The Fantasy Baseball Guide

Here's an unreleased "b" side, a page from the Guide's Statland section that was cut because we ran out of room. It's a list of pitchers ranked by how many hitters they walk and strike out, how many home runs they allow, and their rates allowing hits on balls in play (a high number is usually a sign of bad luck) and hits in general.

Same Pitchers, Different Stats. Note that this is a .pdf file, so you're going to need Adobe Acrobat Reader or Apple's Preview to look at it. File size is 128K.

Print it out, paste in between page 152 and 153, and you'll have a slightly thicker Guide.

Mike won Tout Wars NL in 2005 representing Wise Guy Baseball. I finished second. Mike played a great game and was kind enough to write a Strategies of Champions piece for the Guide. You'll find it on page 15.

What you won't find on page 4 are Mike's bio and photo, because somehow I screwed up. Here they are:


A maniacal baseball fan for over fifty years starting with his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers (whose loss is still felt), Mike played in his first roto league in 1985 . He has only finished out of the money a few times in the 50+ leagues he’s played in, to date. He ONLY competes in baseball, primarily to preserve his sanity, a battle he claims he’s losing. Drop him an email at ROTOMANIAC@aol.com.

Sorry, Mike.

If you find a mistake in the Guide, or something you love, or if you wonder about something, or have an idea for next year's edition, please visit the Ask Rotoman Discussion Board and check out the new group dedicated to the Guide.

The minor league ERAs for 2005 in the Guide are wrong. Somehow I screwed it up and missed it during the proofing. The number in the ERA column (in minor league lines only) is actually the pitcher's RAA, which includes unearned runs as well as earned runs. This isn't an unuseful number, there is research that suggests the RAA is a better measure of a pitcher's talent than his ERA, but that isn't an excuse or justification. I somehow pointed Excel at the wrong column and didn't discover the mistake during proofing.

I'm sorry for the screw up.

Here is a web page that shows all the players in the Guide, their RAA and their corrected ERA. As a rule of thumb, subtract .6 from a pitcher's RAA to get his ERA, though this can be a wildly wrong for individual players.

I'm really sorry for the screw up.

Trace, last year's Fantasy Sports Writers Association "Baseball Writer of the Year," did much excellent work on the magazine. One reward among the couple he received that he won't appreciate is a misspelled web address in the Guide Slugs (those little boxes filling out the columns in the Hitter and Pitcher Guide pages).

Visit Trace's www.longgandhi.com and read his excellent essays when you can. Please. Sorry Trace.

Writing NL pitcher profiles for mlb.com helped me look closely at the pitcher profiles in the magazine. Too many included references to team situations. Some of those seemed like safe bets at the time (see Victor Santos comment below), but really weren't. Next year we go back to NO TEAM CONTEXT COMMENTS in the profiles.

More egregious are the references to the weather and Jeff Weaver's personal difficulties in his comment. These should have been part of the Derek Lowe comment. There is no excuse. The profile should read: It was a promising season, though the 35 homers he allowed was alarming. Dodger Stadium is pretty HR neutral, but this is a big bump up from his previous levels. Fortunately for him he walked fewer hitters than usual, which is why his ERA went up just a little. He's a solid play for the middle of the rotation, especially if he ends up in a pitcher-friendly ballpark.

The profile in the Guide makes it seem that Santos was a minor league non-roster invitee of the Royals, which he was when his profile was written. Alas, the Pirates thought he might have a chance at cracking their rotation, so they selected him in the Rule 5 draft from the Royals. He's not going to be a game changer, but there is some chance he'll help a roto team in the short run. A smaller chance than he'll help the Pirates this year.

The peril of writing the magazine before many of the winter moves are made, you can inadvertantly reference someone or thing in a team context that is rendered ludicrous by the time the magazine comes out. In this case, the only way Leo Mazzone will save Ramirez is if Horacio gets dealt to Baltimore.

In the Guide I have him priced at $17, but chances are he's going to go a lot cheaper than that, unless my sense that he's going to have a very fine year takes hold.

In the Guide I also wrote the word "Diamondbacks" in his profile, when I meant "Marlins." Sorry.

He's not likely to pitch in the major leagues this year, but the big Houston hurler is coming off such a fine Double-A campaign he should have been included in the Guide. And if he gets off to a hot start in Round Rock he could see time in the majors this year. I think he's going to have a year of adjustment, but he was so impressive last year he may be able to blast his way straight through. Definitely a good NL farm pick.

I'm not going to write about every one of these. There will be a new set of bid prices out at the end of February. But I just happened to notice that I have Tim Hudson down for $24 in the magazine, and I think that's too high. Given his struggles the last two years a price around $18 is probably closer.

This is the place to find corrections, updates and additional information about the Fantasy Baseball Guide 2006, which should be out in stores (usually Barnes and Noble and Wal*Mart have the most copies) in the next week or two.