I play in a Head-to-Head league(H2H) which I really like. The purist in me would prefer Roto, but I think it would get really boring by the end of the season.
The standard stat line for most fantasy league is 5X5, 5 offensive categories(BA, R, HR, RBI, Steals) and 5 pitching categories(W, K, ERA, WHIP, Saves). Those actually work quite well, IMO, but there are a couple of annoyances.
Offensive Categories:
1. Undervalue walks
2. Don't even count doubles and triples unless you figure you get the downstream benefit in R and RBI's.
3. Overvalue Steals
4. 4 counting stats with only 1 rate stat.
Pitching Categories:
1. Overvalue Wins
2. ERA and WHIP somewhat redundant. Sometimes they diverge, but most of the time if you win one, you win the other.
3. Overvalues Saves.
If you were the commissioner of a fantasy league and could install any setting you wanted, would you just got with the standard settings(which aren't as bad as I make it sound here), or would you customize it to better reflect the real values of the game.
Adding a couple of categories and going 7X7 would help to correct the overvaluing of Saves and Steals.
You could add a couple of rate stats to the offensive side, OBP and SLG% and replace HR with Total Bases. The probems with the resulting settings would be redundancy between SLG% and Total Bases as well as BA/OBP and possibly undervaluing HR's.
On the pitching side you could add Quality Starts and Holds. This would add a lot of value to setup relievers who have become a huge part of the real game, but are essentially non-entities in most fantasy leagues. It would also add value to good starting pitchers independent of how much run support they get from their team. Wins and QS might be a bit redundant though. You still have the redundancy in ERA and WHIP, but those give you a couple of rate stats to balance out all the counting stats.
In summary, my proposed 7X7 league settings would be:
Offense: BA, OBP, SLG%, R, Total Bases, RBI, Steals.
Pitching: W, QS, ERA, K, WHIP, Holds, Saves.
Q: Could you replace WHIP with Fewest Walks? I don't know if you could do this, but you have lowest ERA and WHIP being categories that seem to work, so you should be able to do it with Walks.
What do you think? What settings would you choose if you were a commissioner?
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Great question Dr. B. I have played in many leagues but never been the commish and partly because of having to make decisions like this! I like the 7 X 7 idea but would like to see BB and SLG% as the additional categories, no OBP. That would even out the percentage categories and cumulative for pitching and batting. I hadn't thought about QS before but really like that stat, Timmy, Madbum, Cain, and even Zito become instantly better.
ReplyDeleteI like the holds addition. We added that to the league I'm in, and it made a big difference. It definitely gives more value to relievers, who widely go ignored in the draft and during the regular season.
ReplyDeleteWe do a 6x6. We used BA, HR, RBI, SB, R and OPS for offense, and W, ERA, WHIP, Holds, Saves and K's. I like your idea of total bases, but I wouldn't include OBP and Slugging as separate categories. I think you could just add OPS and you would achieve the same effect without having to add too many categories. I think in order to keep the 7x7, I would substitute OBP and Slugging with OPS and Home runs. OPS gives you the nice sum of power and walks, while home runs values pure power.
As for pitching, I like the QS add. We did that in my league, and I feel it works well for pitchers who pitch well enough to win, but don't get the run support. It definitely gives more value to the Felix Hernandez and Matt Cain's of the world who seemingly get robbed of wins.
Thanks for the feedback. I'm thinking about starting a league and have been pondering how I would make it better than the one I play in now.
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