With the new season looming upon us but not already here, the majority of us will find ourselves in fantasy baseball meltdown with pre-draft rankings and all sorts of statistical analysis being undertaken on order to ensure that you finish atop the league and secure bragging rights over your friends. After all, isn’t that why we play? To get one over on our amigos?
Fantasy baseball is fun and while this is just my second year of playing, I am already hooked but I do worry about the dark underbelly of the fantasy game. The insidious and hidden beasty under the bed or in the closet just waiting to attack as soon as mummy has left the room and turned off the lights.
The thing that concerns me is when people don’t seem to be able to see the difference between fantasy and reality and all the obsessive stat crunching and forecasting starts to erode and warp the mind into making people think that fantasy rankings represent the breakdown of actual talent in the league. The guys who take the field and sweat in the sun get transformed from flesh and blood athletes into little more than numbers and countless people end up watching the game and seeing something akin to the code in The Matrix.
Can you believe there are actually think that Jeff Kent is the greatest 2-bagger of the last decade? Or that Mike Piazza is a great catcher who should not be confused, when in the field, with some sort of novelty garden gnome? Yes, this is the dark shadow of fantasy baseball. The big downer after the sugar rush.
A case in point is that of Victor Martinez. Now, I have joined two fantasy leagues and in both I made it a priority to draft Martinez and he was a second rounder for me in both. Martinez is a great hitter and should be streets ahead of any other catcher in baseball in terms of offensive production (hence the high fantasy value I place upon him) but if this were real life would I draft him so high? Not likely. In the real world give me a Molina (any of the three really) or a Mike Matheny any day of the week. I’m not saying Martinez isn’t a great player and he would easily be in my top 10 catchers (maybe even top 5) but a good catcher isn’t all about the bat.
Of course the likes of Albert Pujols and Johan Santana are great fantasy players as well as being great players in general so don’t think I feel there is no correlation between the real world and that of fantasy leagues but if you look at someone like Mo Rivera it might become clearer. Rivera is arguably the best closer in baseball but will he record the most saves this year? Again, not likely because his team will be such an offensive juggernaut that he won’t get as many save opportunities as someone like Joe Nathan or Brad Lidge. This all ends up being linked to the whole lies and statistics debate.
As much as I dislike all of Bill James statistical shenanigans I do understand what he is hoping to achieve as all his permutations are based on the fact that its not one or two stats that dictate a good player from bad but a combination of several variables and some are more important than others but all need to be weighed into the equation. Its like a physicists quest to discover dark matter, you try to find that hidden variable that brings all the other parts together to form something palpable that makes everything more complete, decisive and conclusive and you do your best to express those findings.
Of course we must also take account for the scoring system which is possibly the biggest factor in sculpting how we measure the value of players in the fantasy world. In standard 5x5 leagues our offensive players are generally ranked in terms of runs, homeruns, RBI, stolen bases and batting average. Now a good leadoff man might rack up a good average (although the greatest of all time only had a lifetime average of about .279 but the second most walks ever always helps pad your OBP), swipe a few bags and score runs and in doing so will be as valuable to his team in the real world as any of the guys batting behind him but those sluggers will be looking to hit homeruns (not the job of the guys ahead of them), drive in runs (those runs our table setters will be scoring), will also be looking to hit for average and will score runs by driving themselves in (homerun hitters will do that). So even though good leadoff men are rarer creatures in the modern game and are the sparkplugs that power hitters feed off, they will only likely be scoring in two or three categories whereas those big, greedy power hitters will be looking to rack up stats in four of the five statistical groups. In fact the homerun itself will boost your numbers in the runs scored and runs batted in so in essence it counts triple so how is that really fair?
Lets face it, fantasy baseball loves the long ball. In fact in standard 5x5 the triple doesn’t count at all and triples are harder to come by so that’s another dig at the fast guys and not just the fast guys. Remember the year Albert Belle had 50 HR and 52 doubles in just 143 games? Well as incredible a year as that was for Albert, those 50 doubles mean jack to a lot of fantasy owners. Shouldn’t this be a matter of judging offensive output? Isn’t that how fantasy baseball is supposed to work?
We could also go on about how its more impressive for a catcher to hit 30 homers than for a first baseman and how that really doesn’t factor into an extrapolations but that might be seen as being picky but imagine if there was a way to place value on defensive ability and you could have each position with different statistical weightings based on the position a player played. That would be a tough league!
But as much as fantasy ball loves the long ball, it is absolutely enamoured with the K. With the standard 5x5 categories of wins, saves, strikeouts, ERA and WHIP a good pitcher of any type will do well in most of those but only a power pitcher will get the strikeouts. So even though one guy can record three outs on three pitches which carries the same relative results as someone striking out three straight guys, the power guy will be of more use to a fantasy owner. So it becomes less about results or performance and more about stat accumulation.
The really funny thing is that you don’t even need to be a good pitcher to put up a fair few strikeouts. 153 K’s is not a bad total but Daniel Cabrera matched that with an ERA of 4.52 which isn’t so great. Similar story with Javier Vasquez (192, 4.42) and more relievers than you can shake a stick at. In fact every pitcher will strike out some guys over a year.
Of course the capital crime of fantasy baseball lies in the inherit inability to formulate a fair statistic to judge defensive ability and as a result it gets ignored. I get so fed up with people who just don’t seem to realise that baseball is really a team sport and if you carry a bat then you carry a glove. Then you realise that someone like Andruw Jones will take away as many runs as he will score but people don’t realise that not every outfielder can make the grabs he does but then those people have probably never seen Roger Cedeno in the field. Strong defence wins games in the real world but not in fantasy baseball.
Championship teams are built up the middle but fantasy teams are scrambled together from here there and everywhere. You don’t even need to mix up lefties and righties or put together platoons or play match-ups so if you don’t come on top of your league and your friend tries to convince you that he’s the man just remind them that if this were the real world your boys would have had the right blend of team chemistry and timely hits to carry you to the promised land and that fantasy baseball is just a bit of fun and nothing much else…at least that’ll be my excuse…not that I need one because my teams kick donkey. Always good to have an alibi though.
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