DTBL News

Author: Kevin

  • PAR for the Course


    I take a lot of pride in this web site I have developed and enhanced over the years.  Although it lacks some of the bells and whistles you’ll find on the mainstream fantasy baseball sites, this is a fully functional site that handles all of the key elements of fantasy baseball game management.  Just in the last few years, I’ve added a couple new features that I believe have greatly enhanced the overall user experience, namely the live stats tracker and the recent addition of injury notices.  But there is one key element of most fantasy sites that this one has always lacked:  some sort of player rater to help users analyze where their players stack up against the rest of the league.  After several years of spit-balling ideas, I’m happy to announce the addition of a new league statistic that will show up on pages throughout the site:  PAR (Points Above Replacement).

    As the name somewhat suggests, PAR is loosely based on the Sabermetric statistic that is now the de facto #1 stat for rating baseball players, WAR – Wins Above Replacement.  Most of you are probably at least somewhat familiar with WAR, but to put it in very simple terms, it is a stat designed to determine player value based on how many additional wins a player helps his team earn compared to how many wins they would have earned with a replacement level player in that roster spot instead.  So let’s say Player A earns a 4.0 WAR for a 90 win team.  The theory is that the team would have instead won 86 games if Player A had been replaced by a “replacement level” player.  If you want to see a full description of WAR, including the definition of what “replacement level” means, I recommend checking out this page.

    If determining the number of wins a player is worth is widely accepted as the best way of determining a player’s value in real baseball, what about fantasy baseball?  Well, we don’t care about “wins” (team wins, that is).  But we do care about points.  The goal is to earn as many points in the standings as possible.  So wouldn’t it be useful to know approximately how many points a player is worth?  Specifically, how many points in the standings a player helps a team earn compared to a replacement level player.  Enter PAR.  This method of player valuation is something I’ve been working on for quite some time.  It was my goal to complete this effort this past winter and get it up and running before Opening Day.  I made decent progress, but hit a major snag:  my numbers just weren’t adding up.  Specifically, I wasn’t getting anywhere near the expected results in the ratio categories (AVG, ERA and WHIP).  This led to flawed numbers across the board, so I had decided to table it until next winter.  But then a couple weeks ago, I was reading a fantasy baseball article on FanGraphs which contained a link to a second article and then a link to another site.  Suddenly, before my eyes was the exact solution I had been looking for, particularly for fixing my problem with ratio categories.  On one hand, I was a little upset that I hadn’t found (or really even looked for) this site before.  But on the other hand, it was extremely rewarding to discover that fantasy gurus had come up with methods of player valuation that were nearly identical to what I had come up with on my own.  So I think this should give my new stat a little credibility.

    Here’s the page I discovered on a site called Smart Fantasy Baseball.  It’s definitely worth checking out because it probably describes the concepts a lot more clearly than I will be able to.  But what I’ve come up with is not exactly the same, so I will describe PAR in all of its gory details in just a bit.  The linked page describes a concept of player valuation called “Standings Gain Points” or SGP.  So I could have called this new stat SGP as well, but I had already picked PAR before I ever saw anything about SGP.  The concept is the same though.  SGP is the number of points in the standings that a particular player earns for his team.  There is a replacement level concept built into it as well, but that is where my formula is a little different.  One thing to keep in mind is that SGP, and probably other stats like it, are primarily designed to assign values to players to assist with draft preparation or to set future performance projections.  Most of the big sites that develop pre-season player rankings probably incorporate these ideas into their rankings and dollar value assignments.  But that’s not what I’m looking to do here.  I don’t intend to use PAR in pre-season projections or rankings, partly because I assume you all have your own methods of draft preparation (or lack thereof) that you do on your own anyway.

    My intent with PAR is to assign a specific value to the numbers actually accumulated throughout the season in this league.  The formula is based solely on numbers (past and present) from this league.  Many of you probably occasionally glance at player ratings on other sites, which certainly have some value.  But they are usually based on default league settings on those specific sites.  PAR is completely based on our league’s settings and historical results.

    So let’s get to it.  Here is my best attempt to describe what PAR is.  I’ll leave it to you to determine if it is a worthwhile metric, or completely useless information.  I’m not going to go through all of the math involved, but will provide enough information that you could “check my work” if you so desire.  Or if you are a very trusting person, you can immediately buy into this new stat as gospel truth and stop reading now.

    As mentioned, the idea behind PAR is to determine how many points a player helps a team gain in the standings.  For now, only the raw total PAR is displayed on this site, but it is made up of 5 sub-parts:  one for each of the five categories a player helps contribute towards, which are obviously different for hitters than pitchers.  For each of those sub-parts there are two key numbers involved:  the “replacement level” stat total and the number of units in the category necessary to gain a point in the standings.  But before we dive into those, let’s talk sample size, which is applicable to all that follows.

    All of the numbers that feed into PAR come straight out of this league.  At first I thought about only using numbers from the specific season for which I was calculating a player’s PAR.  After all, this would seem to be the best true measure of a player’s value in a given season.  But then I decided this was much too small of a sample size and could be totally thrown out of whack by teams that decided to punt certain categories.  Also, I didn’t want a player who puts up identical numbers in consecutive seasons to potentially have a significantly different PAR for those two years.  So I decided to expand it to a five year sample size.  I chose five years, and not the entire league history, because as you are well aware, there have been major peaks and valleys in offensive production in baseball during the two decades this league has existed.  If I were to use the same numbers to calculate PAR in 2014 as 2001, very few offensive players would have positive value now, while most pitchers would have accumulated negative value during the heart of the “steroid era”, which doesn’t really make sense since there are just as many points to be gained in offensive categories now as there were then.  So I picked five years to produce a decent sample size that wouldn’t be totally ruined by seismic era shifts.  I’ll have more to stay about this later, but now let’s start looking at how players earn points.  I’m going to focus mostly on the counting categories for now, but I’ll get to a separate discussion about the ratio categories (AVG, ERA, WHIP) later.

    To determine what it takes to earn a full point in a given category, I came up with a method of calculating the “average” gap between teams in the standings in that category.  Average is in quotes because it is not exactly the mathematical average, which would only rely on teams that finish in first and last place to calculate this gap.  Initially, that’s exactly what I did.  But then I found that Smart Fantasy Baseball article, which recommended calculating this gap using a slope formula to create a linear distribution.  Check out that article again for the full details, but the main reason to use a slope formula is because it lessens the impact of outliers and includes all teams in the calculation, not just the first and last place squads.  The slope is calculated in each category and averaged over the five year period.  The table a little further down the page displays the calculated values for each category that were used for the 2013 PAR numbers, and will be used in-season for 2014 as well.  So, for example, the calculated gap of 10.05 for home runs means that it generally takes 10 home runs to gain a point in the standings.  Therefore, a player who hits 10 home runs above replacement level will earn a full point towards his PAR for home runs alone.  And for every additional 10 home runs he hits above that, he earns yet another full point.

    Now let’s dive into the replacement level discussion, which is where my method is actually quite different than what I found on other sites.  Replacement level is one of the more controversial aspects of WAR because not everyone agrees on what it should mean.  In fact, prior to a year ago, the two mainstream producers of WAR (FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference) used completely different formulas to determine replacement level.  They have since unified, but it is still far from a 100% agreed upon standard.  This is also a challenge in fantasy player valuation.  Smart Fantasy Baseball’s approach was to set the replacement level baseline based on the projections of players who would just miss being drafted, so basically the best remaining players in the post-draft free agent pool.  This totally makes sense since those guys would be the true replacements for injured/under-performing players.  But keep in mind that I’m not creating a projection system.  I want to use real stats.  And trying to identify who the best available players are in the free agent pool at any given time is not really doable programmatically, especially since we use such a limited pool of players.  So I decided to go a different route.

    The definition of a replacement level player that I came up with is an average player on a team that will finish in last place in any given category.  So basically, for the counting stats (HR, RBI, R, SB, W, SV, K), I determined the typical last place team total in each category and divided that by 14 for the hitting categories and 9 for the pitching categories (14 and 9 being the number of active hitter/pitcher roster spots).  This produces the units that a “replacement level” player would be expected to accumulate in each category assuming he was on the major league roster for the full season.  Wait a second, what does “typical last place team” mean?  Well, I could have just taken the five year average of last place teams in each category.  But again, I didn’t want my numbers to be drastically swayed by teams that intentionally tanked categories.  So instead, I calculated the average team total in each category over a five year span and subtracted from that the “gap” value described above times 4.5.  4.5 because an “average” team would earn 5.5 points in the category, but I’m looking for a total for the team that finished with 1 point (last place).  So this replacement level value is what a last place team would accumulate if all of the team totals truly formed a linear distribution.

    The calculated point differences and replacement level numbers for each category are in the table below.  These were the numbers I used for the 2013 PAR calculations and will be used in-season for 2014 as well.

    Category Point Diff. Gap Replacement Level
    AVG .0029 .2583
    HR 10.05 15.74
    RBI 24.55 65.24
    R 25.35 66.52
    SB 11.02 7.36
    ERA 0.109 4.065
    WHIP 0.0195 1.3162
    W 2.91 7.46
    SV 10.54 5.02
    K 30.60 113.25

    Now let’s do some math and examine exactly how these numbers came about in one category, home runs.  From 2009 through 2013, the average team total in home runs was 265.66.  Using the slope function on each set of 10 team totals (one for each season), the average of those five results is 10.05, which becomes the point difference gap you see in the above table.  The formula to determine the replacement level is:  ((total team average) – (4.5 x point diff gap)) / 14.  So the calculation for the home run replacement level is:  (265.66 – (4.5 x 10.05)) / 14 = 15.74.

    Besides all of that, there are other numbers involved in calculating PAR.  Obviously, a player’s actual stats are included.  But also a new stat that I needed to start tracking in order to make this work:  number of weeks on the active roster.  This is important because I wanted to make PAR a cumulative stat, like WAR, meaning that a player will “earn” value throughout the season towards an end of the year total, but only while on the active roster.  Without tracking weeks on the roster, players who only spend a short period of time on the roster would post a PAR way below zero since they would likely fall well short of the full season replacement level totals.  But this would be misleading because their contribution is not necessarily negative for the team if they produce good numbers during that brief stint.  So another aspect of the PAR formula is multiplying the replacement value by a ratio of the number of weeks a player is on the active roster over 26.  26 is the full number of weeks in the baseball season.  Therefore, a player on the active roster for exactly half the season (13 weeks) would only need to accumulate half of the replacement level total in order to start earning positive value.

    Here is an example of the home run part of the PAR calculation for Jose Bautista in 2013.  He hit 28 home runs in 21 active weeks on the roster, so that’s why those two numbers appear:  (28 – (15.74 x (21/26))) / 10.05 = 1.52.  So Bautista earned 1.52 “points” for HR, which was then added with the four other parts to create a total of 3.6 PAR for the 2013 season.

    I’ve kind of been glossing over the ratio categories to this point.  The number of weeks on the active roster is not used for these categories because we have a better way of determining how much of an impact a player has on those categories:  their actual number of at bats or innings pitched.  In batting average, the first thing needed is the average number of at bats per player over the 5 year span.  This was calculated by taking the total number of at bats in the league over those five years and dividing it by 700 (50 team totals and 14 slots per team).  This came to a total of 531.04 at bats.  Next, the previously calculated replacement level batting average was used to find the replacement level hits:  (.2583 x 531.04) = 137.28.  So our replacement level hitter has about 137 hits and 531 at bats.  The individual player AVG PAR is calculated by taking a team full of replacement level players plus the player being examined.  That’s 13 replacement players plus the examined player to fill up the full 14 slots:  ((137 x 13) + player’s hits) / (531 x 13) + player’s at bats)) = adjusted batting average.  The adjusted batting average will show how much of an effect the player had on the team batting average.  The rest of the calculation is the same as the other categories.  The concept for ERA and WHIP is similar, except the replacement level innings, earned runs, and walks plus hits are calculated and used instead.  This whole paragraph probably makes zero sense, so I once again refer you to the Smart Fantasy Baseball article to get a better grasp on this.  Just keep in mind that I’m using replacement level players instead of average players.  The concept is more or less the same though.

    Now that I’ve described how PAR is calculated, let’s see if the numbers add up.  On a team-by-team basis, you would expect the total batting PAR to be approximately the team’s batting total minus 5 since a team full of replacement level players would still “earn” 5 batting points.  The same applies for pitching.  But looking at individual team PAR totals can be misleading since some teams might win a category convincingly, earning more than the necessary nine points above replacement, in turn skewing the overall numbers.  So a better way to analyze the results is to add up league-wide totals in each sub-part (category) of PAR.  You would expect the league wide total PAR earned in each category to be somewhere around 45 (9 + 8 + 7 + 6 … + 1).  My calculations for the 2013 season produced the following total PAR in each category:

    • Average:  38.27
    • Home Runs:  30.28
    • Runs Batted In:  22.72
    • Runs Scored:  28.12
    • Stolen Bases:  34.84
    • Earned Run Average:  50.73
    • WHIP Ratio:  58.04
    • Wins:  38.26
    • Saves:  49.17
    • Strike Outs:  49.92

    In summary, some categories came closer to the expected result than others.  But even the ones that aren’t close are explainable and not necessarily a sign of a flawed system.  In particular, the league totals in HR, RBI and R were significantly lower in 2013 than over the course of the five year span we examined.  Therefore, I would actually expect these numbers to be well below 45.  To what degree is hard to calculate, but overall, I am satisfied with the results.  Just keep in mind that when I start releasing the PAR numbers for earlier seasons, we should start to see the opposite situation where offensive points earned exceed the expected totals.  I really won’t know for sure how iron clad this formula is until I complete this task for the full league history, and that is going to take a while.  There is a decent chance I will tweak the formula as I proceed.

    Next, I’m going to explain a little about how you should interpret these PAR numbers and possibly add a few words of warning to clear up some potential misconceptions.  First, and in my opinion most importantly, keep in mind that there is no positional adjustment included in these ratings.  PAR is calculated using the same numbers for catchers as outfielders.  Positional strength plays no role.  Since it is much more difficult to get great value out of certain positions, you shouldn’t simply decide Player A is more valuable than Player B based on a higher PAR if they play different positions.  A catcher with a 3.0 PAR is probably more valuable than an outfielder with the same PAR.  Down the road, I intend to come up with a second new stat, closely related to PAR, which will include a positional adjustment.  But that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

    This lack of a positional adjustment is especially noticeable for pitchers.  Relief pitchers, due to their reduced innings and lack of win opportunities, are going to have a tough time earning positive value.  Almost all non-closers are going to have negative PAR.  This may seem like a huge red flag and a flaw in the system.  But I don’t think it is.  These numbers accurately reflect how much more of an impact starting pitchers have on a team’s total stats compared to relievers.  This is not to say relief pitchers have no value though.  A 0.0 PAR player still helps a team more than a -2.0 player.

    Similarly, it is a mistake to make direct comparisons between hitters and pitchers based on PAR.  In general, pitchers are going to have higher PAR than hitters.  The reason for this is because there are just as many points to be gained in the standings in pitching categories as hitting, yet there are far fewer pitchers earning those points so there are more points to go around to each player.  I considered adding an adjustment to pitchers’ PAR to make the average pitcher’s PAR equivalent to an average hitter.  But I decided against it because I wanted to maintain the goal of total league-wide PAR matching the numbers of points actually available in the league standings.  So keep this in mind when comparing the value of a hitter to a pitcher.

    One false impression you could receive from PAR is that your team would be better off with an empty roster spot than playing a guy who is earning negative value.  This is not the case.  A negative value means that the player is providing less value than a replacement player, but a replacement player is more valuable than no player at all.  To illustrate this, let’s say you decide to go the full season with just one healthy catcher and a second catcher who misses the entire season with an injury.  A hypothetical player who puts up zeros in all five categories for the full season would earn a -7.5 PAR.  It would be nearly impossible for any real player to put up a PAR worse than that.  Same goes with pitching.  A pitcher with no stats for a full season would accumulate a -6.7 PAR.  Keep that in mind when determining if it makes sense to play a man short rather than using the below replacement level player on your bench.

    This may be obvious, but simply accumulating the highest team PAR does not guarantee you a championship.  It is very possible to accumulate a category PAR total that is more than the full nine points necessary to finish first in that category.  Ideally, you want to accumulate close to nine points in each of the categories you intend to win.  Of course, it’s not really possible to see what your PAR is in each category right now, but this is something I hope to add in the future.

    Finally, I suggest you pay little attention to the PAR values that are included in the “MLB” lines of a players’ stats for the current season.  Since I don’t have a good way of determining how many weeks a player has been on an active MLB roster, I’m assuming they have been active the full season, which is obviously not the case for a great number of players.  I thought about not calculating these numbers at all, but decided the information could be useful to see how valuable your bench players or free agents have been.  For now, I’m not calculating PAR for the weekly stat lines, but I may add that later.

    So what comes next?  At the moment, the web site contains PAR numbers for the 2013 and 2014 seasons.  The 2014 numbers will be updated every morning as part of the daily stats update.  One thing to keep in mind is that at the beginning of each week most active players’ PAR will take a slight hit as the number of weeks value that is included in the calculations is incremented by one.  This will be barely noticeable later in the season, but you might see some guys drop a tenth of a point or two right now simply for that reason.  I’m going to take a closer look at the year-by-year results in separate posts as I release those numbers to the site.  I’ll analyze the 2013 numbers in greater detail very soon.  Then I will start working my way backwards starting with 2012.  I don’t expect to finish this project until next winter.  I’m definitely going to need to make some changes to the formula as I approach the early seasons of this league when there were fewer teams and fewer points available.  I have no idea how I’m going to do that right now, but I have plenty of time to think about that.

    Wow, that’s one of the longest things I’ve written since college.  I hope you find some of this information helpful in understanding the new stat.  More importantly, I hope you find PAR to be a useful tool in analyzing players’ value in this league.  This is definitely a work in progress and I am very willing to make adjustments.  So if you find flaws in my system or think there are ways I can improve it, don’t hesitate to let me know.  Also, I’m sure there is much of what I described that is not clear to you at the moment.  Please leave me feedback on any questions or comments you have.  Enjoy!

  • Misery Loves Company

    At the one quarter mark of the season, it is far too early to draw conclusions about how the season is going to turn out.  However, the early indication is that this is not going to be a good year for two teams with serious title aspirations.  The Kings and Mavericks were head and shoulders above the pack in 2013 and the pre-season projections indicated that they were the favorites again this year.  But nearly seven weeks into the season, they find themselves in the bottom two spots in the league standings.

    So what’s going on with these two recent powerhouses?  Well, their problems are fairly obvious and similar.  Both have had the strengths of their teams completely neutered by injuries.  Of course, disappointing performances from healthy players haven’t helped the cause either, but it is nearly impossible to remain competitive when fielding a short-handed roster.  At the risk of this turning into an article in which I whine about my team, that’s pretty much what’s going to happen.  So you’ve been warned.

    The Kings won the title last year on the strength of their offense.  They easily led the league in batting points and finished in the top three of all five offensive categories.  So far this year, they find themselves ninth in batting points and last place overall.  They are at or near the bottom of every offensive category except stolen bases.  Here are their currently injured offensive players:  Brandon Belt, Ryan Zimmerman, Carlos Beltran, Jay Bruce, Wilin Rosario, Michael Cuddyer, Aramis Ramirez and Omar Infante.  All of those players, except Ramirez and Infante, were major contributors on last year’s championship squad.  Belt still leads the team in home runs and was pretty much their only offensive player having a good year at the time of his injury.  Among their “healthy” hitters are two more guys who have dealt with injuries earlier this year:  Jose Reyes and Coco Crisp.  Only five offensive players have been in their lineup basically every day.  As much as some of these hitters have struggled this year, the Kings probably weren’t going to be among the leaders right now even with a healthy roster, but these injuries have basically sunk the ship.

    Oh, and the Kings pitching staff hasn’t been a model of clean living either.  Anibal Sanchez and Jason Grilli are currently on the DL (though both are expected back soon).  Three other injured pitchers have been dropped from the roster entirely to make room for injury replacements:  Patrick Corbin, David Hernandez and Nate Jones.  The first two are out for the year and Jones’ return is a complete mystery at this point.  At the time I am writing this, 13 of the 28 players who were on the Kings roster at the completion of the draft are on the disabled list.  That’s almost half the roster!

    I don’t think the Mavericks are feeling too sorry for the Kings though.  The Mavs haven’t had the same quantity of injuries, but the severity of the injuries they have suffered and the fact that they have mostly been consolidated to one specific position has created a grave situation for them as well.  Arguably, the Mavericks had the best pitching staff in league history last year.  Right now, they find themselves dead last in pitching points.  Five of their star pitchers have been dealing with significant injuries this year.  Matt Harvey probably won’t pitch this season following off-season Tommy John surgery.  Martin Perez became the latest of the long list of pitchers lost this year due to torn elbow ligaments.  Clayton Kershaw finally returned to action a couple weeks ago after missing more than a month.  Mat Latos and Taijuan Walker are both yet to pitch in the big leagues this season and their return dates remain unknown.  Of the starting pitchers who played a major role in the Mavericks’ super staff a year ago, only Stephen Strasburg has remained healthy throughout the early part of 2014 (knocking on wood w/r/t Strasburg).  The Mavericks haven’t been dealt the same type of blow to their offensive roster, but the recent loss of Matt Wieters to an elbow injury is problematic.

    The Kings and Mavericks find themselves in a bit of a predicament in terms of attempting to upgrade their rosters as well.  Due in large part to all of the aforementioned injuries, both teams are running out of available free agent signings.  The Kings are down to just four signings to use in the remaining 3/4 of the season while the Mavericks have only three at their disposal.  Of course, a few other teams are in a similar bind.  But it is safe to say these teams simply cannot afford many more injuries.  It’s too early to give up, but the Mavericks and Kings need healthier rosters to get themselves back in the mix.

    Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the biggest injury casualty of the season to date, which occurred earlier this week.  Demigods phenom pitcher Jose Fernandez was diagnosed with a torn UCL and underwent Tommy John surgery yesterday.  I think he and Perez bring the number of Tommy John casualties this season up to a staggering total of 20.  But Fernandez is the biggest loss yet.  After a dominating rookie campaign that earned him the NL Rookie of the Year award, the Demigods selected him with the second third pick in the draft in March.  He had already become the ace of the Demigods staff (well, he and Yu Darvish anyway) and arguably the best pitcher in the league.  At the time of the injury, he led the league in strikeouts.  According to Mike, he was the leading candidate for DTBL Rookie of the Year and very much in the mix for Cy Young as well.  Fortunately, he is still only 21 years old and the success rate in returning from Tommy John surgery is quite high.  So he still figures prominently in the Demigods future.  However, this is a serious blow to their 2014 title hopes.

    I would argue that this is the second straight year, and third time in the past five years, that baseball has lost it’s most electrifying, must-watch pitcher to a torn elbow ligament.  Last year it was Matt Harvey.  In 2010 it was Stephen Strasburg.  Fortunately, there are still a lot of great pitchers out there to watch on a daily basis, but it really stinks that we are missing full seasons from these guys at the peak of their powers.  I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again:  this elbow injury epidemic is hurting the game.  I continue to hope that the best minds in baseball and the medical community are able to solve this dilemma, even if the positive results take years to materialize.

  • Blog Change

    This post really belongs in my web site update thread, but I’m putting it here to do a live test to make sure my latest changes are working properly.

    For years, I’ve been using player action photos in my blog entries, but like a vast majority of small-time bloggers, have done so on somewhat shaky legal ground.  I’ve always been on the look-out for a more legitimate, and free, way of obtaining photos to embed in my posts.  Fortunately, such a source is now available to me.

    A couple months ago, Getty Images, one of the largest image repositories (if not THE largest), announced that they would start allowing almost all of their millions of photos to be embedded in non-commercial web sites, blog posts and social media outlets.  So, starting with this post, I plan on taking advantage of this.  I will embed photos from Getty in all of my future posts.

    As you can see, the embedded image contains links to share the photo as well as a link back to the original Getty host page if you click the photo.  The one negative about the manner in which Getty has decided to make these photos available is that most industry insiders believe they will ultimately go the route of YouTube and include ads in these photos, one way or another.  If/when that occurs, I may revisit this topic.  But in the meantime, I think this should work great for this blog.

    Mostly coincidental, the timing of this change is just about perfect.  Mike has offered to start writing a semi-regular feature for the DTBL News.  I’d hate to put our resident patent examiner in the awkward position of potentially breaking an intellectual property law, but now we don’t have to worry about that.  I’m not going to spoil the theme of Mike’s article, but look for the first one to be posted very soon.

    And on that note, if anybody else is interested in contributing to the DTBL News, whether it be occasional features or even a one time article, please contact me.  I highly encourage this.  You all already have the ability to create blog entries, but I would like to pass along some tips for keeping the posts consistent and compatible with the main site page.

    Finally, I should mention one other temporary change to the site.  In working on this new photo embedding feature, I had to upgrade this WordPress software since it was several years out-of-date.  Unfortunately, in doing so, I had to remove the single sign-on bridge which allowed us to use the same logon account for the main web site, the message board forum and this blog.  That bridge is not compatible with newer versions of WordPress and is no longer supported by the original developer.  So I’m going to be looking for a replacement.  But in the meantime, if you are logged onto your regular site account, you will still be able to make forum posts, but won’t be able to reply to blog posts or create your own blog entries without a separate log on.  I should be able to fix this relatively soon though, so this is just a heads up.

  • Naturals Win Coin Toss

    First of all, the main purpose of this post is to verify that the new RSS feed application I just installed on Facebook is working.  If it is, this post should appear in the newly created DTBL group on Facebook.

    But while I’m at it, I might as well share the latest DTBL News.  Last night, Mike and I did the coin toss to break the tie between the Naturals and Darkhorses for draft position.  As you may recall, not only did the two teams tie for the league championship, but the first tie-breaker criteria also failed to break the tie.  So it came down to a coin toss.  I wanted to make sure I had another unbiased league member present when I did it, so Mike filled that role last night.  The result was that the Naturals will have the ninth pick in each round of the draft, while the Darkhorses will pick tenth for the fourth straight year.

    I’ve been doing some work on the new web site lately.  One of the main goals of this project is to make our league more interactive.  Part of the plan is to tie our league into popular social networking sites.  This is why I created the Facebook group last week.  My hope is to get new DTBL blog entries to show up in your Facebook feeds, so you won’t even have to go to the league web site to see the latest news.  Similarly, I have decided to create a Twitter account.  This account will be used exclusively to post DTBL and baseball related information.  If you are a Twitter user and want to start following me, my account name is @DTBL_Kevin, http://twitter.com/DTBL_Kevin.  You don’t need to sign up for Twitter to get the latest updates though.  I intend to set up a live feed on the new web site which will not only display my tweets, but those of some baseball media personalities as well.

    Although the full new web site probably won’t be finished for a few months, I hope to give you some previews soon.  Stay tuned!

  • Pujols Wins MVP Again

    Years from now after his career is over, we will have to give serious consideration to renaming the award for the league’s best player to the Albert Pujols Award.  Every single year, he puts up the kind of numbers you would expect for the recipient of such an award.  Never once has he had a bad season.  And now, for the fourth time in his career, Jackalope first baseman Albert Pujols has won the DTBL Most Valuable Player award.

    Has there ever been a more predictable player in terms of fantasy production?  Every season is the same for Pujols.  His numbers this year (.312 average, 42 home runs, 118 RBIs, 115 runs, 14 stolen bases) are basically identical to every other season of his career.  Shockingly, that batting average was a career worst.  Not too many guys win the MVP in their worst season in terms of batting average.  Basically, all of his numbers were right in line with his career averages.  Nothing spectacular, but only by his standards.  Pujols led the DTBL in home runs and runs.  He came in third in RBIs and tenth in batting average.  Even the stolen base numbers were pretty respectable.

    This is Pujols’ fourth MVP award.  It is the second time he has won the award in consecutive seasons.  He did so in 2003 and 2004 and now again in 2009 and 2010.  There were some pretty darn good seasons in between as well.  Pujols has essentially carried the Jackalope offense ever since they made him their first round pick back in 2002.  He is the franchise career leader in home runs (369), RBIs (1095) and runs (1069).  He broke the 1,000 milestone in RBIs and runs this season and will reach 400 DTBL home runs sometime next season.  It won’t be long before we see him near the top of the all-time league leaders.  He already ranks second in career batting average (.331).

    Pujols did not win this award easily.  In fact, I was a little surprised he won it at all.  Four other players had similarly fantastic seasons and this award could have gone to any of them.  Those players are Kings outfielder Carlos Gonzalez, Cougars outfielder Josh Hamilton and Naturals first basemen Miguel Cabrera and Joey Votto.  Cabrera and Votto may have hurt each others chances of winning this award, although Cabrera had a slight edge on Votto in every category except stolen bases.

    Pujols won the award with just three of the ten first place votes.  He placed second on four ballots and third on the other three for a total of 73 points.  This bested Gonzalez by just six points.  Gonzalez, the league’s Rookie of the Year, also garnered three first place votes.  Cabrera finished third with a pair of first place votes and 47 points.  He led the league in RBIs and also had a higher average than Pujols.  Somehow, he did not make the top five on one ballot.  Next came the guy who will probably beat out Pujols for the NL MVP, Joey Votto.  The MLB team success will be the primary factor in the NL MVP vote, which doesn’t apply here, although Votto did play for the co-champion Naturals.  He received one first place vote and 40 total points.  Finally, Josh Hamilton finished fifth, but even he received a first place vote.  His chances of winning this award were derailed by missing most of the final month with a rib injury though.  These five guys had tremendous seasons in a year otherwise dominated by pitching.  With the exception of Hamilton, the rest of them kept their DTBL teams in championship contention right until the last week of the season.

    So the Jackalope claimed two of the three post-season awards with the other going to the Kings.  Neither of the co-champions had an award winner, but I’m sure the Naturals and Darkhorses prefer the championship plaque anyway.

    Click here to view the full MVP voting results.

    That’s all for now, but a lot more is coming soon.  Next up, the roster cut deadline is quickly approaching.  Each team will need to cut down to 16 players by the end of November.  More to come on that soon.

  • Halladay Earns Cy Young Award

    Roy Halladay

    2010 was the best season for pitchers in DTBL history.  The countless number of dominating pitching performances was unprecedented.  A man responsible for two of the season’s best moments easily won the 2010 DTBL Cy Young Award.  That pitcher is Jackalope right-hander Roy Halladay.

    Halladay got his first Phillies and National League season off to a bang with a bunch of impressive starts in the first two months, capped off by throwing the 20th perfect game in MLB history in late May.  He wasn’t done with historic outings though.  In October, he threw just the second no-hitter in post-season history against Cincinnati Reds in the NLDS.  Of course, that performance did not count towards his DTBL accomplishments, but was a nice footnote to an incredible season.

    The Jackalope had the best pitching staff in the league and arguably one of the top starting rotations in DTBL history.  However, there was no question who the ace of the staff was.  Halladay tied for the league lead in wins with 21.  His 2.44 ERA and 1.041 WHIP were both the third lowest among qualified pitchers.  He finished fifth in strike outs with 219.  The win and strike out totals were career bests.

    Halladay has had a remarkably consistent career with the Jackalope.  This was the third time he reached the 20 win plateau and he is almost always near the top of the league in ERA and WHIP as well.  The Jackalope stole him in the fourth round of the 2002 draft and have reaped the rewards ever since.  Halladay has 146 wins for the Jackalope with a career ERA barely over 3.00.  Only one pitcher on a DTBL roster this season has more DTBL career wins (Andy Pettitte).  He ranks in the league’s all-time top 10 in wins, ERA and WHIP.  Although he has been a dominating force in the league for nearly a decade, this is his first DTBL Cy Young Award.  He finished third in the voting in both 2003 and 2008.

    As stated up front, this was a truly remarkable year for pitchers.  Although Halladay ran away with the award, the rest of the voting showed just how many deserving candidates there were for the award.  Halladay received nine of the ten first place votes for a total of 97 points.  12 other pitchers received top five votes.  Usually disbursement like that is saved for the other two awards more so than Cy Young.  Cougars pitcher Adam Wainwright finished second, receiving the other first place vote and five seconds for 54 points.  Wainwright also won 20 games, and even had a slightly lower ERA than Halladay.  Felix Hernandez was a test case in how people value wins.  Arguably, he had the most impressive stats of any pitcher if you ignore that he only had 13 wins.  He led the league in ERA and finished second in strike outs.  His 30 points ranked him third in the award voting, but four people didn’t put him on their ballot.  Next came Gators lefty C.C. Sabathia with 23 points.  Sabathia tied Halladay for the league lead with 21 wins.  Coming in fifth with 20 points was another Gators pitcher, Ubaldo Jimenez.  Early in the season, it appeared he would run away with this award.  He cooled off in the second half, but still finished with what would be Cy Young worthy numbers most years.  Even outside of the top five were a couple of pitchers who could have won in other years, like David Price and strike out champion Jered Weaver.  Not to mention a bunch of closers who received some token votes.

    Click here to view the full voting results.

    So far, Carlos Gonzalez and Roy Halladay have cruised to victories in the first two awards that have been named.  I can assure you though that the voting for Most Valuable Player was much, much closer.  Stay tuned for that tomorrow evening.

  • Gonzalez Named Top Rookie

    Initially thought to be a weak class, the 2010 DTBL rookies proved themselves to be a very capable group of first year players.  But one player stood head and shoulders above the rest.  Kings outfielder Carlos Gonzalez was unanimously voted the 2010 DTBL Rookie of the Year.

    Gonzalez was probably the biggest reason why the Kings were able to rebound from a last place finish in 2009 to finish in fourth place this year, just four points behind the co-champions.  Not only was he their best rookie, he was probably the best player on the team.  He hit .336 with 34 home runs, 117 RBIs, 111 runs scored and 26 stolen bases.  The batting average, home runs and runs scored led the Kings.  He was a close second on the team in the other two categories.  He easily led DTBL rookies in every category except stolen bases, making him a fairly obvious choice for this award.

    Gonzalez should be a strong candidate for the league’s Most Valuable Player award as well.  Those incredible numbers were also among the league leaders.  His batting average ranked second behind only Josh Hamilton.  His home run, RBI and run totals also placed him in the top five of the league.  Obviously, the 26 stolen bases are quite impressive as well, making him one of the elite five category players in all of baseball.  He will try to duplicate the feat of Ryan Howard, who in 2006 won both the DTBL Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player awards.  The MVP winner will be announced later this week.

    The Kings took a bit of a gamble on the Colorado Rockies outfielder, Gonzalez, with the first pick in the second round (11th overall) in the March draft.  He was drafted to be a solid five category player with a good upside.  Clearly, nobody projected him as an immediate superstar though, thus the second round draft slot.  In an unusually weak draft class for outfielders, he was the second outfielder picked, behind Andrew McCuthen who also had a strong rookie season.  A few other players selected ahead of him did receive ROY votes, but none had anywhere near the impact of Gonzalez.

    As mentioned, Gonzalez won the award unanimously, receiving all ten first place votes for a total of 100 points.  He is the first unanimous Rookie of the Year winner since Ryan Howard in 2006.  He was not the only rookie to have a great season though.  Mavericks closer Neftali Feliz finished second in the vote.  Feliz burst onto the scene with 40 saves and a minuscule 0.88 WHIP.  He received five second place votes and a total of 53 points.  Finishing third was Moonshiners pitcher Jonathan Sanchez with three second place votes and 41 points.  Sanchez led all rookies with 205 strike outs and 13 wins (tied with Ricky Romero).  Jackalope third baseman Casey McGehee came in fourth with 27 points.  McGehee’s 23 home runs and 104 RBIs were only bested by Gonzalez among the rookie class.  Finally, Naturals outfielder McCutchen filled out the top five.  McCutchen was another strong power and speed guy with 16 home runs and 33 steals.  A couple starting pitchers received votes and would have probably finished higher if they had spent the entire season on DTBL rosters.  Mat Latos and Trevor Cahill fit this description.

    Click here to view the full voting results.

    The 2010 DTBL Awards announcements will continue this week.  The Cy Young Award winner will be named tomorrow (Wednesday) evening.  Finally, the Most Valuable Player will be awarded on Thursday.

  • Fit To Be Tied

    In what turned out to be the wildest finish in league history, six months of thrilling baseball action was not enough to distinguish one team as being the league’s best.  Instead, for the first time ever, two teams will share the title.  When the regular season ended a week ago, David’s Darkhorses and Nick’s Naturals both finished with 76 points, making them the 2010 Dream Team Baseball League Co-Champions.

    Besides the tie at the top, this season becomes quite historic for another reason as well.  With the shared title, the Darkhorses captured their fourth consecutive DTBL Championship.  Kevin’s Kings accomplished the same feat in 2000-2003.  The Darkhorses fourth title ties them with the Kings for the most championships in DTBL history.  This was definitely the least dominating Darkhorses championship team, but that takes nothing away from what they have accomplished.

    Meanwhile, the Naturals captured their second DTBL crown.  They also won back in 2005.  For most of the seasons since then, they have been a consistent contender, but haven’t quite been able to run down the Darkhorses.  This second title matches the Naturals with the Mavericks, Gators and Choppers as two time champions.  Only the Darkhorses, Kings and Cougars have won more.

    The Naturals made some history of their own with this championship.  They captured all 50 possible batting points.  No team has ever reached 50 points in total batting or pitching, although the 1994 Cougars did obtain the maximum 30 batting points (there were only six teams in the league at that time).  Not surprisingly, the Naturals 26 pitching points is the fewest ever for a champion since the league expanded to 10 teams in 1998.  The Darkhorses reached 76 points in a much more conventional manner:  40 batting and 36 pitching.  So while the Naturals were dominating the league with offense and mediocre pitching, the Darkhorses proved to be the most balanced team, just like they have been in all of their championship seasons.

    Obviously, this was the closest finish in league history, but not only because the top two teams finished with identical point totals.  Two other teams came within five points of the title.  Jay’s Jackalope finished three points behind the leaders for a third place finish while the Kings came in fourth, just five points back.  The only other comparable season where the race came down to four teams was in 1999 when the Choppers won by two points with three teams tying for second place.  Since 2001, only three teams have finished within five points of first and those were in different seasons.  In fact, the league has completely lacked pennant races in recent years.  The closest margin of victory in the past four years was 8 1/2 points.  So to have four teams well within that margin is quite remarkable.

    The race was tight all season.  The Darkhorses held the top spot for a majority of the season and even seemed to be distancing themselves from the pack in the late summer.  But the Naturals put on a late season charge and even appeared headed to the consensus title in the final week of the season.  The Darkhorses put forth one final gasp and tied the Naturals with two days remaining.  Surprisingly, despite some extremely tight races in individual categories, the standings remained the same through the final weekend.  The prospect of a couple National League tie-breaking games loomed large, but it turned out the playoff spots were clinched in the final day of the regular season and no additional games were necessary.  So with that, the Darkhorses and Naturals each claimed a piece of the title.

    So how did each team do it?  As mentioned, the Darkhorses were the more balanced team.  They really didn’t have any players with MVP caliber seasons, but instead had a roster full of quality players.  Perhaps not quite to the extreme as their past championship clubs, but this squad didn’t have many weaknesses.  Adrian Gonzalez was probably their top offensive player, but Darkhorses were shockingly absent from the offensive league leaders list.   Gonzalez clubbed a team high 31 home runs.  Matt Holliday had a very good season as well with a .312 average and a team high 103 RBIs.  Hanley Ramirez had another typically solid season too.  But other than that, not a lot of guys stand out.  On the pitching side, Tim Lincecum, Chris Carpenter and Roy Oswalt once again helped make up one of the league’s best pitching staffs.  Although they were overshadowed by the Jackalope rotation this year.  The bullpen, led by Brian Wilson and Francisco Cordero, led the league in saves.  Oswalt won the league WHIP title (1.00) and Wilson recorded more saves than any other DTBL closer (48).

    The Naturals were led by offense, offense and more offense.  Two of the leading MVP candidates are Naturals.  First basemen Miguel Cabrera and Joey Votto will both garner strong MVP consideration.  Cabrera finished in the top four of the league in every offensive category except stolen bases.  He hit .329 with 38 home runs, a DTBL leading 126 RBIs and 111 runs scored.  Votto also finished among the league leaders in all of those categories, slightly behind Cabrera in each.  Votto hit .324, 37 home runs, 113 RBIs and 106 runs scored.  While those guys were awesome for the entire season, it was the late season tear of Troy Tulowitzki which may have pushed the Naturals over the top.  Tulo finished with 27 home runs, almost all of which seemed to be in the last month and a half of the season.  Although the Naturals pitching points were on the low side, they did have a few guys who had tremendous seasons.  David Price and Jon Lester carried the starting rotation and Joakim Soria had another solid season out of the bullpen.

    The Darkhorses and Naturals earned the league’s ultimate prize, but a few other teams have to be happy with their season as well.  The Jackalope had their best finish (3rd) since 2006 and were in the race the entire season.  Led by the league’s best pitching staff, if they can improve their offense a bit, they will be a favorite in 2011.  The Kings rebounded from an absolutely dreadful last place finish in 2009 to finish fourth this year.  An improved pitching staff in the second half of the season bodes well for the future too.  The Moonshiners and Gators saw modest improvement, moving up one spot each to finish fifth and sixth respectively.  And although a seventh place finish isn’t much to get excited about, it was the best finish for the Choppers since 2006.

    Then there were the rest.  The Mavericks took the honor of the league’s most disappointing team.  Ravaged by injuries and out of the race early, they made a bunch of trades with an eye to the future.  This left them with a very thin roster for the last couple months of the season.  Just like this year, they will have two of the first three picks in the draft next year though.  Hopefully it turns out better for them this next time around.  The Cougars fell to ninth place despite a surprisingly good offense led by MVP candidate Josh Hamilton.  However, their league worst nine pitching points removed any hopes of being a contender.  Finally, the Demigods had their worst season ever, finishing dead last.  For a while, last place looked like it was going to be an extremely coveted position.  However, Stephen Strasburg’s injury put a bit of a damper on that.  Next year’s draft still figures to be quite loaded though, so these bottom finishing teams will have an opportunity for immediate improvement.

    Speaking of next year’s draft, a coin toss will be performed to determine which team will pick 10th in the draft.  The first tie-breaker for determining draft position is a head-to-head stat category comparison.  However, the Darkhorses and Naturals each bested the other in five categories, so the coin toss will be necessary.  I will wait until I have another DTBL member present to witness it and will let you know how it turns out.

    That’s all for the 2010 DTBL season.  Thanks to everyone for yet another exciting year.  18 seasons are in the books!  This was one of our most active seasons in terms of activity too, which always helps keep things interesting.  I will be in touch about the post season awards voting soon.  Congratulations to Dave and Nick on their well deserved titles!

  • Co-Champions!

    It’s official.  The Darkhorses and Naturals will share the 2010 DTBL Championship.  Much more to come later, but I thought I would post this so you know the standings and stats were updated this morning and the season is officially over.  Congrats to Dave and Nick!

  • A Real Pennant Race

    After three years of Darkhorses domination, it appears we finally have an exciting race on our hands.  With two weeks remaining in the season, the championship is very much up for grabs.  Of course, the three time defending champs are one of the top contenders, but they are not running away with it like they have the last three years.  Through Sunday, the Darkhorses find themselves one point out of first, trailing the Naturals.  Those two have swapped the top spot several times the last couple weeks with neither team holding more than a couple point edge.

    The Naturals currently hold the top spot thanks to an incredible offense that leads the league in all five batting categories.  No team has ever come close to doing that before, so that will be an interesting thing to watch down the stretch.  They just may need to hang onto those 50 points to win the league because their pitching staff has been a little disappointing.  Their current 27 pitching points would be the lowest total ever for a league champion.

    The Darkhorses are a much more balanced team.  They rank third in the league in both batting and pitching points.  However, their total of 76 points is quite a bit below the pace they set the last few years.  The last team to win the league with fewer than 80 points was the Mavericks in 2006, but that could be the case this year.

    While mostly a two team race, the Jackalope and Kings are technically still alive as well.  The Kings were the story of the league in August, moving from the bottom half of the standings all the way up to second place at one point.  They did so thanks to a resurgent pitching staff.  They have fallen back a bit the last couple weeks and are currently 11 1/2 points out of first.  No matter how things turn out, this will be a successful season for the once proud franchise that finished dead last a year ago.

    Meanwhile, the Jackalope are keeping hope alive in their quest for a first DTBL championship.  They are in third place, 8 1/2 points behind.  However, close inspection of the standings shows several categories where they have an opportunity to pick up points.  It will take an incredible two week run and will probably require the top two teams to fall back a bit, but the Jackalope are certainly still in the running.

    Looking at the different categories, both the Naturals and Darkhorses are in pretty good shape with few worries about losing ground.  There aren’t a lot of points to be gained either though, so I would be very surprised if either team shifted more than a couple points up or down.  So with the current margin being just a single point, this is almost certainly going to wind up being one of the closest races in league history.  The Jackalope have several categories where they have an opportunity to pick up points, so it will be very interesting to see if this turns into a three team sprint to the finish.

    Perhaps not as exciting, the race is equally tight at the bottom of the standings.  The Cougars currently sit in last place, but just one half point behind the Demigods.  Meanwhile, the Mavericks, playing with barely more than half a roster, are four points out of last.  The Choppers have put on a nice late season run to move up to 7th place.

    Will the Darkhorses make it four in a row and tie the Kings for the most titles in league history?  Will the underdog Naturals hang on to win their second championship?  Or will the Jackalope put on a furious run to win their first title?  Stay tuned!