The Fantasy Baseball Sherpa

I recently concluded my wrap-up for the 2009 season, ranking the top Hitters and Pitchers for several widely used formats.  Just out of curiosity I checked my rankings for the 2008 season and compared them to the MVP and Cy Young award winners in both leagues.  The Fantasy Baseball Sherpa rankings correctly predicted both MVPs (Albert Pujols and Dustin Pedroia) and the NL Cy Young (Tim Lincecum).  The only discrepancy was with the AL CY Young, where Cliff Lee, who was second in the Fantasy Baseball Sherpa rankings, beat out Roy Halladay, who was first in the Fantasy Baseball Sherpa rankings.

Since the NL MVP race seems to be the only 2009 race with a clear winner, I thought it would be fun to use the 2009 Fantasy Baseball Sherpa rankings to predict the results of several of the awards which are in doubt.  Here are my predictions:

NL MVP - Albert Pujols

AL MVP - Joe Mauer

NL Cy Young - Tim Lincecum

AL Cy Young - Zack Greinke

NL Rookie of the Year - Chris Coghlan

AL Rookie of the Year - Andrew Bailey

Actually, I cheated a bit - I assumed that the MVP awards would go to hitters.  If we allow pitchers to be eligible for the MVP, which technically they are, then according to the Fantasy Baseball Sherpa rankings, Zack Greinke should win the AL MVP too.  I’ll be shocked if that actually happens, but if it does, remember that you read it here first!

I’ll do a follow-up post after all the awards are announced to see how accurately the rankings predicted the award winners.

In the meantime, enjoy the playoffs!

The Sherpa

Fantasy Baseball Sherpa

The Fantasy Baseball Sherpa’s Blog

@fantasy_sherpa on Twitter

The Fantasy Baseball Sherpa’s Facebook fan page

This time of year many fantasy baseball team owners look to trades in an effort to improve their place in the standings.  Of course, everyone’s ideal is to trade away players who will perform worse over the remainder of the season than they have year-to-date, while simultaneously trading for players who will perform better over the remainder of the season than they have year-to-date.

How should you assess a player’s year-to-date value vs. his forecasted remainder-of season value?  Using Fantasy Baseball Sherpa’s In-season Updates tool, an owner can quantify both of these values in an effort to identify players who are currently undervalued and overvalued.  Fantasy Baseball Sherpa assigns a score of 1.00 Sherpa Points to the league leader in each category.  All other players are assigned a score for that category based on their result relative to the league leader’s result.

For example, if the league leader has hit 26 HRs year-to-date, then a player who has hit 13 HRs year-to-date would be assigned a scoreof 0.50 Sherpa Points.  For ratio categories (e.g.- AVG, ERA) a proxy statistic is used.  A player’s scores in each category can be added up to determine the player’s Total Sherpa Points.  A player’s maximum score is equal to the number of categories used (note:  this maximum score will be different for Hitters and Pitchers if your league uses a different number of categories for Hitters and Pitchers).

Here are 10 National League Hitters who are good buy-low candidates for a league using the standard 5 Hitting categories (AVG, Home Runs, RBI, Stolen Bases, & Runs Scored) based on stats through games of Sun 6/21/09:

1. Alfonso Soriano, OF, ChC (2.79 Remainder-of-Season Total Sherpa Points - 1.50 Year-to-Date Total Sherpa Points = +1.29)
2. Carlos Gonzalez, OF, Col (1.33 - 0.20 = +1.13)
3. Jimmy Rollins, SS, Phi (2.18 - 1.06 =+1.12)
4. Geovany Soto, C, ChC (1.55 - 0.50 = +1.05)
5. Chris Coghlan, 3B/OF, Fla (1.81 - 0.77 = +1.04)
6. Lance Berkman, 1B, Hou (2.53 - 1.55 = +0.98)
7. Andrew McCutchen, OF, Pit (1.68 - 0.72 = +0.96)
8. Ryan Ludwick, OF, StL (2.17 - 1.22 = +0.95)
9. Brian Giles, OF, SD (1.04 - 0.10 = +0.94)
10. Everth Cabrera, SS, SD (1.05 - 0.15 = +0.90)

Here are 10 National League Hitters who are good sell-high candidates for a league using the standard 5 Hitting categories based on stats through games of Sun 6/21/09:

1. Orlando Hudson, 2B, LAD (1.41 - 2.18 = -0.77)
2. Raul Ibanez, OF, Phi (2.49 - 3.21 = -0.72)
3. Justin Upton, OF, Ari (2.00 - 2.65 = -0.65)
4. Todd Helton, 1B, Col (1.80 - 2.26 = -0.46)
5. Clint Barmes, 2B/SS, Col (1.50 - 1.90 = -0.40)
6. Pablo Sandoval, C/1B/3B, SF (1.67 - 2.03 = -0.36)
7. Gary Sheffield, OF, NYM (1.14 - 1.40 = -26)
8. Mark Reynolds, 1B/3B, Ari (2.38 - 2.62 = -0.24)
9. Nick Johnson, 1B, Was (1.59 - 1.82 = -0.23)
10. Michael Bourn, OF, Hou (1.86 - 2.08 = -0.22)

Of course, there are a number of reasons why a player’s performance over the remainder of the season may vary significantly from his performance year-to-date, including normal variation in results, injuries, changes in roles, etc.  By attempting to quantify both a player’s year-to-date and remainder-of-season results, we can take at least some of the guesswork out of identifying buy-low and sell-high candidates.

Until next time,

The Sherpa

Fantasy Baseball Sherpa

The Fantasy Baseball Sherpa’s Blog

@fantasy_sherpa on Twitter