The Fantasy Baseball Sherpa

Over the next few days I’ll be evaluating several popular, widely-available sets of fantasy baseball projections; the goal is to determine whether each set of projections can serve as a realistic base for ranking players for your fantasy baseball draft or auction.

Here are some of the benchmarks based on 2005-07 MLB data that I’ll be using to evaluate the Hitters’ projections (note: these figures exclude hitting stats for Pitchers):

1. Total At-Bats (AB) for all Hitters, all Teams should be in the range of 161,000-163,000.
2. Total AB for a Team should range from 5,100-5,400 for an NL team and from 5,400-5,800 for an AL team.
3. Total Hits should range from 43,000-45,000.
4. Overall Batting Average should be in the range of .268-.273.
5. Total Home Runs should range from 4,900 to 5,400.
6. Total Runs Batted In should be in the range of 21,000-22,000.
7. Total Runs Scored should range from 22,000-23,500.
8. Total Stolen Bases should be in the range of 2,500-3,000.

Why does this matter? Simply put, if the aggregate projections underlying the player rankings/dollar values you’re using aren’t consistent with recent baseball actual results, there’s a good chance the player rankings/dollar values you’re using will also be inaccurate in aggregate. This problem will probably not be apparent to you in the early stages of your draft/auction - you’ll probably find that all projections for the top-tier players will be reasonably close to one another.

However, once you reach the second and third-tier players (where fantasy drafts/auctions are won and lost), it’s imperative to be working from a reasonable set of projections. If you aren’t, chances are you’ll be significantly overstating or understating a player’s true worth.

If it turns out you are working from an inaccurate set of projections, you have 2 options: (1) Hope/pray that everyone else in your league is also working from a set of projections that’s at least as inaccurate as the one you’re using, or (2) Throw away your current set of player projections/rankings/values and look for a better alternative. In the next few days I hope to be able to help you do just that!

I’ll post the Pitching benchmarks shortly.

The Sherpa

Tags: aggregate projections, fantasy baseball draft, fantasy baseball projections, The Sherpa

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 7:07 pm and is filed under fantasy baseball, fantasy baseball sherpa, fantasy baseball strategy, fantasy baseball strategy blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.