Depth Factor: How Your Fantasy Team can Survive (or Thrive) Despite any Injury

Occasionally, MLB general mangers say something that can of great use to fantasy owners. Ideas that can be considered a real world lesson regarding how to run your fantasy baseball team.

As such, Boston general manager Theo Epstein said the following after the team’s acquisition of Adam LaRoche:

"We've been in the market for a player who can ... help our club's depth at the corner infield. We've checked in with a number of players ... that had the most reasonable acquisition cost, so this was a chance to get a player who we think will help our club."

While never my favorite individual (I’m a Yankees fan), Epstein makes a strong point that resonates into fantasy leagues, especially with trade deadlines looming. Depth is a crucial attribute for a fantasy team in the season’s final months, particularly in daily leagues.

For the first few months of the season, depth can be slowly built with trades and free agents. Few owners are worried about having a strong bench and may even deal away depth to solidify their starting lineup. After all, there remain various avenues of player acquisition still available.

However, once the trade deadline passes, it’s a different story. In many leagues, the bottom teams have already surrendered their season and won’t be dropping any gems onto the waiver wire. And since trades are no longer possible, any roster shortcomings may have to be filled with gambles on late season call ups.

To avoid that predicament, use the last few weeks before your league’s trading deadline to craft an injury-proof roster. This can be especially important in daily leagues as it may give you the ability to catch up to your opponents simply by having each position filled on any given day.

It’s an easy task, actually, but one that certainly depends on how much bench space your league provides. The shorter the bench, the more valuable multi-position eligible players become.

It’s also a strategy I begin preparing for early in the season, stashing struggling multi-position eligible players on my bench. But it can also be done in August, when many owners start to become exhausted by the marathon baseball season (some of them even start thinking about football).

The strategy also relies on your pitching situation. If you’re way behind in innings pitched, you may need to fill your bench with pitchers in order to catch up.

Many MLB general managers use fancy equipment and formulas, but you can simply type up/write down your team’s starting lineup and see if you have enough on your bench to cover each and every position twice.

For example, in one of my 5 x 5 roto leagues, my starting lineup looks like this:

C: Brian McCann

1B: Justin Morneau

2B: Ben Zobrist

SS: Jimmy Rollins

3B: Chipper Jones

OF: Hunter Pence

OF: Nelson Cruz

OF: Matt Kemp

DH: Joey Votto

My bench consists of Milton Bradley, Franklin Gutierrez and Felipe Lopez while Geovany Soto, Carlos Beltran and Carlos Delgado are currently injured.

Clearly the roster is far from perfect and I’ll be tinkering some more in the next couple of weeks, but a quick glance shows I have two options at catcher (once Soto returns), both Votto and Morneau for 1B, Zobrist can play 2B, SS and OF and Lopez is eligible at 2B, SS, 3B and OF.

In the event any one of those nine players can’t play, I’ve got someone to fill in at his position. Every starter in that lineup has at least one backup.

Each day as lineups are announced, I check my roster and slide in a bench player if one of my starters. More importantly, no one injury can cripple my offense.

It’s important to keep a few mental deadlines with regard to you roster. Four to six weeks into the season, it’s time to try and steal underachieving players from unwitting owners. Around the All-Star break, consider moving some guys who are clearly playing above their heads.

And as the MLB deadline hits, it’s time to finalize a roster that can not be broken.

The Actual Value of Fantasy Baseball Decisions

Michael Lewis’ “Moneyball” introduced the baseball mainstream to Sabermetrics, but I realized early on that I didn’t have the brain capacity to fully understand, absorb or apply all of the copious statistical data that had suddenly flooded the market. What I was able to glean from the book was the to recognize and appreciate what my competition valued and under-valued. Like most fantasy baseball enthusiasts, I’m always looking for an edge…and thus my one truly Sabremetric endeavor each year is a massive, ranked list that I use as draft prep for my long-running 12-team, 5x5 rotisserie mixed league.

Dubbed the SPI (ostensibly for “Smith Projection Index”, but clearly a rip-off of the college basketball rating system), my rankings use a proprietary formula to weigh pre-season draft lists from “fantasy experts”, average draft position (ADP) from comparable leagues and my own carefully culled data. The goal is to rank every player and prospect, not necessarily from first to worst, but by actual value. I want to be able to anticipate when specific players will be snatched up, as this foresight can be perhaps my biggest advantage in a league where hours of draft homework is the standard. But I also don’t want to take a mediocre player simply because he’s on a lot of sleeper lists. I want a draft list that is both objective AND subjective, because really…isn’t that the best way to make an informed and accurate decision?

It’s easy to love Albert Pujols’ production, but when you’re building your draft list (or trying to climb the standings), a more important element is deciphering Pujols’ value relative to other players in the league. Four months ago, the SPI said Pujols was the best player in baseball, but that Prince Fielder was the best 1B value – someone who would likely produce 1st round stats despite being a 3rd or 4th round draft pick. SPI ranked him #25, roughly 5-10 picks ahead of where he was selected in most comparable leagues. Obviously no one who selected Pujols is kicking himself that he missed Fielder, but of the SPI’s top 15 First Basemen, only Prince and Joey Votto had rankings that were double digits better than the players’ ADP. Fielder ended up as the 21st pick, Votto the 105th (despite an SPI of 74), and neither of the owners who drafted these players is disappointed.

I could bore you with the SPI’s pre-season studs and sleepers, and its mid-season hits and misses, but instead, I’d like to implore you to consider four types of value when building your daily, weekly, monthly, yearly and keeper league rosters. Potential value is the sexy siren that can present the greatest (or lowest) return on investment; performance value is entirely objective, incredibly accurate, and yet easy to dismiss because it’s, for lack of a better word, boring; perceived value uses projections, extrapolations and – surprisingly enough – wishful thinking to make judgment calls. But it’s the incredibly obvious and too-often ignored Actual Value that represents your greatest chance of success, because it takes into account all available subjective and objective data to reach a conclusion. Maybe our progressive minds can absorb this information, but you can bet that the majority of your competition will get stuck somewhere along the way to enlightenment. Use their weaknesses to your advantage.

You cannot be a winning fantasy player over the long haul if you’re too focused on potential, performance or perceived value. But actual value – the “It’s the Economy, Stupid” of fantasy baseball analysis – is one of the few legitimate methods for us to grab a real advantage. And short of unsustainable good luck, it’s likely the only tool to ensure long-term competitiveness in the deepest and most ruthless of fantasy baseball contests.

This is THE (capital letters) vital skill to have when planning your draft, building a mid-season trade offer or weighing your roster options. Once you recognize the competitor who is too hung up on potential value, you’ll be able to capitalize on his “grass is always greener” fetish. Compete against a performance value owner? His lack of imagination will keep him in the past while you dominate the future. And if you find yourself up against a perceived value foe, you can count on his overreliance on formulas and crossed-fingers to make him ignore the real world trends staring him right in the face.

Of course, if you’re matched up with an opponent who understands the actual value of potential, performance and perception…chances are it’s too late. I’ve already won.

Inconsistent Players

For my inaugural post, I felt it necessary to cover a topic befitting a blog titled “Daily Baseball Data”. Nothing is more valuable in daily leagues than consistency. A player that will be in the lineup every day and produce steady numbers is invaluable. It means one less spot in your lineup to analyze each day, which gives you more time to focus energy in other areas.

Conversely, productive players who continually fail to find a place in their team’s lineup can slowly lead to fantasy paralysis. There are few things worse than finally checking lineup in the middle of a game and wondering why your player was left out of the mix.

With that in mind, here are a few fantasy players that are increasingly becoming headaches. Not because their performance is wretched, but because you feel the need to check on their status a dozen times before each game:

Chipper Jones, 3B, Atlanta Braves: This is an easy one because Jones has had the same story for years. An immensely productive player when he’s on the field, Jones is batting .292 with an .880 OPS this season. It’s a far cry from his tremendous 2008, but still solid.

But, as usual with Jones, the injuries remain a problem. He has already missed 12 of Atlanta’s 85 games. It would be somewhat more excusable if he missed 12 games in a row. At least then you would know he’s hurt and needs to be on the bench.

Instead, Jones spreads out his absences. He missed the third game of the season and then four games in a row in mid-April. He missed two games four days apart in early May, back-to-back games on May 22-23 and the last three with a groin injury.

It’s a no brainer to put Jones in the lineup when you know he’s going to play. But do you ever really KNOW he’s going to play?

Nelson Cruz, OF, Texas Rangers: It’s hard to imagine any player on pace for 40 homers and 25 steals would have trouble getting in the lineup, but that’s the situation Cruz is in at the moment.

Since Josh Hamilton’s return to the majors, the Rangers have a cluttered outfield situation that also includes David Murphy, Marlon Byrd and Andruw Jones.

Texas has won six of its last eight games and Cruz has slumped recently while Murphy, Byrd and Jones have played well. As a result, manager Ron Washington has decided Cruz is the odd man out, even though he is the superior player.

Even if you know Cruz should be in your daily fantasy lineup, his MLB manager apparently has less confidence in him and that’s leads to a frustrating situation where a recent fantasy asset is becoming gamble.

Mike Napoli, C, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim: What’s wrong with this picture: a catcher with an .863 OPS and on pace for 25 homers has only played in 58 of his team’s 83 games.

Napoli is arguably the third or fourth-best fantasy catcher as far as production per game, only the Angels don’t seem to realize that probably indicates he should play more. Instead, Napoli is routinely benched for Jeff Mathis, who is a superior defensive player.

Los Angeles’ outfield situation has a tremendous impact on Napoli’s playing time. The team has five outfielders with more than 148 at-bats while Napoli has 194.

Catcher is such a thin position that it’s absolute agony watching so much power potential go to waste. It necessitates that you use a roster spot for a backup catcher for the 32 percent of Angels’ games that Napoli is on the bench.

Jason Kubel, OF, Minnesota Twins: It’s no secret that Kubel is a dreadful hitter against lefties. He has a career .836 OPS in 1144 at-bats against righties and a .635 OPS in 282 at-bats against lefties. That disparity is the only thing preventing him from being a must-start fantasy outfielder.

But it also makes me wonder if Kubel has ever really gotten a fair shot at being an every day player. Recent baseball history is littered with guys who struggled against lefthanded pitching before adjusting to become everyday players (Paul O’Neill and David Ortiz come to mind).

Owning Kubel, like every other player on this list, is an exercise in patience. Unlike other fantasy sports, baseball has only rare instances in which a coach’s decisions impact your team. Filling out the lineup card is one of the biggest.

Kubel is on pace for a career-high 505 at bats (as well as 26 homers and 81 RBI). The Twins are still prone to sit him against lefties though, which makes him something less than a reliable everyday player.

Colby Rasmus, OF, St. Louis Cardinals: I used to work at a sports organization when Tony LaRussa was nicknamed “The Chemist”, mainly because of his propensity for experimenting with his lineup instead of just playing it simple.

Rasmus is a 22-year-old outfielder with an .814 OPS – second-best on the team behind you-know-who. Injuries have led to him being fourth on the team with 257 at-bats and yet he currently finds himself losing at-bats to Ryan Ludwick, Chris Duncan and Rick Ankiel - veterans that are not producing nearly as well.

Forward-thinking owners pounced on Rasmus early and are eagerly waiting for LaRussa to proclaim “this is our guy.”

But until then it’s going to be a nightly exercise in trying to find out what concoction “The Chemist” is coming up with next.

Holistic Fantasy Baseball Strategy

I’m not going to lie, I have just as much idea as you do if Jimmy Rollins will get his average up, if Francisco Liriano will get his ERA down, or if Ben Zobrist will revert to Ben Zobrist circa 2006. There are plenty of statistics and historical data that might give us an idea one way or another, but we can’t really guarantee whether or not these assumptions will bear out by the end of the season.

Instead, I would like to write on some lesser known aspects of attacking fantasy baseball from unorthodox angles and its game strategy aspect, in both pre-season draft preparation and in-season management. Some player analysis will undoubtedly sneak in, but most stats will be eschewed and instead the focus will be more on holistic strategies behind building and winning a fantasy baseball team. To me, fantasy baseball is fairly similar to investing, it's more important to have a sound strategy to build upon than knowing which player or stock to acquire.

I’ve always been interested in baseball from a young age, but my interest really soared once I read Michael Lewis’ infamous “Moneyball”. Yeah, yeah, another sabermetrician. There are enough people who can explain why Billy Beane is brilliant (though I gladly will take the bait if no one else is around), but the most important aspect of that book was explaining the importance of attacking inefficiencies. I hope this blog will help you understand how to take advantage of inefficiency in terms of fantasy baseball.

Until next time…