As detailed in this post, the seven contributors to Nerd Baseball compete in a ten team, head-to-head, total points fantasy baseball league.
Our draft took place last Saturday, so read on to see how everything played out, and then let us know which nerd writer is the pre-season favorite, and which should start making plans for 2010 (poll shows the first five picks for each team)…
Loading ...Most of us here at Nerd Baseball have competed in a fantasy baseball league against each other since 2002.
Tomorrow is the day we look forward to all winter. Tomorrow is like Christmas, the 4th of July, and Arbor Day all rolled into one. Tomorrow is Draft Day.
Some of us will draft a team that provides us with a misguided feeling of self-worth, a false reassurance that we know a little bit about baseball, and one year of bragging rights. Others will draft a team that provides them with six months of teeth-gnashing and self-loathing.
Join us in the coming week for a recap of our draft, a look back at some memorable draft blunders, and the chance to let us know how awesome or horrible our picks are.
For today, study up on our scoring system…
There are mysteries, there are enigmas, and then there’s finding out that someone found Nerd Baseball by doing a Google search for “Famtasy Goggles.”
Did they misspell “fantasy” or is there actually a brand of goggles named “Famtasy?”
Were they searching for fantasy baseball and goggle-wearing players?
Do they have a fantasy that can only be fulfilled through a particular pair of goggles?
Was this somehow Chris Sabo related?
Post your ideas in the comments section.
I joined a new fantasy baseball league this year, supremely confident that I could manage two baseball teams provided I only ignore the rest of my life (I have no idea how NYC does three leagues). With the draft coming up, we had a discussion of rules, specifically, what stats should count. A few of us felt that walks were undervalued, and suggested some combination of BB or OBP to account for this. However, the response from the rest of the league was that walks are boring, and thus have no place in fantasy baseball. I’m on board with the walks are boring sentiment, but it got me to thinking, what would a fantasy baseball league look like if it were composed of the most exciting stats?
What to do with A-Rod?
While looking at the ESPN average draft selections, it’s become apparent that the A-Rod slide has begun. After having surgery on Monday, his average draft position has fallen from 2nd or 3rd overall to 29.9. It will almost certainly fall to somewhere within the 3rd round (or below) before the drop ends.
How long you let him slide may go a long way in determining the final standings in your league. While the risk is certainly real, this feels a little too much like the great Pujols elbow scare of 2008. The fantasy draft for my main league fell right at the height of the speculation about Pujols missing most of the season…and because of this, he fell to about the 25th pick overall.
Needless to say, that turned out to be possibly the best 3rd round value in the history of fantasy baseball.
At least we know in this case that A-Rod will be missing some weeks. But as long as you can identify a late-round backup that will produce at a reasonable level for the first few weeks, I’ve got to think that letting him slide past the 3rd round will help deliver a steal for someone else.
No one has ever mistaken fantasy baseball for real-life baseball. Except for me. When I’m trouncing the nincompoops in my league, I want to feel like the victory has some greater meaning in life. My fellow nincompoops feel much the same way, which is why we set up a Sportsline league that allows us to set the stat values to whatever we so desire. This way, we don’t have to deal with the absurdness of a Yahoo! League where a SB is the same as a HR.
It also turns out that I’ve been tasked with learning R, an open source statistical package, for work. Namely, I need to figure out how to do a multiple regression. This is a statistical technique that allows you to model an outcome based on multiple inputs. So, to learn how to use the software, I decided to model offense in baseball, and finally figure out how good our league’s scoring system really is (for offense, at least).
Here’s a warning. It gets really nerdy from here on out, so if you’re just interested in the answer, here it is. Our method is pretty good. We overvalue walks. If you’re for some reason interested in R vs. SPSS, R is an adequate replacement.
(4.74 out of 5) (4.73 out of 5) (4.73 out of 5) (4.68 out of 5) (4.67 out of 5)