Ask Rotoman

Here’s Rob’s piece.

My opinion about PEDs has changed over the last five years or so. Some of that has been because I learned more about the PEDs, and in large part it is because I saw the way the athletes accused and convicted of PEDs use reacted. Badly, of course. The trials and investigations and testimony all helped show that the players knew where the guilt was, even when naifs like me were defending them.

So, we had our villain. Finally.

Of course, when I put it that way I start to get all wishy washy again. This really isn’t a story of villains and, presumably, heroes, but rather a story of lots of similar but not identical people undergoing pressures that are similar but not identical. Talk about the despicable union protecting the drug takers ignores the many actions over the years by the owners to control the players and limit their compensation. In this context the slow to emerge drug rules reflect ownership’s desire to get an upper hand on the players, and the players (union) protecting their privacy and civil rights.

In any case, I don’t think McGwire is the hard Hall of Fame case. Even with his spectacular power accomplishments, he’s not a clear cut Hall of Famer. Discount him for PED usage and it’s easy to keep him off any HOF list. Bonds and Clemens are the real deal, on the other hand, Hall of Famers before they took the drugs. The big question is whether their induction will open the door to the boderline cases like McGwire.

This story out of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review alleges that future Pirate Jose Tabata isn’t the age he says he is, backs that up with a vacuous quote from Pirates GM Neil Huntington saying that he’s heard rumors, and then says that there is no evidence that Tabata’s papers (which show that he is 21) are illegitimate.

I have no idea how old Jose Tabata is, but I would like some bit–a tiny little bit–of evidence from someone making allegations. Without it, I waste my time reading the allegations, and then I waste more time writing about the stupidity of publishing conjecture. Oh, I just did. Sorry.

My friend Todd Zola makes an excellent point about Player Projections today in a story at SI.com.

I bring this up because I’m working on the projections for Patton $ Online, which we’ll be releasing next week. People ask how that set of projections is different than the projections that appear in the Fantasy Baseball Guide 2010 (on newsstands now!), and a big part of it goes to Todd’s point: Most player projections are similar when it comes to the evaluation of the player’s talent, it’s often in the playing time that they vary.

When we’re putting the Guide together in December, there are still hundreds of free agents available. While it’s easy to project playing time for the guys who are sure to be starters, because we know they’re going to get 550-650 AB if they’re healthy (and obviously a similar dynamic is in place for pitchers), but for guys on the edge, who may platoon or even be benched, playing time is hard to predict until they’ve settled on teams.

The Patton $ projections incorporate all the team and league changes into the mix, and are updated during the spring to reflect the most recent changes. In addition, the Patton $ projections include more detailed categories, like extra base hits for hitters, and homers allowed for pitchers.

On newstands everywhere!

Many years ago, a lifetime perhaps, I got into a pissing match with Chris Liss about the serial comma (or, as Vampire Weekend calls it, the Oxford comma). But who really cares about that?

Back then, Chris Liss also wrote a story for the Fantasy Football Guide about how our brains are way more adaptable than formulas and other pedantic bs we create for fantasy sports. We think better than we compute, was Chris’s point, and we would be smart to rely more on our brains than any formulas. I said then and I say now, I think he’s right.

Tonight I read something else from Chris: http://www.rotowire.com/baseball/features/2010_LissStrategy.htm

The story linked here, about how Chris won Tout Wars Mixed and the Yahoo Friends and Family League that Rotowire (Chris’s domain) runs, is excellent.

Chris also wrote a story for the Fantasy Baseball Guide 2010 (on newstands now!), the magazine I edit, about the same stuff.

My point is that Chris is pretty much right. Our brains are quicker and more fluid than any formula we could create. You still need to know your league, and know the players (all the players) and how rostering them will change your team—which is what my earning and cost values and other objective measures provide—but once you’ve internalized that data, you can do better on your own than poring over some cheat sheet.

Good stuff.

You can decide whether the love is warranted.

The decades best unread books | Books | guardian.co.uk

I love this. And I wonder if I will read any of these.

I got my copy of the Baseball Forecaster about 10 days ago, but closing the magazine meant not cracking it, even though I’ve got a short bit in it (which happened to run here first, about WHIP v. WH/9), until now.

Ron’s lead essay is very smart. It’s about how wrong we are about players, year after year, and he wonders why we pursue exacting but nearly always wrong projections. Then he comes up with something new, called the Mayberry Method.

There’s a lot to like about the way the MM summarizes a player’s skills in a descriptive way. Yet despite it’s simplicity, I’m not convinced it is going to catch on. New stuff often doesn’t, even when it has real merit. On the other hand, the benchmarks MM describes so succinctly are becoming increasingly entrenched as leading indicators, making me wonder why–if we’re getting better at defining leading indicators–we’re not getting better predicting breakouts.

As Ron says in the piece, we may be smarter now than we were 20 years ago, but that may not be such a good thing.

Steve Moyer always gives us so-called experts a copy of the hot-off-the-press Bill James Handbook at First Pitch Arizona, for which I am very grateful. Not that I wouldn’t buy it, I have many times, but this way it ends up in my hands even sooner.

The book continues to grow, with increased focus on the defense awards and rankings, focus on baserunning skills, and the ever useful park factors. I’m a great fan of baseball-reference.com and fangraphs.com, both of which I use all day long, but I sit and read the Bill James Handbook, poring over its pages as if it were a ripping good yarn, which in many ways it is.

I’m glad for both these books and recommend them highly.

The Forecasters Challenge 2009

Tom Tango said today he’ll be running the Forecasters Challenge again in 2010. The primary judging will come from the Pros-Joes format, which is described in the link above. The idea, basically, is to have each pro draft against 21 inferior lists. In last year’s challenge my projections ranked 3rd using this method.

For the record, using the 22 pros against all the other pros, my projections ranked 5th.

In the head to head scoring system, I was second division.

Overall, Rotoworld and John Eric Hanson seemed to score the best.

SAN DIEGO STATE OFFICIAL ATHLETIC SITE

I was writing the profile of Stephen Strasburg for the Guide tonight, and chanced to visit the San Diego State baseball stats site. Strasburg’s line is incredible, which is why we’re all salivating over him, but the curious fact is that every player on the site has a link to a player page except Strasburg.

I don’t have time to investigate now, but it would seem that SS has pulled a BB (remember when Barry Bonds removed himself from the MLBPA licensing agreements, so he could make his own deals?), or else San Diego State doesn’t want to pay the bandwidth charges for all the people looking to read Mr. Strasburg’s bio.