Welcome to our weekly feature chronicling the 2008 season of the National Fantasy Baseball Championship, the NFBC, sharing concepts and ideas that can hopefully be applied to your league, too.
Last month in this space, I called out such a service provided by the lords of the NFBC that can be put to use anywhere. The NFBC transaction deadline for Free Agent Allocation Budget (FAAB) acquisitions is on Sunday evening.
Correspondingly, each Monday morning, a list of every player added in every league that week, including the amounts of their winning bids, plus a separate list of every player dropped is posted on the NFBC message board.
These are located on special threads and are available to anyone, whether you are an NFBC player or not. The threads are new every week, but here are links to this past weekend’s adds and drops.
I mention this not just to recycle an old idea, but as a bridge to my topic of the day.
The NFBC, through their game contractor, STATS Inc., provides data on each player in terms of the penetration of leagues in which the player is drafted and percentage of leagues in which the player is in the starting line-up.
My question to you is whether or not one should heed that information, either in assessing free agents or deciding who to play?
I will start with the latter point first as I think it is the easier one. What other teams did last week should only be of the mildest interest to you this period.
For hitters, better to look at their last week or two of play to find hot hitters and play the hand. Are they playing good pitching teams next week or poor ones? Are they scheduled in stadiums conducive to hitting or in pitchers parks?
For pitchers, it is even simpler. Where the pitchers are playing as well as whether or not they have two starts that week are far more important facts than what percentage of other owners started the pitcher the previous week.
Another important consideration is roster size. NFBC rosters consist of the often-standard 14 position players and nine pitchers plus seven reserve slots. The latter are most often also used to stash two or three injured players, leaving just four or five bench guys who could be candidates for insertion.
Bottom line is that more often than not, these playing time decisions can be made without concern over external factors.
How about bidding for players, then?
I can relate to this one personally. In past columns, I documented my poor draft and the bad injury luck that accompanied it. As a result, I am lodged in the bottom quarter of my league, Orlando 3.
Yet, of my 23 starters, 22 of them are 100% owned. Only one, outfielder Elijah Dukes of Washington at 90.3%, is not rostered on every single NFBC team. In addition, two of my bench players are at 100% ownership and three more are at 96.8%. Only rehabbing Cardinal Chris Carpenter (83.9%) and his demoted former teammate Chris Duncan (54.8%) are not almost universally popular.
Looking at these numbers, with the exception of Duncan perhaps, one might consider standing pat. That would be a tremendous mistake.
Look at your standings in the various scoring categories and assess what you need to do to improve. If it means taking a bit of risk to dump a rehabbing player like Carpenter, do it and don’t look back.
Sure, the player you drop might be picked up by another owner, but with 15 teams in each league, there are 450 players rostered at any given point in time. Does it really matter if you cut the 420th-ranked one?
As a point of reference, here are some of the players currently available in Orlando League 3, with the percentages of leagues owned/started following:
Pitchers: Josh Banks (96.8/47.2), Braden Looper (64.5/22.6), Jeff Suppan (61.3/48.4), Masa Kobayashi (45.2/12.9), Claudio Vargas and Blaine Boyer (35.5/9.7), Zach Duke (29.0/29.0), Odalis Perez (29.0/9.7).
With the possible exception of Banks, are any of these guys potential significant contributors, let alone game-changers?
Position Players: Marcus Thames (93.5/77.4), Jason Kendall (93.5/74.2), Jose Castillo (87.1/47.4), Marco Scutaro (67.7/64.5), Franklin Gutierrez (64.5/32.3), David Eckstein (61.3/32.3), Brendan Harris (54.8/45.2), Aaron Boone (45.2/38.7), Tadahito Iguchi (45.2/9.7).
It seems elementary, but ask yourself the most basic questions: “Will any of these players help my team in the categories in which I need to move up? Are they at positions where I can play them without having to bench other more important contributors? Are they more likely to give me more than the players I have to drop?”
In other words, don’t place bids and turn over your roster just to place bids. Again, make the moves you believe best to put as many points on the board as possible.
Better to look for emerging players than to sift through the leftovers in the FAAB dumpster. And when you do decide to bid, make an aggressive enough bid to maximize the odds that you get your man.
Brian Walton’s work can also be found daily at stlcardinals.scout.com.