How to measure a player's return?

[Rule405]

In several instances, HQ will state that a player should return $x of value, etc. Example: "Stewart has batted only .244 this spring, but has smacked six doubles and boasts a contact rate of 95%. Stewart accumulated 576 AB last year, returning $16 to his fantasy owners." How do you come up with a value for a player's production/worth?

It may be elementary (my dear Watson), but I need the training and the knowledge.

Thanks,

bert

[RAY@HQ]

We generate our $ values using a "percentage valuation method", where basically we measure the contribution of each player to his league's overall pool of value in each category. For instance, Jose Reyes stole X bases last year, the NL as a whole stole Y bases. Reyes was responsible for X/Y of the NL's SBs. Do that calculation for each scoring category, measure against the total dollars available (# of teams in the roto league * budget) and you can generate a dollar value.

That's the one-paragraph explanation. For more detail, search on "PVM v. SGP" for a couple of lengthy threads in these forums. Or if you're really interested, pick up a copy of our "How to Value Players for Rotisserie Baseball" book.

[usualsuspects]

Ray, if you're still out there, can you elaborate a bit on the method for calculating AVG? (And, I have the original and HQ re-issue of McGee's book).

Reason being, I was looking at Chipper and Andrew Jones. Counting stats for either 4x4 or 5x5 are essentially projected identically. Chipper gets an extra $21 in 4x4, and $17 in 5x5, based on his (vastly) better AVG. Which without doing any math seems like a huge swing.

[RAY@HQ]

You're getting a bit beyond my expertise here... but yes, that is a huge swing. 75 points of BA is a very significant difference. If you look at it as variance from a midpoint of .280 (for instance), the idea that Chipper's level above that .280 line and Andruw's below that line each impact their value by $10 (positive or negative), I can believe that. It's not that simple, but to me that means that the $21/$16 differences pass the "sanity test".

To get an idea of the real numbers, it can be helpful to tinker with the Custom Draft Guide, and run it for single categories, or pairs of categories (HR/RBI) and see how the values break down.

[RobR]

Ray's got it. Also Andruw has 80 more AB than Chipper making his 248 AVG more of a burden for your team.