Projo Fantasy Sports Blog

By Michael Salfino

There are a bunch of topics in my inbox that don’t warrant a full column but are nonetheless interesting. Let’s do a "By The Numbers" potpourri before the season starts in earnest next week.

Friend and colleague Gene McCaffrey in his great "Wise Guy Baseball" annual went to the trouble to track the disabled list last year and writes that “at any moment 140 players were on the DL.” Put another way, about 20 percent of everyone’s roster should be expected to be sidelined due to injury. That seems high.

Some of these guys presumably were injured the prior year or in the offseason and just remained sidelined. Francisco Liriano (Tommy John surgery in 2006) and Juan Rivera, who broke his leg in winter ball after the 2006 season and missed all but 14 games, come to mind, but not too many others. McCaffrey adds that about 400 players total go on the DL each year.

The Indians and the Red Sox had the fewest DL trips last year (nine each); the A’s the most (22), followed by the Phillies (an NL-leading 19). It’s not how many guys a team loses, but the quality of the lost players and extent of the injury that most matters when assessing good or bad injury luck.

But I believe McCaffrey’s reasonably demonstrated that there's a 50-percent chance of “Player X” going on the DL this year. (Make sure to get “Player Y” instead.)

Also recently received my "Bill James Gold Mine 2008," which has the substantive yet breezy style that characterized his great Baseball Abstracts back in the 1980s.

I noted with interest his piece on quantifying consistency. The bottom line is that the average “good” hitter has a consistency score of .743, while the average “good” pitcher is .696. That’s not as big a difference as you'd suspect.

Of course, the problem is not only defining what's good, which James does convincingly with his Win Shares, but limiting your data to only good players. Aren't players who reach a significant threshold of "goodness" inherently more consistent?

Still, hitters are about 7 percent more consistent than hitters of about the same quality. That means they reasonably are worth about 7 percent more (assuming you pay for projectability). In the biggest player procurement market around, the fantasy baseball one, teams field 23 players, 14 of which are hitters. Hitting and pitching categories have equal value. Since about 61 percent of your players are hitters and they are about 7 percent more projectable, there’s a mathematical case for spending 68 percent of your fantasy baseball budget on pitching. Wouldn’t you know, that’s just about what the average fantasy owners spends on hitting. Their collective intuition appears correct.

Similarly, let’s use the wisdom of crowds to project the best hitters and pitchers of 2008. These results come courtesy of our friends at MockDraftCentral.com, which compiles data from thousands of fantasy baseball drafts.

The fantasy community says 10 of the top 12 offensive players now reside in the NL: (in order) Hanley Ramirez, David Wright, Jose Reyes, Matt Holliday, Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, Albert Pujols (elbow), Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun. The best overall hitter is Alex Rodriguez, with new Tiger Miguel Cabrera slotting between Rollins and Utley.

The best starter overall is the Mets' Johan Santana, with Erik Bedard, who the Mariners recently acquired, slotting well behind him as the AL’s best pitcher.

Let’s see who the fantasy market is over and undervaluing.

Buy

Rafael Furcal, SS, Dodgers: Before last year, Furcal and Jimmy Rollins were indistinguishable. Now, Rollins is first-round Fantasy Gold while Furcal slides to the fourth or fifth round. Passing on Jimmy and buying low with Furcal (they’re about the same age) is the surest way to turn a profit.

Josh Beckett, P, Red Sox: Fans are running to the hills over the bad back that will keep Beckett from making the season-opening trip to Japan. But the only difference between Beckett and more than half the pitchers is that he’s got his (seemingly minor) injury now, when the games don’t count.

Hold

Joe Mauer, C, Twins: The fantasy market decided that Mauer’s power is not coming soon and that he’s a baby when it comes to playing through the normal catcher dings and bruises. Well, he’s out of action a lot. And the homers seem unlikely given the extreme ground-ball rate that increased from 2006 to 2007 and furthermore during the second-half of ’07.

Sell

Derek Jeter, SS, Yankees: Another guy who hits too many ground balls to slug sufficiently. The magic he once worked on the bases seems diminished (15 for 23 stealing bases) and how likely is that to come back at age 34? Orlando Cabrera goes four rounds later in most drafts and is the wise play relative to cost.

Francisco Liriano, P, Twins: He’s "thicker," which is a nice way of saying "fat.” The fastball seems fatter, too. And slower. He hasn’t pitched in more than 18 months. Sadly, sometimes guys don’t come back from Tommy John surgery.

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