pitchers, the pricing formula seems to have trouble accommodating the sporadic nature of games played, especially for relievers. The good news is that this creates some significant bargains; the bad news is that it appears that some of these bargains will persist, so you're less likely to capitalize on the additional points you would expect to earn if the cheaper prices converged to a more consistent valuation.

And of course, this ignores any consideration of trading strategies. If you actively rotate your starting pitchers every 2 starts, you can significantly improve your pitching yield. In fact, an efficient pitcher rotation strategy favors the higher point producers, which is not where the chart suggests that the best relative pitching values are found. Thus, you need to regard this graphical analysis as just one additional piece of information to feed into your "strategy analyzer". Sometimes it seems like the more you know, the less you understand....

RotoGuru is produced by Dave Hall (a.k.a. the Guru), an avid fantasy sports player. He is not employed by any of the fantasy sports games discussed within this site, and all opinions expressed are solely his own. Questions or comments are welcome, and should be emailed to Guru<davehall@rotoguru2.com>.