My Yahoo! Friends and Family Team
- By: Chris Liss
- On: 3/22/2011 7:09:00 PM
- View Comments : 98
Related: Chris Liss
| Round | Player | Pos |
| 1.8 | Alex Rodriguez | 3B |
| 2.7 | Kevin Youkilis | 1B |
| 3.8 | Justin Upton | OF |
| 4.7 | Mike Stanton | OF |
| 5.8 | B.J. Upton | OF |
| 6.7 | Colby Rasmus | OF |
| 7.8 | Joakim Soria | P |
| 8.7 | Francisco Rodriguez | P |
| 9.8 | Matt Wieters | C |
| 10.7 | Joe Nathan | P |
| 11.8 | Brad Lidge | P |
| 12.7 | Rafael Furcal | SS |
| 13.8 | Jeremy Hellickson | P |
| 14.7 | Alfonso Soriano | OF |
| 15.8 | Alex Gordon | 3B/OF |
| 16.7 | Josh Beckett | P |
| 17.8 | Brian Matusz | P |
| 18.7 | Brandon League | P |
| 19.8 | Sean Rodriguez | 2B/OF |
| 20.7 | Homer Bailey | P |
| 21.8 | Nate McLouth | OF |
| 22.7 | Trevor Cahill | P |
| 23.8 | Alexi Casilla | 2B/SS |
| 24.7 | Nyjer Morgan | OF |
| 25.8 | Scott Downs | P |
Some quick notes:
I drafted hitters with my six picks, and then closers with four of my next five. I didn't take a starting pitcher (Hellickson) until the 13th round. Why? Because this league has a low innings cap, so closers have a lot more value than usual. Consider that normally when you roster a closer instead of an SP, you lose big in two categories, wins and Ks, in exchange for saves and maybe a small amount of ERA and WHIP. But in a league where we're all going to get to 1250 IP, it's really K/9 and wins/9. My closers won't hurt me at all in Ks, and they might even help slightly. And they'll probably hurt me a little in wins, but if they get 4 or 5 in 80 IP, it won't be by very much. Closers are capable of helping in five categories if they get you a handful of wins.
Of course, an elite starter is also worth more because he can get you 210 IP of your 1250 total, roughly 1/6 of your total output rather than 1/8 or 1/9 in an uncapped league. That means a Felix Hernandez or a Lincecum will help your ratios even more than usual. But if you can cobble together 400 good innings between four closers and assorted middle relief pickups, then you only need 850 more innings over the entire year. And because it's a daily league, you can bench your starters against the Yankees, Red Sox and Rangers, for example. So my plan was to skimp on starting pitching (unless someone good fell to me - I just missed on Max Scherzer, for example, and strongly considered Jon Lester (Round 3) and Zack Greinke (Round 6), but they were gone before my next turn - stock up on hitting and closers and then grab some pitchers with strikeout upside late.
The other plan - because this is such a tough group - was to be aggressive on pre-peak rising stars. So I took Wieters, Stanton, both Uptons, Rasmus, Hellickson, Matusz, Bailey and even Gordon. Even Cahill, Sean Rodriguez and Alexi Casilla fit that description to an extent.
Overall, I'm happy with the team, but will need my speculative pitchers to pitch well - at least when they have favorable match-ups.
reddit
Comments
On: 3/22/2011 8:17:00 PM
On: 3/22/2011 8:21:00 PM
On: 3/22/2011 8:22:00 PM
On: 3/22/2011 8:23:00 PM
On: 3/22/2011 8:44:00 PM
On: 3/22/2011 8:47:00 PM
On: 3/22/2011 8:51:00 PM
On: 3/22/2011 8:59:00 PM
On: 3/22/2011 9:03:00 PM
On: 3/22/2011 9:04:00 PM
On: 3/22/2011 9:06:00 PM
On: 3/22/2011 10:10:00 PM
I did adjust a couple of small things - I took Utley's projection down significantly (I may have had an old Utley projection in there) and made a couple of other minor tweaks (nothing affecting my own players). I also changed strikeouts to K/9 to go with how this capped league generally plays out.
I was half asleep during the entry, so I might have made some errors with position slotting. To that end, I ran two separate sets of standings, one including the three bench players and one without them.
Here's how the results fell:
(including reserves)
salfino
evans
ghelken
funston
singman
romig
buser
razzball
pianowski
erickson
behrens
del don
carty
liss
(ignoring reserves)
erickson
salfino
buser
razzball
behrens
evans
ghelken
del don
funston
carty
romig
liss
singman
pianowski
So depending on which batch you prefer, looks like Liss is in the basement or I am. Damn you, magic projections!
It's strange that three players radically adjust Jeff's standing (a lot of teams had notable changes between the formats). I'm assuming the Belt projection was very slight; I don't have it in front of me. I suppose we should play the season out and see what happens.
On: 3/22/2011 10:38:00 PM
On: 3/22/2011 10:49:00 PM
On: 3/22/2011 11:32:00 PM
On: 3/23/2011 5:16:00 AM
And yet... the kid's special. Every single person who has watched him play or been around him, with any degree of baseball knowledge, has come away completely floored by his relentless work ethic, baseball IQ and maturity. The anecdote I posted on the admin site yesterday -- about Stanton deliberately setting a pitching machine to throw sliders just off the plate 90% of the time, just so he can better recognize the mistakes in the 10% that are over the plate -- is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the kind of stuff he's been doing on his own for years already.
Does any of that matter? I think it does. That's the kind of mental skill set, combined with Stanton's ridiculous physical tools, that makes a player a Hall of Famer if he stays healthy. But I guess we're about to find out.
On: 3/23/2011 6:51:00 AM
It wasn't long ago I recall this type of pre-season hype about Justin Upton.
On: 3/23/2011 7:36:00 AM
On: 3/23/2011 8:04:00 AM
On: 3/23/2011 8:13:00 AM
On: 3/23/2011 8:18:00 AM
On: 3/23/2011 8:20:00 AM
On: 3/23/2011 8:38:00 AM
On: 3/23/2011 8:47:00 AM
On: 3/23/2011 8:48:00 AM
On: 3/23/2011 9:14:00 AM
As for the 1250 IP limit, if injuries and sitting out some starts leaves you off the pace, it is really easy to set up a revolving door in your last bench spot and stream pitchers to make up the difference.
On: 3/23/2011 9:30:00 AM
On: 3/23/2011 9:37:00 AM
On: 3/23/2011 10:03:00 AM
As for benching Beckett and others against the Yanks, here's the thing. Yes, Liss can do that. But so can everybody else. So if Liss is behind in WHIP, it's not like he can catch up by benching pitchers against the Yanks, as everyone else will, too.
On: 3/23/2011 10:21:00 AM
And the Upton analogy is off point. Stanton is where Upton was before 2009, not last year. He delivered a huge profit. Last year, Upton was a second-round pick.
On: 3/23/2011 10:43:00 AM
On: 3/23/2011 10:45:00 AM
On: 3/23/2011 10:47:00 AM
On: 3/23/2011 11:51:00 AM
On: 3/23/2011 1:15:00 PM
On: 3/23/2011 1:21:00 PM
On: 3/23/2011 1:23:00 PM
On: 3/23/2011 2:15:00 PM
On: 3/23/2011 2:17:00 PM
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On: 3/23/2011 3:14:00 PM
On: 3/23/2011 4:20:00 PM
On: 3/23/2011 4:24:00 PM
On: 3/23/2011 4:29:00 PM
On: 3/23/2011 4:38:00 PM
On: 3/23/2011 4:49:00 PM
On: 3/23/2011 5:22:00 PM
On: 3/23/2011 5:26:00 PM
On: 3/23/2011 6:18:00 PM
On: 3/23/2011 6:32:00 PM
Stanton would definitely have been on my radar at those picks, and I don't think it's as ridiculous a pick as most people here seem to think it is. If Stanton gets 500 ABs, I don't see how his [B]mean[B] projection is any less than 35 HRs. This is a guy who has torn apart every level of the minors, has great MLEs, and has posted a terrific half a season at the major league level. And when I say terrific, I don't just mean in terms of total numbers.
I mean, if you look at his raw power, you see that he's hitting the ball - with regularity - close to 450 feet. He's hitting balls past 400 feet to the opposite field. These are terrific signs for a power hitter, and they are signs that his power is legit. If you can hit the ball 450 feet, logically, you're also going to be hitting them 350. Further, he showed pretty decent plate discipline despite his K% (which isn't as bad as most make it out to be). He swung at pitches out of the zone at a pretty-close-to-league-average rate and made contact with them at a well-above-average rate.
Maybe I'm using a straw-man argument here, but it seems to me that there are two distinct arguments people make against a guy like Stanton who has put up a good half season but is otherwise "unproven": 1) Pitchers will adjust to him and find his holes, and 2) Since we're working with limited data, we have to regress him heavily to the mean.
Chris has already addressed (1) to an extent by talking about Stanton's stellar work ethic and the example of the pitch machine throwing 90% sliders off the plate and 10% over the middle so he can recognize mistake pitches better.
In regard to (2), what many people fail to understand is that "regression to the mean" doesn't mean regressing a guy like Stanton to league average. I'd go as far as to say that doing so is wrong. When you have a guy like Stanton with measurable raw power like he has, regressing his stats to league average is assuming that he's a league average player, which he's not. You need to regress him to players like him.
Unfortunately, there aren't many comparables for a 20 year old guy with 450 ft power and a 30%+ K%, but if you eliminate the age, you'd be comparing him to some elite power hitters like Ryan Howard, Mark Reynolds, Adam Dunn, Prince Fielder, Jim Thome (a few years back), etc. That's some very good company and regressing to that group would make Stanton look much more favorable than simply regressing him to all rookies or to league average. Because while we only have a half season of MLB data on him, we do have other data and we do know that he is not a mere rookie or league average player.
If someone has another specific argument against Stanton, I'd love to hear it.
On: 3/23/2011 6:41:00 PM
Usually when people rip me for making a certain pick, they'll just yell about how much of a reach I made. What they're really saying is that I deviated badly from ADP. I picked out of turn. A good critique of my pick would be making the case that my valuation (which is all that's important because it's my team) is wrong. If my valuation is right, it doesn't matter how out of turn I went unless that player would have been available in the next round. So long as that's not the case, the only critique you can make about my pick is that my valuation was wrong. And yelling "reach" isn't that. You have to attack the basis for my valuation. Which is harder to do because I didn't come upon it without a fair amount of research, experience and deliberation.
Basically Derek's point does the opposite - it bolsters the basis for my valuation of Stanton.
On: 3/23/2011 6:50:00 PM
On: 3/23/2011 7:57:00 PM
His avg also should be sub .300 and if not for his ridiculous avg with runners on base last year, his Rbis numbers would have simply been good.
I'm an actual Yankees/ Arod fan and I wish I was wrong but I think his days of posting top 10 value are gone.
On: 3/23/2011 8:08:00 PM
On: 3/23/2011 8:12:00 PM
It's easy to say Stanton will be like Adam Dunn or Ryan Howard. But how do we honestly know he won't be more like Chris Davis? Compare Stanton's numbers in the minors to Davis - are they really that different? I'm not saying Stanton is Davis; I actually agree that he's a decent bet to hit 35 HRs. But if he hits .240 or .250 in the process, how much is he really worth? One could argue he'd be a somewhat better version of Mark Reynolds at a less important position.
On: 3/23/2011 8:19:00 PM
On: 3/23/2011 9:44:00 PM
On: 3/23/2011 10:42:00 PM
On: 3/24/2011 7:40:00 AM
On: 3/24/2011 7:44:00 AM
On: 3/24/2011 8:16:00 AM
On: 3/24/2011 8:35:00 AM
On: 3/24/2011 9:34:00 AM
On: 3/24/2011 12:38:00 PM
My step son and I call him Bam Bam.
On: 3/24/2011 12:46:00 PM
On: 3/24/2011 1:51:00 PM
On: 3/24/2011 2:01:00 PM
On: 3/24/2011 2:40:00 PM
On: 3/24/2011 2:47:00 PM
On: 3/24/2011 2:48:00 PM
On: 3/24/2011 5:07:00 PM
If you look at THT's Oliver MLEs, which underlie a projection system that has been shown to be one of, if not, the best system for projecting young players, we see that Stanton has posted MLEs of 20, 28, and 37 HR/500 AB the past three seasons. Weight that 5/4/3 and you get 30 HR per 500/AB. Add in an aging curve, which is steep for a 20-year old, and a 30 HR mean skills projection is perfectly reasonable. If you look at Oliver's projection itself, it has him down for 33 HRs in 460 AB. If you want to look at other projections, Bill James has him for 36 HR/500, FanGraphs Fans for 31 HR/500, and ZiPS for 30 HR/500.
Where I think you can argue, however, is on the playing time projection. If you think 500 AB is too many because he could get sent back to the minors, then I'm not going to argue with you. This isn't something that we can quantify, and there is some possibility that this happens. 20% sounds too high to me, but maybe I'm wrong.
But if you agree with Jeff's point that safety early and risks late is largely unattainable in tough leagues like this and you submit to taking risks early, then Stanton is as good of a risk as they come because the skills are there and all we need to hope for is the PT. Plus, there's additional, significant upside in his skills projection.
On: 3/24/2011 5:42:00 PM
On: 3/24/2011 6:17:00 PM
That's what I'd put as his over/under, too, as that's the number where I'd have a hard time deciding whether to go over or under.
Good stuff, guys. Enjoyable debate.
On: 3/24/2011 6:22:00 PM
On: 3/24/2011 6:29:00 PM
On: 3/24/2011 7:56:00 PM
On: 3/24/2011 8:06:00 PM
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On: 3/24/2011 8:30:00 PM
On: 3/24/2011 8:58:00 PM
On: 3/24/2011 9:48:00 PM
On: 3/25/2011 5:10:00 AM
On: 3/25/2011 8:29:00 AM
I just can't see him dropping his K% below 30%, despite the strong September. The contact rate was much better than I expected last season, but he could also go in the tank swinging for the fences like Mark Reynolds did in '10. Give me the over all day.
Stanton is a unique player with huge upside. Could he return 4th round value? Absolutely, and then some. He could also be a monumental bust and be sent down by May 15th. A pretty polarizing name, and great debate.
I really wonder how the league is going to pitch him this season, and how he has adjusted to the scouting reports that are out on him. That will ultimately be the deciding factor, and none of us can predict that until we see some evidence once the season starts.
I thought the Stanton pick was a reach, but it isn't complete lunacy based on your rationale.
On: 3/25/2011 9:16:00 AM
On: 3/25/2011 9:48:00 AM
On: 3/25/2011 10:40:00 AM
On: 3/25/2011 10:57:00 AM
On: 3/25/2011 11:16:00 AM
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