The Fantasy Baseball Sherpa

Back in February when Alex Rodriguez admitted to having used steroids from 2001-2003 while with the Texas Rangers, I did an analysis of A-Rod’s career from a fantasy baseball perspective.  My goal was to determine whether A-Rod’s use of banned substances had a significant impact on his stats during his “Steroids Period”.

Here’s a summary of my findings:  ” . . . while Rodriguez may have been more consistent from 2001-2003 than over any other three-year period of his career, he definitely did not perform at a higher level relative to his peers during those years . . .”

This summary would naturally lead you to one of two conclusions:  (1) the steroids did not have a significant impact on A-Rod’s performance, at least not on the baseball field (i.e. - the A-Rod version), or (2) A-Rod’s steroid use was most likely not confined to the three-year period in question (i.e.- the Selena Roberts version).

Today Manny Ramirez was suspended for 50 games, apparently for testing positive for a banned substance related to off-the-field performance issues (and cycling off of steroids).  Once again, two conclusions are possible: (1) this was all just an honest mistake on the part of Manny and/or his doctor (i.e.- the dog ate my homework version, as Buster Olney referred to it today on ESPN.com), or (2) A-Rod is not the only active big-name player who has used performance-enhancing drugs (i.e.- the common sense version).

Whichever conclusion you wish to believe, I thought it would be interesting to view Manny’s career accomplishments through the same prism I applied to A-Rod’s back in February.

On my website FantasyBaseballSherpa.com I’ve created a method of evaluating players’ fantasy baseball impact called the Sherpa Points system.  For counting stats such as home runs, RBI, etc., the league leader in the category is assigned a Sherpa Points score of 1.00.  A player with half the league leader’s total in that category would receive a 0.50 Sherpa Points, a player with a quarter of the league leader’s total in that category would receive 0.25 Sherpa Points, etc. 

For rate stats such as batting average a proxy statistic can be used.  To get a player’s Total Sherpa Points across all fantasy categories, you simply add up his Sherpa Points in each individual category.  If your fantasy league uses n hitting categories, then the maximum Total Sherpa Points would be n.  Thus, we have a straightforward method of evaluating a player’s overall fantasy impact.  The same method can be used to evaluate pitchers.

For the standard five hitting categories (AVG, HR, RBI, SB, R) here are Manny Ramirez’ Total Sherpa Points scores by year since he became a full-time player in 1995 (max possible score is 5.00):

• 1995:  2.64
• 1996:  2.59
• 1997:  2.33
• 1998:  2.79
• 1999:  3.31
• 2000:  2.82
• 2001:  2.35
• 2002:  2.83
• 2003:  3.03
• 2004:  2.93
• 2005:  3.09
• 2006:  2.38
• 2007:  1.78
• 2008:  3.22

As was the case with A-Rod, Manny’s stats have shown a fair amount of year-to-year variation, which is to be expected.  However, unlike A-Rod, Manny was not a bona fide superstar in his first full year in the league.  To be fair, some of that is attributable to the fact that A-Rod has always been more active on the basepaths than Manny (whose career high for SBs was 8 in his 2nd season in the league), and he’s also consistently scored more runs than Manny.  A-Rod’s higher runs scored could be attributable to being more active on the basepaths, having better “RBI guys” hitting behind him in the lineup, and especially to the fact that A-Rod’s consistently played more games in a season than Manny.

Coincidentally (or maybe not), both A-Rod and Manny had big power spikes in 1998 (Manny’s 4th full season; A-Rod’s 3rd).  A-Rod’s HR total jumped from 23 in 1997 to 42 in 1998, while Manny’s increased from 26 in 1997 to 45 in 1998.  Coincidentally (or maybe not), 1998 was also the year that Mark McGwire’s HR total increased from 34 to 70, and Sammy Sosa’s increased from 36 to 66.

Manny’s career stats are more difficult to evaluate than A-Rod’s, primarily due to his having missed major chunks of time in four seasons (2000, 2002, 2006, and 2007), while A-Rod has missed significant amounts of time in just two seasons prior to this one (1999, 2008).  Also, since we don’t have a “confession” yet from Manny, we can’t really compare his performance from one period of his career with the rest of his career, the way we can with A-Rod.

Yet one thing is clear in both A-Rod’s and Manny’s cases.  A-Rod had the two best seasons of his career from a fantasy perspective in 2005 (the season he turned 30) and 2007 (the season he turned 32).  Manny had the second best season of his career in 2008 (the season he turned 36).  Yes, they are both supremely talented players.  Yes, knowledge regarding both nutrition and conditioning are much more advanced than they were a generation ago.  And yes, there is historical precedent for All-Star players performing at a high level well into their 30s - Willie Mays didn’t drop off until the season he turned 35, and Hank Aaron was still productive at age 38.

However, given that both A-Rod and Manny have tested positive for banned substances at the same time they were turning in some of the best performances of their career, it’s almost impossible to believe that any of their accomplishments were done without the aid of performance-enhancing drugs.  That’s one of the few things that even Yankee fans and Red Sox fans can agree on.

The Sherpa

FantasyBaseballSherpa.com