Crooked Pitch

I just read a fantastic article over at CBS Sports regarding a recent mock draft they held. In their head to head, roto league they decided to alter the scoring a bit to include, among other stats, negative points for batter strike outs and a point for walks, which is exactly the same value of a hit. You may not think that this affects the value of fantasy players, but if you’ll take a close look, it truly does.

• Prince Fielder and his 50 home runs are more valuable that Ryan Howard and his nearly 50 homers. 88 points more valuable, to be exact. Why? Well, Howard strikes out much more and walks less.
• Let me list a few hitters that are less valuable than Gary Sheffield in this scoring system. Grady Sizemore, Ichiro Suzuki & Manny Ramirez. Why? Look at each of their walk rates and strikeout to walk ratio numbers.

I’m not linking to this CBS article or bringing this up to change your minds about player valuation. What I want each of you to think about are the stat categories that your leagues use to determine points. Most draft lists (The lists here at Crooked Pitch included) are calculated using a standard 5X5 system. However, if you use that 5X5 list to draft your team in the CBS league mentioned above, you may be in danger of a poor showing.

Long story short… If you’re drafting in a league that is something other than 5X5 scoring, make sure that the draft list you are using is altered to take the extra stat categories into account.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 8:30 pm and is filed under Draft Lists. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.