Fantasy Points Leagues?

[snakebns]

OK, in the past I have been in Sandbox type leagues that use "Fantasy Points" instead of roto-cats in a "head-to-head" bi-weekly format. From what I have seen on this site so far, it is HEAVILY geared toward roto-style leagues.

Is there any material that I am missing that deals directly with valuation of players using this type of format? Are there any suggestions that anuone could make that would help me better utilize all this wonderful information to my advantage?

Thank you ahead of time for any and all of your responses.

[NICK@HQ]

My main league is a H2H points-based league for which roto strategy is mostly useless. Nevertheless I find this site invaluable for teaching me to spread risk, evaluate talent correctly, know who the up-and-coming talent really will be, who is due for a fall, and so on.

As for valuing players, I just create a spreadsheet with BBHQ stats, convert the stats to points based on my league's rules, and voila! Valuation can be calculated from that. It's different from standard roto valuations, but it seems to match my league's bidding fairly well. In fact, it gives me an advantage over those who use standard valuations and thus overpay for, say, closers while undervaluing middle relievers.

[Rob]

Is there any material that I am missing that deals directly with valuation of players using this type of format? Are there any suggestions that anyone could make that would help me better utilize all this wonderful information to my advantage?

There are a number of books in print and articles on this site that deal with valuation down to very fine detail. You're right that most of them are geared towards roto, but the concepts are the same. In fact, points based leagues are much easier to value. I think Art McGee's book dealt with "par value" which really is like value above replacement.

In the most basic sense, if your league drafts 100 players, the 100th player is worth exactly $1.

Let's say that the 100th player, let's call him Girardi, is projected to score 100 points, and the best player, let's call him Barry, is projected to score 1000 points.

In this simple scenario, Barry's marginal value is 900 points, and Girardi's is 0 points. Since every player must cost $1, that's the minimum. So you total up the MARGINAL points of the top 100 players in your league, divide that by the number or marginal dollars in the league (total dollars in the league minus $1 times number of players), and that gives you the value per point. Multiply that by the number of projected points, add $1 (the minimum) and you have a value.

This is a very simple example. If you want to break each position down, you could go through the exercise for each position, with different replacement values for each, but many think it's not worth the fuss. That's your call.

I'm curious, what kind of point system do you use. I'm looking for other players who use front office scoring, a points system that accurate reflects hitters values, and does OK for pitchers.

FRONT OFFICE SCORING

Hitters Points Values
AB -0.5
H   3.0
2b  1.0
3b  2.0
HR  3.0
BB  1.5
SB  1.0
CS -2.0

Pitchers Points Values
Win 3.0
Loss -3.0
Save 2.0
Game Finished 1.0
Inning Pitched 4.5
Hit Allowed -2.5
HR Allowed -3.0
Walk Allowed -1.0

Email me at rcmiller3@hotmail.com if you'd like more information.

Regards,
Rob

[RAY@HQ]

Snake, just to add to the good advice that's already been offered here:

Taking the Excel versions of the projections files, it shouldn't be too difficult to add a column that yields projected point totals for your format. If you sort the spreadsheet by that new column, and compare that column to R$ or 5$, you should be able to quickly identify players (or even better, types of players) who are over- or under-valued in roto compared to your format. This should give you a nice head start going into your draft, in terms of knowing the names of guys that you can use to exploit the roto-biases of your competitors.

In fact, with a little studying, you can probably get some basic rules for quick corrections on the fly: i.e. knock a couple of bucks off of R$ for speedsters, add a couple for good OBP guys... whatever the case might be.