These blog posts will be focused on the head to head matchup strategy as it relates to traditional 5x5 leagues (8 10 and 12) with the following categories (R, HR, RBI, SB, BA, K, W, SV, ERA, WHIP). Where other categories are applicable, such as OPS, I will include a comment about same. It is important that this information is anectodal more than anything. It is my opinion about the trends and traditions of baseball, those things that hold true through time and bear themselves out in the numbers.
Any conscientious owner after 30 days of the baseball season will begin to have a fair idea of his team’s strengths and weaknesses, areas where he cannot compete and areas where he is dominant. Improvement, though, will cost value, as waiver wire and player rater hawks stockpile the most viable fantasy players of the season, and drop the dead weight. Therefore, the question is how to improve your team the most while losing the least in the process. That said, today we focus on the aspect of finding Runs, one of the ten standard 5x5 head to head categories, and the manner of improving your team best in the face of poor Runs Scored output.
As always, this blog will stress starting with the basics. How are we to think about Runs Scored? It is an obvious bold face statistic, but hidden within Runs Scored is the necessary prerequisite: being on base. Like the triangle having three sides, it is axiomatic that being on base must occur for a run to be scored. Once on base thereafter, a host of individual and team factors affect the possibilities of a man scoring while on base, including the first-to-third speed of the individual player on base, the team and the player’s propensity to steal bases, the hitting prowess of the rest of the team’s lineup, etc. These are the basics.
To maximize the potential that the player you pick up or trade for will assist in improving your runs scored category, it is necessary to find the right statistical predictors which are correlated most heavily with runs scored. As I stated above, scoring runs is directly related to runners being on base. After crunching nuimbers related to runners being on base, the two statistics that appear to correlate very strongly with Runs Scored are Grounded Into Double Plays (GIDP) and On Base Plus Slugging Percentage (OPS). OPS has a very strong correlation to runs scored. Check out this great post to learn more on the correlation between OPS and Runs Scored http://myportfolio.usc.edu/ruixu/2010/02/title_in_progess_subtitle.html.
The more bases per successful plate appearance a player achieves, the more likely the player is to score and any players on base in front of him to score a run as well. This is the principle of on base PLUS slugging. This is the Albert Pujols example. But, ok, tell us something we don’t know. Individual players with a high OPS are not hard to find. It is no coincidence that they are always the first players taken in a draft. But in this post we are looking for value. This blog is the territory of Captain Awesome, not Captain Obvious (thank you “Chuck”).
Therefore, how can we find a player who is likely to score a lot of runs who doesn’t cost much? I suggest using the team OPS statistic. Take a look at the team OPS stats everyday on www.baseball-reference.com. This year, we can see four helpful tips for early value trading.
1) The 2010 Angels without Vlad Guerrero will produce many fewer fantasy worthy run scorers. Here, target trading OF Bobby Abreu. The Angels’ OPS and Runs Scored are both below league average, meaning these two strongly correlated indicators are probably bearing out truth (i.e. the Angels offense is underpowered);
2) the Royals and Marlins can be expected to produce more fantasy worthy run producers than the Mariners, Athletics, Cardinals, Angels, Indians, and Orioles (the Mets and Rangers are currently below the Royals and Marlins in OPS, but lets wait until Carlos Beltran and Nelson Cruz return, respectively). Here, target OF Cameron Maybin, OF Scott Podsednick, and UTIL Jose Guillen;
3)Tampa Bay is unlikely to keep up this pace if 3B Evan Longoria goes through any cold stretch. Longoria is by far the most important piece in the Rays’ puzzle, and as he goes, so goes the Rays’. The Rays are a fragile unit – they are boom or bust based almost entirely on one phenomenal player. Here, have a Tampa Bay exit strategy.
Finally, 4)the NL West and the AL East have the highest conglomeration of fantasy worthy run scorers. Put all this together and in my opinion, an example of good waiver wire work would include taking Will Venable over Skip Schumaker, Travis Snider over Kosuke Fukodome, and trading for Denard Span, Scott Podsednick or BJ Upton but not Ichiro, Michael Bourn, or Shin Soo Choo.
The other category to watch is GIDP. A team with a high rate of double plays has a higher likelihood of ending run scoring opportunities because a runner on base is erased due to a double play. This is why they say the double play is the pitcher’s best friend. On the flip side, this correlation weakens where a team is so far ABOVE league norm offensively that their runs scored are not affected by double plays because that team, as a unit, is putting so many runners on base that the double play is virtually inevitable. As a recent example the 2009 Yankees and the 2009 Red Sox had the first and second most runs scored in the American League, the first and second most walks, and the second and third most double plays. But their team speed was not great, so a slow man at first base could be more easily caught in a double play than a speedier guy. In other words, be careful with GIDP, but given there is a correlation between having ducks on the pond and scoring runs, there must be a commensurate correlation between GIDP and runs scored. This year, only Arizona and Minnesota have scored more runs than league average and ground into double plays more than the league average. Keep a watch on Minny and Arizona to possibly slow down offensively and as a result, the fantasy stats of these players to potentially decrease.
The funniest stat – Seattle. Their team speed has resulted in almost no double plays, but virtually no runs either. That’s because there are never ON BASE!
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