Rates & Barrels - Multi-Position Eligibility, Dollar Values & Precision, and Seeking Challenges in 2022

Episode Date: January 11, 2022

Eno and DVR discuss players with multi-position eligibility, and the necessity of finding at least a few players with that flexibility to fit on draft-and-hold rosters. Plus, they examine Brandon Lowe's 2021, and answer questions about dollar values, limitations of WAR in a small sample, and the types of leagues to consider for those seeking a greater fantasy baseball challenge in 2022.  Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at 33% off for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Monday, January 10th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we will discuss a wide variety of questions. A lot of good questions came in to the mailbag, questions about multi-position players and whether they might be underrated. I think Eno has the opposite feeling, so we'll discuss why he feels that way and figure out if there's some truth maybe on both sides of the argument, depending on where in the player pool exactly you're looking uh brandon lau very popular in the mailbag this weekend so we'll talk about him on this episode uh we'll talk about what to do when you see a partial season of war is it something that you should if you have a third of a season multiply by three and say hey that's about what

that player would have done or is it more complicated than that some questions about dollar values if we get that far. Where to play in leagues. How to increase activity in Dynasty League. So yeah, lots of ground to cover. We'll cover some, maybe all of it, but at least some of it on this episode. Eno, how was your weekend? It was good until you absolutely murdered me in pickleball.

Oh my god. Well, it was your first time playing. Took me like three games to score a point. It's okay. I think that's normal. I had about a two-year head start. It was fun. And we had a little toast to celebrate the sale.

Yeah, it was a decent weekend. Yeah, I saw Sing 2, which for me is weird because I really do not. I'm not a Broadway guy. I do not like musicals generally. And even musicals in the past that have had pop songs in them, I don't like. But I love Sing. It's something about doing it with animated guys. in the past that have had like pop songs in them i don't like but i love sing it's it's um something about doing it with animated guys and just having like an animated wolf um you know doing a prince song something it's something so weird about it and And it also reminded me, you know, I didn't really know the words to Billy Jean is not my lover until I heard a Greek cover of it by someone who spoke all the words, you know, very differently than Michael Jackson.

And I was like, oh, the kid is not my son. That's what he's saying? Oh, my God. So there were a few lines in the Prince cover that I was like, oh, I didn't know. There's a thing about eggplant in here? Anyway. in here anyway and it's it's like slightly uncomfortable to to like realize these super sexual lyrics in this prince song uh you know what is being paraded around before you're you know seven and nine year old by you know these animated animals yeah i mean i guess that's the

challenge of making content that parents will also enjoy is you have to be able to sneak things in that the kids don't pick up on and not ask a lot of questions about my wife and I have a big disagreement on that where I judge I judge movies based on whether or not I like

them you know like kids movies even she's like no not for you and I'm like yeah but I have to sit there you might as well make it enjoyable for me too i mean i think some of the best examples i can think of and i say this as someone who doesn't have any kids i would think of like shrek is a pretty good movie that i feel like when when that came out you watch that and you're like i think everybody could like this i think kids like it i think everybody could like this. I think kids like it. I think grownups like it. I think teenagers like it. Yeah, they sneak enough adult jokes in there for sure.

Yeah. And I just think that's almost the hardest thing to do is to make something for everyone. Toy Story was probably like that. I mean, clearly made for kids, but also made well enough where everybody can sit there and enjoy. I know they made like 10 more Toy Stories. can sit there and enjoy. I know they made 10 more Toy Stories, so I'm sure Toy Story 7, Andy moves into the retirement home

is not as enjoyable as the original was, but you got to keep the franchise going. You got a little dark on that one. These are his rehabilitation toys now. He still has Woody and Buzz with him.

You have toys, you put them on your shelf. Toy Story 4, Andy hosts a baseball podcast. And they're on the shelf behind him. You just keep it going. It's part of life. All right. Well, we'll go to the baseball now. No one cares what I was up to this weekend.

I actually started cleaning my apartment, like not in a spring cleaning sort of way, but just like moving things to where they actually should go. So it feels like, you know, we're not packing up in a few months and leaving again, because we're not packing up and leaving again. Or if we are, I don't know that yet. And I will be very, very upset when I find that out at some point so moving on to the baseball the question that we're going to start with today are multi-position players underrated this question came in from mitch he writes ahead an observation as i was starting up draft season with the large roster size of nfbc's draft and hold format which for those who haven't played

it yet or haven't heard us talk about it yet, that's a 50-round format. Some of those leagues are 12 teams, some are 15. Deep, nonetheless, knowing season pickups. It seems to me that the multi-position eligible players, especially those that provide both speed and power, are being severely undervalued. The examples he threw at us include Jake Cronenworth, first, second, short, middle corner. Enrique Hernandez, second outfield and middle. Chris Bryant, third and outfield. Mark Kanha, first and outfield.

And I think relative price, of course, is something to consider here. Chris Bryant's kind of just inside the top 100 in terms of ADP. Cronenworth goes about 25 picks after that. And then you've got Kike and Kanha. Both go outside the top 200 in most drafts. So a good mix of different guys. You were saying before we started, though, that you think that multi-position players might be slightly overvalued in these formats. So I guess I want to start by asking you, why do you think they might be slightly overvalued?

Well, I think they're certainly overvalued in a situation where you have a waiver wire. Because you don't need to have backups for all your positions. Those are the guys on the waiver wire. That's just what you're going to have to do is go to the waiver wire to get replacements. In teams, in setups like these draft champions where you don't have a waiver wire,

best ball, then they are very important. I'm not saying they're not important. I'm just saying that it just seems in practice that I haven't quite found the balance between wanting those on my team and wanting to have three or four players at every position, which requires some multi-eligibility, guys, and how much i want to spend on that and so for an example uh i just picked uh gene segura am i saying that correctly um with uh i can actually in real time uh check out what pick that was i think it was pick 202 sounds about right yeah i picked him with pick 202 uh by the auction calculator he is a ten dollar player but he has a single eligibility um jake cronenworth went ahead of him uh he has

but i'm not saying that 9.6 on the auction calculator is inferior to 10.3. I'm just saying that Jake Cronenworth went like four rounds before. And Segura was still there at $10. Enrique went before him. Ryan McMahon went before him and is worth, by the auction calculator, $3 less. Chris Taylor, I think Luis Urias even went. Luis Urias is evaluated by by auction calculator at $5. So I got a value on Segura just because he didn't have any other positional eligibilities and people were reaching for that.

Now, it's a question I put to you this very weekend at the pickleball. How much in dollars, uh, do you think that eligibility is worth? Um, and you had a guess. I have that number at about two for a draft and hold. It's a plus $2 to the value when you can't make those in season moves closer

to probably just an even dollar. If you can get those replacements, I think where you, you can save quite a bit in NFBC specifically, and some leagues are full-on weekly leagues. NFBC, you get twice-weekly changes for your hitters, only once-weekly changes for your pitchers. Having more flexibility on the roster does reduce the amount of playing time

you lose at the midweek change. So if you have more multi-position guys and you lose a third baseman, but you can shuffle around and actually get someone who's going to play a lot in because you have that flexibility you're getting more playing time more production than you would if you didn't have that flexibility it's value on the margins but i do think in draft and hold when you can't go to the wire and make a move at all it's a bigger thing to look for it's even more important to have some some guys that can move around because you're going to lose players. You're going to have injured guys that come back. You're going to

have some injured guys that don't come back. You're going to have guys that get sent down. Inevitably, your roster is going to get smaller over the course of the season. And one way to protect yourself against that is just to have as many options as you can who can fill multiple spots. So I actually think it sort of depends on who the player is. With this, and this is mentioned in Mitch's email, you have to consider, too, how much playing time risk comes with this profile. One thing you were saying when we were talking about

this over the weekend was a lot of the guys that pick up multi-position eligibility are not necessarily stable hitters. Ding, ding, ding. Or not the stars. The stars, I mean, Tatis and maybe Bryant are the top-end guys, but most of the guys, they just put you out of position. They want you there. You're the star. someone got hurt and they were the best option to play the other position, then that might actually be more of a stable multi-position guy for the current year in terms of his playing time going forward.

But it also might mean that like at a keeper league, he's not going to retain multi-position eligibility. His job is not to move around. It just was in that one unique circumstance. Whereas an example of that, you know, I would say maybe is, that's not Cronenworth. it's not cronin worth it's

probably more like a dj lemahew in that case he had a spot to call his own they had injury issues that moved him around so he picked up first second and third we don't expect dj lemahew to move around quite as much this year he could still do it if he needs to but he's probably tracking more towards the one spot is his in the future. Again, doesn't matter for 2022, but he wouldn't have that same sort of playing time risk. Whereas if you start going further down the pool, and I would say at the high end, Quique Hernandez is an example of this.

Maybe Josh Rojas is a good example of this, just going about 10 picks later. He's second short and outfield. Is Josh Rojas versatile in a good way, or is he just versatile in a way where he can collect extra playing time until someone else is there? Would he be supplanted and made more of a utility guy if all their prospects hit or come up? But I think this actually has a real-life corollary

because there was some research done by a former leader of the analytics department in Los Angeles who said that Chris Taylor is worth an extra win or two beyond his production on the field because he can play all over. And if you look at the way the Dodgers have been built, and now the Giants, with Farhan leaving the Dodgers, I think it's pretty obvious that they really value positional versatility and having sort of backups on the roster in this way that you're talking about where, oh, you know, it's Tuesday and someone's got a barking hamstring.

Can we just move this guy here and move this guy here? Oh yeah, we can because that's how we're built. And that's how you keep your, that is valuable. However, you know, you'd also want to do that with stars. And I wonder if, and you also want them to be undervalued. Like, you want to be getting a value out of it. So you want to sign, I think, like a Tommy Lastello who can play first and second, right? Not that well, but you want that versatility. You want to sign these guys that are cheap and provide you versatility.

But do you want to buy Chris Taylor at the top of the market and pay him a lot to do this? Because he's no longer a good option at shortstop. You know, you don't really want to play him at shortstop defensively. So now he's pretty much an outfielder who can play second or short in a pinch. Right? He's lost his versatility because he's older and he's more established. And yes, he can be a starter in center field.

That's fine. Or in the outfield, that's fine. But versatility, I think, is the domain of young, unproven guys coming up rather than something I would want to pay for on the free agent market. And that's where the real life and the fantasy, I think, correlate, which is what I'm trying to say is, yes, I love positional versatility.

No, I don't want to pay for it. I want it to be undervalued. I don't want to pay full price for it. You know what I mean? So, you know, and then the last bit is you'll see even if you just run the auction calculator uh and put a position that nearer to the bottom of the auction calculator there will be a lot of guys that would like we said that play all over uh so it you know even in my league eduardo escobar is still out there luisa rise is still out there jonathan scope is still out there. Luis Arias is still out there. Jonathan Scope is still out there.

These are all guys that have multiple position eligibility that I can still use to paper over and get some plate appearances if other guys are hurt, but won't be starters for me. I'm not paying starter money, and I'm not overpaying what the auction calculator says. I'll go get them in the $3 rounds. I'll pay $3, and they might actually be worth $5 because they have all those positional

eligibilities. That's what I want. I want to get that undervalued. I don't want to pay for it, is what I'm saying. I think at this point, Cronenworth is going at the very height of his cost. I think he's going

among the starters in a way that I'm not sure. I do have a team, a DC team with Cronenworth on it, but I'm just not sure that you want to target it hardcore. This team right now that I've built, I have not thought about positional versatility at all. at all. I've got Walsh, Rodgers, Torres, Devers, Segura, Betts, and O'Neal. I think only Torres and Rodgers

will have multiple eligibility this year. I totally plan on having more multiple eligibility guys. I just didn't want to pay the top rounds in the top of the market well you'll find a few that pick it up in season though too like labor torres doesn't have a yet short and second pretty soon after the season begins assuming that the yankees find

their upgrade at shortstop via free agency right maybe if not, even if Urshela can play some short stops sometimes, you know, it just takes 10 games. Yeah, so I would say the most undervalued multi-position eligible players are the players who will add that value early in the season. And not cost.

Oh, yeah, or yeah, they don't even show up as having it yet. But even when you start looking at a team like the Giants, which lean into the versatility of a lot of players, and where do the players they have or had last year, where do they go in terms of ADP?

Bryant's, of course, among them with that third outfield. I think Bryant's undervalued because of previous shoulder issues and maybe because people don't know where he's going to play in 2022 since he didn't sign yet. That to me is why he's underrated. It's not necessarily because people aren't valuing third and outfield enough. It's because of uncertainty about home park.

Lamont Wade kind of goes in the back of the top 300. I think there's playing time uncertainty there. One, one B O F is, is, is really undervalued. I've noticed. Yeah. That gives you CI and CI and b are in first base are actually kind of hard in some of these drafts the really back end first

baseman are not really that exciting here's the thing too like if you look at wade versus even wilmer flores who's first second and third flores goes like 100 picks later. He's very draftable, especially in these formats where you can't make in-season pickups. Wade being a lefty and Flores being a righty, even if you're looking at part-time playing time shares, there's, to me, a better path for Wade to get 75% to 80% of a job, whereas Flores seems like he's kind of more likely to top out at that range. It doesn't seem like 100% playing time for Flores is happening. You're waiting for a significant injury on that Giants infield before you're playing Flores in a weekly league.

Right. You might shuttle him in for a weekend or a partial week, depending on what's going on with the rest of your roster, and say, well, he's probably going to play three times in these four days because they're going to see two lefties and stuff like that. But I do think the identity of those part-time players, like what they bring, what drives their playing time, left-handed, right-handed, is kind of a big part of

which ones I'm interested in taking the chances on. Yeah, and some combinations are worth more than others. Perhaps the combinations I have are worth less than others. The multi-eligibilities I have are both second and short. So maybe that's actually not that valuable because you're just staying in the middle infield and it's a pretty common maybe multi-eligibility to have as players kind of age out of shortstop.

A lot of them go to second, so there's a lot of sort of second and short. And it also can be kind of weird. When am I going to switch those guys around? They're my starters. Yeah. The question I have for you about Jake Cronenworth,

I feel like that ADP is a little high, 124.8 from the email. I'm looking at just drafts from January. I can't imagine he's going much earlier or later than that. He kind of goes to the same spots from January. I can't imagine he's going much earlier or later than that. He kind of goes to the same spot all the time. Yeah. One 16 is where he's going in the handful of drafts that have been done so far this month. For me, it's not that people are paying up extra because he can go corner middle with first, second and short.

I think people are maybe just higher on his skills than I am as a hitter. And I definitely underestimated how much he was going to play last year. I don't want to overcorrect and then overestimate how much he's going to play this year. I like that he doesn't strike out a lot, but he's a little older than you'd think for a guy that hasn't been in the big leagues that long. What am I missing in his profile? And last year he popped 21 homers. Is there another level power-wise? The run production could be a little better, possibly.

94 runs scored against 71 RBIs. Probably not going to move up in the order all that often, though. I just think a lot of what he did last year was closer to his max. Since he does move around, he doesn't necessarily have a spot to call his own. I think he's a good player, but I don't see another level there. Yeah, I mean, the barrel rate doesn't suggest it. 7% barrel rate suggests that he kind of overproduced on his barrels a little bit. The projections are okay, but 16 homers, six stolen bases, 269. I mean, the Segura projections are better. I mean, that's why

Segura is worth more. But to be able to move that around, I could see Cronenworth being worth more. But, you know, the difference in our draft was Cronenworth 120, Segura 200. Yeah, not worth 80 picks. And they seem like very similar players. The guys that will have a good batting average

pop, you know, 15 to 20 homers. Segura is going to steal more bases and has demonstrated a longer track record and a good batting average pop 15 to 20 homers. Segura is going to steal more bases and has demonstrated a longer track record and a good batting average. But otherwise, they're very comparable players just on that bit. Even just the Quique Hernandez difference too. I know they're slightly different, just that Quique is older. But is Cronenworth that much better than kike justify a hundred pick difference i don't think so yeah and it's unfortunate because i really like corona worth

and as a real life player i think he's he's gonna be really hugely important to the padres next year but he just sort of represents uh i think the high watermark for the you know the the multi-position where people are maybe considering that too much you know i'm just saying you know i'm just saying like there are many opportunities to get multi-position guys you don't necessarily have to think about it in the first six to eight rounds like there's lots of them coming later so yeah yeah i think that's a good way to sum it up. But I appreciate that question, Mitch. I think it's definitely something to think about.

And without moves, the deeper the league, I think you do want to think a little more about that as you kind of build out the middle core of the roster at the very least. There are some early rounders that carry multi-position eligibility too. So if you get them along the way, terrific. If you don't, it's not going to ruin your team. Yeah, that's basically what I'm saying. And you'll find some values by looking at guys

who only have one position like the Segura situation. Segura is like sort of comically undervalued year to year. But the other thing I just wanted to say real quick was that I do think it is useful to get to the number four at every position. And the only way to do that, given the roster constraints, is multi-position guys, if you think about it.

You can't actually draft four at every position and eight catchers involved. You can't do that. So you kind of have to find multi-position guys to make it work. Yeah, that's definitely a good point too. Let's go to our next question. This one came in from Royce,

who points out that he's from the same hometown as Braylon Allen. So if you are a fan of Wisconsin football, like me, that means something to you. If you are not a fan of Wisconsin football, It's Greek. Yeah, like who's Braylon Allen? Moving on to the question,

can you break down Brandon Lau on the pot? He had 39 bombs last year, but his path to it seems interesting. Both his strikeout rate and walk rate went down as the year progressed, and his production seemed to skyrocket. Was he being more aggressive early? It all seemed to change around the end of July, which also seems to coincide with when Nelson Cruz arrived, a guy that hits his pitch when he sees it.

I can't figure out a good fan graph, splits tool, or savant search function to see if a player is being aggressive earlier in counts. So you took a look. What did you find looking at Brandon Lau's approach as the 2021 season rolled along? I mean, he definitely was less aggressive in the second half. What I see is I just used the graph tool and looked at his swing and his reach rates on fan graphs, the day that you can do 15-game rolling graphs on fan graphs.

And the strangest thing happened right around that time that they pointed out, end of July, they say, end of June, end of July, end of July, yeah. He just stopped reaching at pitches. He, he swung a lot less in general. And I think what you're seeing is here's a guy who was struggling a little bit and he said, you know what, when I'm struggling, a good thing for me to do sometimes is just to wait for my pitch and just like really just you get aggressively patient you know and so there's this like big uh tank in his in his reach rate and then his uh his uh wobo comes back up and and he has that excellent second half the weird thing is that he goes back to reaching like

he did at the beginning of the season by the end of the season everything is back to normal um so i i don't think that we saw something change in brandon lau that will be changed for the rest of time you know what i mean i think that he it was just one of those cat and mouse things over the course of the season where there was some book on him that was working and then say he said screw it and one thing that you see is a slider slider rate went from 20 to like 10 uh during that time so i think if what i'm seeing is he said i'm not going to swing at any sliders you know and the sliders he got that he still got you know were sliders in the zone and that's why he got fewer sliders um and after a while he realized okay well i'm gonna have to swing at some of these sliders because they're in the zone and i don't want to just give up strikes so that's the story i would tell is that he had

a kind of a cat and mouse situation where he got boxed in a corner he said all right i'm gonna spit at everything you throw at me for a while and then he sort of figured his way out of the box and uh the only thing i would add on top of that is I just think that he's undervalued by the community. You know, a guy who almost hit 40 homers last year, or he did if you count the postseason. He had such a poor postseason after all that that I think, you know, do I have that right? It definitely happened in the shortened season. He had a 0-0-0 postseason. Yeah.

He did not get a single hit and struck out 50% of the time. So I think that's in people's memories, and then they think his strikeout rate was higher than it even was. Guys, yeah, he's projected for 29% strikeout rate, but he hits the ball really hard. He actually does steal some bases, and he's not a guy I don't think that's a risk for hitting 210 with that batted ball profile. I think your risk is that he hits 230 with 30 homers and 5 steals, and the ceiling is much better than that. Yeah, we like the Rays' lineup,

so he's going to drive in plenty of runs. He's going to score plenty of runs. I think in terms of his five-category profile, it's a lot of Max Muncy. It's a lot of that, and I think the other thing that stands out to me— With some of the risk even of sitting against lefties if he gets worse. I mean, Muncy has the same risk to some extent because they have teams that move guys around.

Muncy gets that on the infield, but I think with Lau, we've seen him play double-digit games in the outfield in each of the full-length seasons where he's been on the roster. Especially with Wander crowding the infield. He's going to play short pretty much every day, I think.

I don't expect him to move around too much, but Brouhan's going to play somewhere. The Rays do so much mixing and matching in so many positions that Lau, I think. I don't expect him to move around too much. Also, they do. But Brouhaha's going to play somewhere. The Rays do so much mixing and matching in so many positions that Lau, I think, got pushed last year into pretty much full playing time just by the fact that they were mixing and matching in other places.

Because they mix and match at third. If you just think about, like, we do this sometimes when we start doing the previews for the season, right? We do the build a roster, and we, you know, like, who are is it probably like 14 bats here 13 bats who are there 13 bats and we always like try to be like okay these so if you have 13 bats right and eight are on the field at any given time that means that you can and you and you always need to have a backup catcher right so you

got your eight starting bats you have your backup catch that's nine so you can have three to four more bats that means by nature of it that you could platoon at three to four spots and you'd actually want to have a bat on the bench at all times right so someone that can actually do something some lefty righty ability on the bench in terms of pinch hitting so i would say that the max that a team can really platoon is three positions so for the rays that's third first and to some extent center i think center i would count center as their third one and then just because of all the moving pieces you can move guys around and stuff yeah but in terms of like a like a strict platoon that I have two guys assigned to this one position, I think three is around the max.

Yeah, I think that's reasonable. Extra position eligibility guys do become really valuable if you think about it, you know? Especially if they're like a lefty swinger, I feel like. Yeah, or if they're not in danger of losing time. That's the thing you have to be most careful with, I think, when you look at the multi-position guys. I guess, is there some of that with Lyle then?

They can drop out. I was thinking about it in the sense of... What if Walls becomes the full-time third baseman? They have so many players they can bring up because Vidal Brujan has nothing left to prove in the minors. So he's got to be at least getting a chance. He can play second base. That's probably the best place to play him.

You've already played Lau in the outfield some, so you feel better about playing Lau in the outfield. Plus, you have Josh Lowe. There's that. He's going to play center because they're going to get rid of Kiermaier somehow. They have to. Kevin Kiermaier can't still be on this roster as a starter. He could be the bench

outfielder. Can the Padres move Eric Hosmer? I'll say the Rays have been trying to move Kevin Kiermaier for a while. There's a lot less time left on that deal. Money and time now at the point where I think you can find a taker for Kevin Kiermaier.

So I just think it gets more crowded with young guys that they're going to want to play. As a result, I just think Brandon Lau ends up playing more in the outfield. So I don't think there's that much playing time risk. I think his playing time risk would be missing time against lefties.

Because if you platoon three and a half spots, or if it just all works out in a way where you don't have to play him as much against lefties, that's where he could lose a little bit. But he does a ton of damage when he connects. The K rate is not off the charts bad. He could also be traded because they always trade

their guys that get more expensive. So if he gets traded, I think it would actually be positive for him, most likely. Because he would be traded into a starting position where he doesn't really have any playing time risk probably. And he would also leave the trot. So, yeah, I think he's a very good player. I don't know that, you know, he struck out 21% of the time in the second half.

I'm not expecting or hoping for that sort of deal next year. No, but I can live with his mid-20s K rate because of how often he barrels up the ball. That's a perfectly fine trade-off, even though you know you're probably sitting more in that 240, 250 range with the average in a typical year. By the way, if you've got a question for a future episode, email ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com,

or you can ask in the comments section under this video on YouTube if you're watching there. We'd really appreciate it if you drop some questions in there because we'd like to defeat the algorithm. Trying to beat all the algorithms in our lives. And that's one way for you to help us do that. So feel free to drop questions in there. I'll be sure to check in on that and make sure we get those questions in. Another question here about the partial season of war and what to do with it. And the example that Kevin used in the email was for Glenn Otto.

I don't know if anyone out here remembers. Glenn Otto made six starts for the Rangers in the second half. He had a 25.2% K rate. Not bad. 7.2% walk rate. Okay, we can live with that. A 9.26 ERA, but a 317 FIP, and that turned into a 0.6 war. So the question was if he'd made 30 starts and pitched to the

same skills, can I assume his war would have been 30 divided by six and multiply that, uh, that number and get to like a three war? Like, is that a actual way to get to the partial season of war, taking the optimal games, divided by games and multiplying by war? Yeah, unfortunately, this is actually, I think a problem with war. It's a problem with the way war is perceived, I think, which is that it's a counting stat

and it racks up like RBI. Except that it's not really a counting stat. It is in that it gives you one number at the end of the year, but you can put up negative war. So you can't put up negative RBI. You can't unhit a homer. So even though war shows up in that same like oh he put up three war it's not the same as hitting three homers so you know that there is a there is a sort of flaw

in the way that war can be perceived that uh gets exacerbated when people are like oh yeah he did one win in a half season so he's a two-win guy i don't have a great answer for you because i would say definitely don't do the multiplication thing um the one thing that does occur to me is that you could use uh projections to kind of uh fill it out so we were talking about auto here yep uh so Otto through, uh, cause projections are the numbers best estimate of the true talent of the player. Right. So, um, you know, last year he put up a 0.6 war in 23 innings. He's projected for one war in 97. Um, you know, if you want to add those together and get an idea of what he might do in a, in a full sort of 120, 130 inning season,

um, I, I'd feel better about that than sort of multiplying it. So ends up being, uh, a pretty different answer, right? And so he's ends up being a below average,

uh, starting pitcher with that, uh, math. Yeah. Because the projection with the playing time on fan graphs right now is 18 starts for 2022, 97 innings, makes them a one-war value. Lower K rate, similar walk rate, higher home run rate.

Babbitt kind of comes back into this stratosphere. There was a 423 Babbitt for Glenn Otto in those limited starts last year. So yeah, that seems a little weird. But it does give you a better indicator of what he'd be likely to do. I think that makes him more like a 1.6, 1.7 war pitcher if you kind of took that projection and added volume to it without changing skills. And it also helps you. If you remember this in-season, it really helps mostly in-season

because you'll see what the guy has done to date, and then there'll be a rest-of-season projection. And so you'll often see a guy who came out to a hot start have two wins and the rest-of-season projection is for half a win or something. That helps you kind of realize, oh, yeah, I'm not going to double the two wins. I'm going to just consider him a little bit better than a halftime player or something. You know what I mean? So it really makes sense when you see the rest of season projections.

That should come together. In terms of what my model, I'm so addicted to my model, I had to go look. It says that Otto has a plus slider, a really, really good slider, a good knuckle curve, so he's a two-good breaking ball guy, a good knuckle curve so he's a too good breaking ball guy and that the four seam fastball uh if he locates a little bit better this year or has a little bit better stuff on it could be an average pitch so um you know i like auto it's two two breaking balls and an average fastball in a in a good location uh should be actually an above-average pitcher.

So, you know, war aside, Otto is somebody that I'd be interested in. Yeah, I think he's the kind of guy that once you get to that round 40 to 50 range of these draft and hold leagues we've been talking about, there could be a lot of innings there too. And sometimes just getting some innings from those picks late can be valuable. Kind of spot them in carefully. One thing I was talking about last season after we had, I think it was Vlad Sedler was the guest on the Athletic Fantasy Baseball podcast. That the AL West was a really favorable spot for pitchers a year ago.

I think it's still going to be pretty good. Obviously, the Rangers are better with Seager and Marcus Simeon there. But if you are a Ranger, you're not pitching against the Rangers anyway. So generally a division that I think is above average in terms of ease of matchups for pitchers. So keep that in mind too. Texas might be a little more streamable in our deep leagues than we are accustomed to with some of these young guys

that they're trying to break in. Thanks a lot for that question, Kevin. Got a question about dollar values here from Charlie. He writes, I have kind of a beginner or big picture question. I'm only looking for a general response, maybe using a few players as examples. Heading into year two of an auto new league, but still feel pretty anchorless when judging dollar values for player production. Where do strong fantasy managers get a dollar value? Is there a rule of thumb on a stat or set of stats that we can convert into dollars

or if we have to rank them on projections and inflate the best players for scarcity how do we value scarcity simple math based on war maybe i get why acuna is 50 to 60 dollars and guillermo heredia is one dollar but it seems like i could lose by being off by a few dollars on multiple 20 to 30 dollar players players. Thank you, Charlie. So even if you don't play auto-new, I don't think this is specific to auto-new. It's just inflation's a bigger issue there than it is in a lot of other leagues

because there's a keeper aspect to it. It's just kind of the way that salaries and arbitration and things work in that format. So let's go to the first part of the question. Where do you like to get your dollar values, Eno? What do you like to have factored into those well i like i use the auction calculator on fangraphs and um they've got some helpful presets there for auto new where you can just click one button and it sets up all the the rules

and the dollars uh to to make it work um so that i that's it and like i said in in the last podcast that we did on fantasy stuff, there is a bit of false precision in projections and auction calculators. So usually it's a guide for me, even on that dollar level. I know that there's some analysts and some auto-new players out there who will just look at the difference between the price of the player and the auction value and just cut them if they don't. players out there and who will just look at the difference between the price of the player and the auction value and just cut them if if they don't uh i i know some that want to even get uh you know 30 more you know uh value back than than the auction calculator says and cuts everybody

otherwise however i found that a lot of times the auctions, the kind of restocking auctions in Adenau and the draft in, you know, the restocking drafts, the restocking part of any keeper league is overvalued. I find that people are too excited to get high picks for their players. I'd rather have the player than the pick most of the time. When I see trades like that, I think that the draft is often full of players that were rejected from other teams. And a lot of times you'd be like, oh, well, they just need to bounce back. And Cody Ballinger, he's going to be out there and I want to have some money so I can go get him. Sure. But there are also a lot of people who never bounce back. So you're buying from a pool of players that may have injuries that have changed the rest of the trajectory of their

career. May not have their fastball anymore. You're buying from the less desirable pool. You're buying from the less desirable pool. You know, you're buying from the rejects. So, like, you know, I just feel like I am a little bit closer to, like, if it's worth close to the value. And I'll go a little bit over. And that's the part where we start talking about inflation and the way that I have not found a really good way of doing it. I believe the auction calculator has some sort of ability to kind of take players out of the pool for the values. You can put, there's like a little keeper thing where you can just like put players in there and that sort of takes them out and does some inflation

work for you. But the way I do it is just by eyeballing it. And what I do is as the draft approaches and as the keeper deadline approaches, I keep looking at the free agent wire at each position. And so I'll say, okay, I've got this first baseman, I've got Jose Breu, and I've got him for $21. And the auction calculator says he's worth 18 or 19. I could cut him, you know, and then even try to buy him back at less. What I find also is when you do something like that you jose reo goes for 24 in the draft you know so so i would then be looking at the available first baseman on the free agent wire before i cut a bray you just saying like what happens if i cut a bray you he goes for 24 and i have to go for the second best option that's inflation to me is what's the second best option

what's the third best option what's the third best option what other options do i have at that position if i don't get that guy well you're you're doing the homework to figure out what you think the room is going to do that's unique to the situation of they're not being any other players like that so to your league yeah because the the system does not know which first baseman are being thrown back when you run the dollar values. You're just looking at them. If everyone were available, this is what they'd cost. You have to make the human sort of logical calculations and factor in the opportunity cost.

If I throw him back and he gets inflated above my price, then what do I do? Oh, crap. Now I've got Brandon Belt as the best first base option available or whatever it might be. That should actually be a big part of your final decisions. It shouldn't just be a pure raw dollar sort of calculation that you're using to decide whether or not you're keeping a player. I think the other part of this question that's kind of interesting for me, how precise do you need to be with your dollar values? And I mean, I use dollar values for leagues that are just snake drafts just to know, am I getting

more here with this guy or this guy? Should I wait? How much of a gap is there based on the projections and the things we care about? I'm still looking across positions, still looking for tier drops, looking for categorical drops as well but how important do you think it is to be precise to the dollar on players is that is that where you're at the dollar level or do you think even that might be more precise than necessary given just given all the volatility and the noise that we're we're dealing with in the player pool and mostly in the form of injuries demotions all these different things that that throw chaos into our world like the projections themselves are are strong and accurate but

we also know there are some limitations too yeah yeah i mean um was the the r squared you know like i wish i should have done this before we got on here i didn't think to do this but you know, like, I wish I should have done this before we got on here. I didn't think to do this. But, you know, what the tests for the amount of error in projection systems, you know, you'll be surprised that there is a fair amount of error, you know. And people don't do these as much as they should, I feel like. And people don't do these as much as they should, I feel like. But the amount of error here, here's something I found for evaluating the projection systems on GetBigBoard. The R squared between projections and outcomes

for each of the categories, the fantasy categories that we look at, is below 0.5. So less than a coin flip. And those are the leaders. That's Steamer and ATC. So that's just how this was done. And of course, you know? So that's, that's, that's just how this, uh, this was done. Um, uh, and of course, if we're all using projections and using the best projections, then,

then you've got to leg up on somebody. But, uh, my point is that there's, uh, still a bit of a coin flip situation here when we're talking about all the chaos and everything. Uh, that's why I think that, uh, one of the things that Jeff Zimmerman does so well is, you know, his motto is playing time is king. And I think that's, I think that, I think he's right. And I think it's because there's so much noise in projecting performance. And performance, of course, is tied to playing time. But if you pick players in good playing time situations that are that are you know assured of playing time even if they don't hit their you know 90th percentile outcome in in terms of production then you're going to do better than other people that are always chasing

this 90th percentile in terms of production right or of course yeah so so you know i guess my answer is i i use projections because that's what we have and that's what we we need to have a mooring we need to have an anchor but i will go a dollar or two or three above or under whatever i will and i will try to read the room you know sagura at ten dollars was was uh was a good pick after 120 after if joe cronenworth is going to go at 120 right so i've been sitting there looking at sakura for like eight rounds there's 80 picks you know so like uh i i feel like uh i i could have i could have taken him two or three rounds ago so you have to think about the

room you have to think about the specifics of each position the inflation at each position uh you have to think about their age and your team's win cycle. And if you want to pay more for a win now or if you're just trying to amass the young guys. And then you really want to think about playing time above all else. And some of those things are in the projections.

Some of those things, the projections are good at. Some of the things they're not so good at. So I think I'm willing to throw a human brain on top of those projections i just like how it took me losing to jeff directly in tout wars a handful of times before i had that revelation like i think it was sometime last draft season where i was like maybe the edge is projecting playing time it's like yeah he's been telling people that for a while no one wants to listen so He literally has a tweet from yesterday. Playing time is king.

Yeah, and I think he's been pretty clear about that for a long time, that that's how he plays. Wow, that's why he wins a lot. But for me, I think the light bulb moment, even though it was spoon-fed to all of us, was just thinking about it in the sense of everyone goes in with projections. Projections within a reasonable degree

are pretty similar across the board, or we're using the same two, three, four sets of projections in a room of 15 people. So if we're all looking through the same kinds of evaluation lens for players, there's just not that much that's going to give us separation. I think just from a pure leverage standpoint, going through

and projecting playing time on my own having a different volume of playing time more accurate volume of playing time projected that to me seemed like the just a simple way to be different than the room and even if you're not going to go through that's like a pretty labor intensive situation uh the the kind of low-hanging fruit the underlying uh low-hanging fruit there that is available to anybody with less work is where are their playing time battles where is their playing time to be lost and gained right and i that's where you know i think there's a huge number of like i tell everybody if i was if i wasn't if i was going to use somebody else's projections i mean this is part of my process is just to look through the depth charts every year.

I look through the depth charts, and I look at a backup. I look at the backup situations, and it's what I do in basketball, too. I look at the backup situations, and I look at, you know, who was already creeping forward, who was losing time. Josh Bell was starting to lose some time against lefties. What does that mean? You know, that's what I'm looking at. I'm looking at who's a young guy that could come up and and take that job what like taylor walls like

like who's he is he gonna take third you know is andy diaz gonna be finally you know like pretty much on the outs or is walls gonna be a halftime player like those are the playing time situations i think that are worth a lot. Because if you get that right, you get all those extra plate appearances. Yeah, I think in mono leagues and draft and hold, being right about who actually plays a lot off the bench ends up being big. And then, of course, who wins those outright battles, that's huge for mixed leagues. Those are huge in mono leagues too.

But I just think the line at which you're looking for playing time to be above expectations, it really changes a lot based on the type of league you're playing in. Very Captain Obvious sort of revelation there too, but just passing that along. What you're looking for can vary quite a bit depending on just how deep your league actually goes. Thanks a lot for that question, Charlie. The other question about dollar values that came in came from Alan, and it's an auction with daily rosters and deep benches. He's just asking if player A is projected to play in 120 games and return $20 in value versus player B projected to play in 150 and return the same $20 in value.

Is A more valuable because I can sub in a bench player for those extra 30 games or is it no real value because the player i'm subbing it is basically a one dollar player if player a is more valuable how much more valuable are they i think player a is is more valuable than b based on the quality of player c it like the the question sort of answers itself right if you have mediocre bench guys, then the difference could end up being nothing. Or if you have a bad bench player, you could actually hurt yourself with player A, right? A daily league does give you that opportunity though to maximize the value of every lineup deadline. So you get 20 plus whatever you're able to get in the lineup

on those days where that other player doesn't play which you know assuming the injury or known lineup issues ahead of time where you can cycle players in and out you can take advantage of that yeah there's some question of uh why uh the playing time is lower right uh if it's because they're in a platoon situation then you just need to have a platoon on your on your on your roster you know you need to have another player on your roster. You need to have another player on your roster that plays that position. So then the multi-eligibility guys really help. But if it's because he's going to be injured, then you have to ask yourself,

how many IL slots do I have? And is this guy likely to get injured and eat up my bench spot? So I guess one type is maybe Josh Donaldson. There's a guy who's going to have a good projection for when he's in, but he's going to lose random games to load management to, you know, the cranky calf or whatever it is.

And that's going to be, that's going to be harder. If you're, if you're thinking, Oh, I'll replace that production from off the wire. That's going to be harder to do, right?

Because he's going to lose single games here and there you know and then are you gonna have like a stream like you're gonna have a streaming guy or do you have a guy that's third be eligible that's on your bench that you're like okay i have josh donaldson he's gonna start but heimer kind of lario is is gonna play for him on the days where his calf sucks then you've got a pretty good situation then you probably want the guy who is better in less playing time because you've got Heimer Kondalario on your bench. So yeah, it depends on player C. It depends on player C. It depends on your IL situation. It depends on why that player has a lower playing time projection. I think Jeff Zirin would say you want the guy with the bigger playing time projection. I think Jeff Zerrin would say, you want the guy with the bigger playing time projection.

Well, I don't know if he'd say that necessarily because, again, we're looking back at it retroactively, so we know that the outcome is that the values are equal, and then it's just a question of making sure you have good players to replace him. Right, right. I mean, where it starts to break down, if you're in a weekly league

where you can't get the injured player out, when Josh Donaldson's, when the cranky calf which sounds like a either a dive bar or like a really like nice small plates kind of gastro pub situation yeah yeah if you lose on a tuesday in a weekly league then that's wasted production you're not getting somebody in the lineup for that time so i do think this is where your risk tolerance in a daily league changes slightly. Your bench isn't endless, though. You can only have so many part-time guys on the bench. You need some versatility.

And I use the bench most for pitchers. I'd rather have fewer guys on my bench there. You can't have all the guys that are going to play 110 to 120 games that are undervalued all on the same roster but you could definitely take advantage of that in in leagues like that so but generally i think even in the weekly leagues donaldson is uh pretty uh undervalued at this point he's really dropping like a stone and he's available really late and uh i think even in a keeper in a weekly league if he wasn't my starter at a position and he was just a guy I could plug in or use at corner infield that's sort of where he's starting to

get drafted now I'm back in on him I just it's hard to depend on him as a every down back you know as a starter at third base I like when you get the football analysis in there. I don't have much in there. Use football jargon. Ten points. All I have is that and the Mike Shanahan of the bullpen. Yeah, that's

just the Rays, man. They've just been being like the Rays. Next question here came from Mark. Just a question about where to play. We talk about the NFBC a lot all the time. He's wondering if we could take some time to walk through different leagues which are open to anyone to join and where you can learn more about them.

He says his brother co-manages a team with them and they've had some commissioner shenanigans in recent years, so they're looking to join a league that won't break the bank, but is competitive because they also don't want to get waxed by fantasy pros. Any thoughts on something like this? We talk about the NFBC a lot on this show. They don't pay us to do it. We just like playing their contest because they are very competitive. But I think the thing they have done really well

in the last few years is they've opened up more types of contests. You can get in at much lower price points, right? So just a few different things. They have a contest overview page, which you can check out, NFBC. It's a weird website. It's nfc.shgn.com if you want the actual URL. Just search NFBC, and I think it now appears ahead of the Niagara Frontier B frontier bicycle club or whatever that site was that would always come up oh come on every time i just write nfbc up in the url i'm like what i think greg and

tom should do like a charity bike ride with those guys to like get them to just hand over the url or something there's got to be some way to make it all work but that's that's for them to sort out but there's all sorts of contests. I think my advice would be, if you co-manage with someone, figure out what you're willing to spend on a league. I would say that even a 12-team online championship league at the NFBC, it's 30 rounds, typical 14 hitters, nine pitchers, weekly fab, seven bench spots. That's not an unapproachable league. It's just a question of whether or not you want to put in that much of an entry fee. The entry fee is $350, I think, for the online championships.

They have some $100 leagues, though, don't they? What are the $100 leagues? They have some for less than that, too. But I'm saying in terms of just the level of difficulty, those are challenging leagues, but they're not overwhelming. If you play in a home league and you've done well multiple years, I think you can be competitive in an online championship

if you're able to stay on top of the twice weekly changes. If you take the time to look at how the format plays, obviously there's no trading. So if trading is part of the reason why you win your home leagues because you're better at trading than everybody else, okay, you got to factor that in.

You're not going to be able to do that you need to build more balanced squads you can't you can't just you know collect uh you know a ton of talent and be like oh i have no steals and i'll just trade for them later that doesn't work yeah i mean there's there is a learning curve in these leagues because of the way people play them but i i would say that's probably the higher end of the of where i would begin if i was making the leap from never playing before to playing i i don't think for most people you'd want to say let's just take a plunge let's just go for the main right away like that yeah yeah that seems pretty risky i would dabble in either like a satellite league or yeah something different

before doing that yeah especially because i mean and i don't begrudge anybody their business model you know and i'm not i'm not accusing them of anything untoward they you know they list everything that you can see all the return and what you you can win and it's all there for you to figure out there is a fair amount of rake you know uh at nfbc like they're gonna they take it's not like you just add up all the entry fees and you get, you know, for first place, you get most of it, you know what I'm saying? It's, they have to run a business. So that's, that can turn some people away. You know, they'd rather have a league where, you know, if you had 12 participants, they all put their money in and

all the money goes to, you the winners um and i understand that however there you know there aren't uh the forums that there used to be uh where we used to all go and post and find leagues um and i have uh seen that it's difficult for people these days to get a lead together with strangers um because there's just not the same gathering points, right? You know, I know that they've asked us on Twitter now to do a post to help athletic readers find leagues. So we can do that at some point where just kind of create a dummy post just to have people talk to each other about, you know in leagues together um but and one last bit of warning is if you're doing those leagues on the side be careful about paypal paypal can actually freeze uh you know your your fundage so if anybody

is like sort of uh you know sending in um funds for the the the keeper league or for whatever and says this is for the fantasy league uh it it can get frozen you know like paypal is uh does not want to be in that business and uh has frozen accounts in the past for stuff like that so i would just say uh league safe is a is a decent alternative if you're going to have a group of friends or even strangers. LeagueSafe has some protections in there and is made for this. LeagueSafe is a way to kind of – and there is a little bit of a fee, but it's a small one. Yeah. So the variety of leagues, I mean, we talk about NFBC 50s.

Those are already running like crazy. Those are 12-team leagues. 50 bucks is the entry fee entry fee 50 rounds no in-season pickups so that's different too if you want to do something with in-season pickups the satellite leagues i was mentioning before they do 12 teamers and 15 teamers in that format those i started 125 bucks those are good i think that's where i would start 125 satellite leagues because draft and hold and best ball are just a totally different animal. And you're going to be in a new place and doing a new game. And then you don't get any of the juice of running that league during the season.

A lot of those draft and hold is you draft it and you forget it, basically. You check in on it every once in a while. Or you set some lineups in certain standings, and that's it. So I would say the Satellite League is the way to start if you're going to try an FPC. The other thing you got to keep in mind, too, why don't they pay back 100% of the prizes? There are licensing fees that you have to pay now to operate in states.

That's a significant cost. Stats cost a lot of money, too. People that work on the website, they have to pay now to operate in states. That's a significant cost. Stats cost a lot of money too. People that work on the website, they have to be paid. I'm not begrudging it at all. I'm just saying that some people would rather play where 100% is going back to the winners. Right. I just think for some people, they're like, where does that money go? Well, there's overhead in running a contest like this.

It's real. Stats are very expensive. The coding. They've made a game for you. The's real. Stats are very expensive. It's coding. They've made a game for you. The rooms are really good too. I find that the in-season play is very good because the fab is more intuitive

than most. It runs really quickly. You know, just lots of good stuff. It's a nicely put together site. It's a fun, it's like, yeah, it's good. And if you're in a draft and something happens,

like we were drafting Stephen Kwan, the outfielder for the Indians, the Guardians, and he was listed as a free agent. And so we were just like, is this the right Stephen Kwan? Or like, why isn't he listed as being for Cleveland or whatever? And we alerted support and we got, I think it was like an hour or something. We got something right back.

So their support is really good. And the players, they're good too because it's for money. The other sites that run leagues, I don't play any leagues where I pay money on fan tracks. I've done Tout Wars drafts in there. They do run leagues. They have best ball stuff up right now. They've got a bunch of different formats

up. They've been around for a while. RT Sports is another one. I would just say I've played in leagues on all three, even though I only I think every league I've played on fan tracks in RT has been a side league. There wasn't a cash entry fee.

The only ones I've had buy-ins for the last several years have been NFBC. And they're quick to pay out at the end of the year too. So you just, that's a nice little extra bit of security. You never know with some of the other sites that I don't even know that are out there. If you go with something that's not reputable necessarily, and I'm not saying that FanTracks or RT, I'm saying other new sites that might be popping up. There's always that added risk that money might disappear. So just keep that in mind as well. So hopefully that gives you some idea. We keep talking about all these leagues. Hopefully that's at least a little bit of a breakdown, but just go to the contest overview page. You can see what the entry fees are. You can read more about the rules, what makes those leagues unique over at NFBC. You can read more about the rules, what makes those leagues unique over at NFBC. That is going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. If you've got a question for a future episode, be sure to send those in.

If you're watching us on YouTube, be sure to barrel up on the Like button. On Twitter, he's at Inoceros. I am at Derek Van Ryper. We are back with you on Thursday. Thanks for listening.