Earlier today I was looking at two different baseball websites. A few of the guys and one lady from Church of the Saviour organized a Fantasy Baseball league last year, Major League Churchball. Clever eh?
So I was doing some research on ESPN.com as well as baseballdocs.com. I realized that the two websites had players ranked differently. (I didn't really realize this, it's common knowledge, but for the purpose of wording I realized it). Every site is going to have players ranked differently, the question is why? Not only why? but which players do I need to know why and which players are not ranked all that differently in the grand scheme of things. Alex Rodriguez is #1 on ESPN and #2 on BaseballDocs, that really doesn't matter, if you have pick No. 1 you are taking the guy that you want (most likely Rodriguez, Pujols, or Hanler Ramirez). The guys that matter are guys like James Shields who is #85 on BaseballDocs and #54 on ESPN or Rafael Furcal who is #114 on BaseballDocs and 72 on ESPN. So I present you the GISSER (Gauging Indications of Statistical Standing and Estimated Rating). It can also stand for Garbagy Idiotic Stupid Suggestions Estimated Randomly, but I prefer the first one as it is more truthful.
I know! Your anxious! What is this magical device!
I have to tell you that it is not so much magical as an exact science, and if it were magical I would not be able to tell you. This takes time to do, you can't just subtract and figure it out. You need a graphing calculator as well as FOUR hilighters.
Oh yeah what does it do, maybe I should explain that first. Basically you can take any two groups of rankings and find out what players have major discrepancies in the rankings. I would suggest using the site that your league is hosted on as well as a site you find searching in Google. Olaf's Oakland Athletics Blog is probably not a good one, because Eric Chavez and Jason Giambi have not been good for Fantasy owners for at least 5 years. For example in performing the GISSER I learned that while AJ Burnett is ranked 99 Overall by BaseballDocs and 125 Overall by ESPN (20th Best SP by BaseballDocs ad 28th Best SP by ESPN) The 26 player differential is really not as big as it looks.
Why that might be depends. For example BaseballDocs and ESPN had the first 9 pitchers ranked exactly the same in terms of position, but ESPNs first 9 were all rated significantly higher than BaseballDocs in terms of overall (no less than difference of 5, which is half a round in a Fantasy draft). What this means is that ESPN values a Top 10 pitcher more than BaseballDocs, but they agree on which pitchers should go in what order. What you must decide when drafting is how much you value a Top 10 pitcher and whether you agree with these so-called experts. After performing the GISSER I found that the rankings for the First 12 Pitchers by both websites were close enough that the only real discrepancy is value vs other positions, not the stats they will give you. When you get deeper down you find much more difference (Gavin Floyd has a positional difference of 30+, that is a red flag).
Step 1: You now have your two websites, write down the O-Ranks (overall ranking) and the P-Ranks (positional rank) for the amount of players you think will actually be drafted one position at a time for now(In a 10 team league 70 pitchers is resourceful enough in most cases, 20 catchers is more tha enough, and your probably looking at 60 outfielders). With pitchers I used BaseballDocs top 63 and then threw in a handful I've guys I like.
Step 2: You are now going to subtract the difference between the websites for each player (overall-overall and positonal-positional). Burnett has a O-Rank Diff of 26 (that's absolute value, depends on which one you wrote down first).
Step 3: If you are using a graphing calculator add all your values into a list. There are two ways to do this, you can include negatives or you can use absolute value. I used absolute value for pitchers and JUST REALIZED I DID IT DIFFERENTLY FOR CATCHERS AND SHORTSTOPS. Good thing I'm writing this to you guys.
Step 4: After performing an outlier test that tells me that players who have a differential of 55 or more are outliers, and getting rid of their values from the list. I perform the 1-Variable Stats function. This tells me that the mean, that's average in laymens terms, is 21.3. The standard deviation is 13.9. I decided that any time a player's Rank Diff is more than one standard deviation away from the mean, I will check to find out what the reason is. This is also a player I want to go check a third website for information on, and see which one is closer.
Step 5: Get out your hilighters. I used 4 because I had four different things to look for.
- ESPN O-Rank is lower than BaseballDocs O-Rank (pink)
- ESPN O-Rank is higher than BaseballDocs O-Rank (orange)
- ESPN P-Rank is lower than BaseballDocs P-Rank (blue)
- ESPN P-Rank is higher than BaseballDocs P-Rank (yellow)
- BY THE WAY, HIGHER MEANS BETTER... 1, 2, 3 IS HIGHER THAN 46, 47, 58. IT DOES NOT REFER TO THE NUMBER, BUT THE RANKING.
Conclusion: Now you are sitting doing one of two things... Wondering why on earth you spent your time reading this, you have not come out any more knowledgeable about Fantasy Baseball and you don't think this equation really means anything. Or you are getting your 2B rankings out and preparing to do some fancy math. I have succeeded. You have read this and you are going to try it and use my advice, or you won't use it and I will be a better Fantasy Player than you.
No comments:
Post a Comment