Just a Bit Outside: Making Smart Fantasy Baseball Decisions…for Once

Howie Kendrick is the Dr. House of professional baseball. Dare me to make sense of that analogy? OK…if you insist.

I’ve seen a full six episodes of the inexplicably popular Fox Drama, “House,” which makes me entirely qualified to generalize the show as a heaping pile of horse turd. In every episode, Dr. House and his team encounter a baffling medical mystery and offer – with complete certainty – a handful of diagnoses that one-by-one are proven incorrect. Finally, with the patient on the verge of certain death, the good doctor somehow generates the accurate diagnosis, the patient recovers and House goes back to popping Vicodin like its candy.

And yes, that’s EVERY episode. Why are millions of Americans watching? I suppose on this baseball blog, that’s neither here nor there.

So how does that apply to Howie Kendrick? No, I’m not suggesting that the Anaheim infielder has a drug problem, but I am suggesting that America’s fantasy owners have a problem by stubbornly continuing to insert the young Angel into their lineups.

A quick check of the most mainstream of sites reveals that Kendrick is an especially popular player. He’s owned in 72% of ESPN leagues, which at first blush, sounds right for a man of such alleged talents. The thing is, Kendrick is 28th on ESPN’s player rater – that’s not overall, that’s among other second basemen! Oh sure, Howie has been hot lately, but in a format in which the standard league has 10 teams, utilizes the standard five hitting stats and starts a 2B and a MI, no more than 20 second basemen should EVER be owned. And yet, Kendrick is rostered in nearly three-quarters of all leagues.

But my beef with Kendrick goes beyond his being overrated. Even in deeper leagues in which Kendrick could legitimately be considered, he’s a bad play. Sure, we’re talking about a guy with an impeccable minor league resume, one who was billed as a future big league batting champ. But his lifetime .300 major league batting average is empty; the guy has 18 homeruns in 1,200 major league at-bats! He offers nominal stolen base potential, below-average RBI, and because he’s seemingly allergic to taking a free pass (maybe House can diagnose the ailment), the guy scores far too few runs to be useful. But hey – at least your team starts a .300 hitter, right?

This pre-season, Kendrick’s average draft position in ESPN leagues was 127, making him a 13th round pick on average. Jose Lopez and Mark DeRosa were the next 2Bs, with ADPs of 136 and 141, respectively. And don’t even get me started about Aaron Hill, Marco Scutaro and Orlando Hudson, who were undrafted free agents in all but the deepest 2009 leagues. Do you get the picture? Not only is Kendrick’s limited skill set vastly overrated by players today, but it was overrated during the 2009 pre-season and will likely be overrated again in the spring of 2010.

Riddle me this, batsmen – which 2B would you rather have on your fantasy team?

Player A: .300 BA, 7 HR, 37 RBI, 49 Runs, 5 SB
Player B: .273 BA, 6 HR, 37 RBI, 38 Runs, 8 SB

Obviously, you’ll take the superior performance of Player A (Freddy Sanchez, by the way – who is 169 overall on CBS Sportsline’s player rater compared to 241 for Kendrick). And while one could argue that Howie’s production has come in 120 fewer at-bats, I say that’s another indictment against him! After all, despite breaking camp as the Angels’ starting 2B each of the past three seasons, various injuries have prevented Kendrick from ever amassing more than 340 at-bats in a season.

Listen, I have nothing personal against Howie Kendrick. I’m sure his talent is real and may eventually lead to legitimate fantasy value. But hey, I also know that Hugh Laurie is a fine actor…and I don’t let that fact excuse him for starring in redundant, brain-shrinking, stink bomb TV. It is human nature to be wowed by minor league stats and the gushing reviews of advanced scouts, just like it’s easy for us to be influenced to watch a crappy show by its copious amount of Golden Globe nominations. But sometimes, fantasy addicts, the proof is in the pudding.

You shouldn’t flip over to “House” during its normal timeslot because that’s what you’re programmed to do; you should only watch if you’ve had a frontal lobotomy and can no longer process rational thought. The same holds true for Howie Kendrick – don’t draft and/or start him in your fantasy leagues because you’re blinded by a pretty batting average and the allure of his potential. I’d wager that in 99% of leagues in which Kendrick starts, there is a better and cheaper 2B available on the waiver wire.

So don’t do it. Don’t watch crappy TV and don’t let momentum lead you to employing overrated second basemen – not now, not ever. Because the truth is, a bad episode of House only lasts an hour…but a season of Howie Kendrick on your roster may cause a significant narcotic dependency. And seriously, how much Vicodin do you really want to pop?

Salary Cap Fantasy Baseball: Lineup Analysis For 8/4/2009

Last week I asked readers to submit their lineup selections (with comments) for analysis here at Daily Baseball Data. My first taker on the offer was Robert C., who plays Facebook Salary Cap Fantasy Baseball. What follows are his lineup for today's (8/4/09) games, his reasoning for each of his picks, and then my thoughts on his selections. For anyone who hasn't tried the game, it's a half season game with a points scoring system and a salary cap. It also allows a maximum of 162 games for each hitter position in the lineup.

C: Joe Mauer - Small sample size (3-3) but there is a home run in there, and had a 2-4 game Sunday, plus I mean c'mon it's Joe Mauer

1B: Carlos Pena - Rays have hit Lester hard and I expect them to continue tomorrow. Pena's OPS is an edge over 1.000 against Lester in 22 AB

2B: Aaron Hill - Doesn't have the best numbers against Pettitte but has been hot as of late riding a 12 game hitting streak going 19 for his last 51

3B: Mark Reynolds - Small sample size but good numbers against Duke, 4-7 with 4 extra base hits, including 1 HR

SS: Ryan Theriot - Been good as of late with 5 hits in his last 2 games as well as a .421 BA against Cueto tomorrow

OF: Johnny Damon - Sports a huge sample size of 88 AB against Halladay and has 2 HR off him in that time sporting a .349 average as well

OF: Carl Crawford - Has an OBP of .381 against Lester and with V-Mart or Varitek behind the plate, I expect the Rays to be running

OF: Kendry Morales - Swinging a very hot bat in his last 8 games going 13 for 34 with 3 HR in his last 2 games

DH: Troy Tulowitzki - Very hot past few days as well going 15 for 29 over his last 8 games

RP: Mariano Rivera - Been very good converting something like 25 straight saves.

SP: Jarrod Washburn - I like his chances against the Orioles for his first start in Detroit, seeing as he's been lights out against the Orioles sporting a 0.56 era against them with 1 CG under his belt in only 2 starts

I'll take things in reverse here. In general in salary cap games of any sort, the starting pitcher is the player who will generally have the potential for the most points (and the most variance), making them your most important choice. Most of the time, it's not worth looking for bargains among SPs. I look for players with a high strikeout rate, low walk rate, and a weak opponent in a decent (or better) park for pitchers. Other factors I'd consider are whether they're home or away, and whether they have a good groundball rate. However, if you're not actually using a statistical model (and I'm not for this analysis), it's pretty difficult to take more than three or four factors into account in your analysis. In any case, Washburn definitely isn't one of the guys I'd be looking at today. The two pitchers who are good enough to meet my criteria and have nice situations today are Josh Johnson and Javier Vazquez. Johan Santana is also worth considering.

Picking a closer can be tricky. You definitely want someone who gets virtually all of his team's save opportunities, and someone who is likely to pitch well, given the opportunity. Rivera fits the bill on both counts. The problem with him today is that Halladay is the opposing starter, making the chances of a Yankee win much worse than usual. Look for a team that will be heavily favored given the starting pitching matchup. I think that despite all the injuries to the Mets' offense, Francisco Rodriguez would be a good choice today.

Reading through Robert's explanations of his picks for hitters, it looks like he's using three main lines of reasoning: quality of player, recent success, and batter vs. pitcher matchup history. In general, I only rely heavily on the first of these. Both recent success and batter vs. pitcher matchup history tend to rely too heavily on small sample sizes of data. I realize that may sound funny to hear from someone who runs a website where the most popular feature is the matchup history data, but Dave Hall ('Rotoguru') is the one who makes heavy use of that data (and has had a lot of success doing so). I focus more on player quality, opposing pitcher and park. My statistical model takes a variety of other factors into account such as home/away, lefty/righty matchups, opposing bullpens and more. But if you're not actually doing the calculations (which I'm not, today), then it's best to just focus on the most important factors.

Simply looking at the opposing pitchers for Robert's picks, I can see that there are three hitters in his lineup that I would definitely want to change. Damon (facing Halladay) and Pena and Crawford (facing Lester). There's simply no way I want hitters going up against opposing starters of that quality. There are almost always hitters that are nearly as good who are facing much easier opponents.

Today is not a particularly good day for hitters, but there are plenty of more favorable matchups than Lester and Halladay. Two of the teams whose hitters I would target looking for bargains today include the Twins against Huff (low K/9 rate, low GB%) and Royals against Rowland-Smith (low K/9, low GB%). Without reviewing the exact prices of players and the scoring system for Facebook Salary Cap Challenge in detail, I don't know precisely what the best option is, but I'd imagine that by taking a pair of slightly cheaper outfielders (with better matchups) than Damon and Crawford, Robert could probably afford to swap Pena out for Morneau. Given the matchups, that's an immense upgrade.