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Lou here again.  Matt from Fantasy Insider Online is having difficulties logging in and asked me post this for him.  Enjoy!

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Earlier in the week, I took part in a fantasy draft that involved a whole slew of heavy hitters in the industry and which will be printed in a fantasy magazine to come out in January.  I know, I know… early, right?  The 2007 season ended just under a month ago, and already (with a lot of top free agents still out on the market) we are trying to look ahead to ’08.  Nevertheless, considering that the ’07 season was still fresh in everyone’s mind, it may help to explain something that went down during the draft that I thought to be a bit out of the ordinary. 

With the 11^th pick in the 1^st Round, NL Rookie of the Year and Milwaukee 3B Ryan Braun was taken off of the board.  Please, do not get me wrong – Braun was an absolute beast this past season and posted up per game fantasy numbers very similar to those of fantasy monster Alex Rodriguez.  However, how much stock can you really put in a player with just one year of experience in the majors, let alone one year of statistical information to base your pick off of?  Solely based off of last season, there is no doubt that Braun is worthy of a 1^st Round selection, however, at such a deep position with so many exceptional AND experienced 3B options for this coming year, I would rather play the law of averages. 

Can Braun duplicate (or even come close to) his .324 BA, 34 HR and near 100 RBI in 2008?  The ball is up in the air.  Yet, this led me to take a look at the trends of past Rookie of the Year winners and how they performed in their sophomore seasons.  Most recently, we can go back only one year to see two cases in which players kept things headed in the right direction during their second years.  Both Marlins SS Hanley Ramirez and Tigers SP Justin Verlander (ROY winners from 2006) improved across the board from 2006 to 2007 – with Ramirez having an absolute monster year.  It is practically inconceivable for this year’s NL ROY, Braun, to better any of his 2007 numbers next year, however, much like Verlander, he could stay consistent and improve in some areas. 

Recently, many players (both hitters and pitchers) have either stayed consistent or done better in the following season after being crowned Rookie of the Year.  Players like Ryan Howard and Jason Bay, both who are that big-hit type player similar to Braun, have improved in their sophomore seasons.  Nevertheless, past ROY winners like Eric Hinske, Angel Berroa, and even Dontrelle Willis to an extent, show that a solid follow-up year to a stellar rookie campaign is not a lock. 

In the end, I would rather take a seasoned veteran with a few years of statistical backing which would warrant him a 1^st Round pick rather than basing that draft selection off of one outstanding season.  Would I love to have Braun on my fantasy teams in 2008?  Without a doubt.  Playing in a very suspect NL Central division, hitting in a lineup with up and coming stars like Prince Fielder, J.J. Hardy and Corey Hart, Braun definitely has the opportunity to keep the ball rolling into 2008 and beyond.  Yet, to me, a 1^st Round selection does not seem right to me, and I tend to see Braun as a solid 3^rd or 4^th Round option.  When it’s all said and done, however, consistent trends from seasoned players will help me sleep a little bit easier at night.

One of the most overlooked aspects in roster construction is the idea behind positional scarcity. The premise behind the theory is that an owner should not necessarily draft the player with the best overall stats, but rather, the player with the best stats when compared to others at the same position. The concept is simple in theory but unfortunately much more difficult in practice.

Looking back on 2007, yere are the average stats for each position:

C - .255 AVG, 9 HR, 39 R, 47 RBI, 2 SB

1B- .277 AVG, 19 HR, 63 R, 71 RBI, 2 SB

2B- .274 AVG, 9 HR, 69 R, 54 RBI, 10 SB

3B- .272 AVG, 17 HR, 64 R, 67 RBI, 7 SB

SS- .276 AVG, 12 HR, 72 R, 59 RBI, 15 SB

OF- .276 AVG, 14 HR, 66 R, 62 RBI, 11 SB

Last season, FIO and the Baseball Lab created an in depth Player Rater tool that enables us to rank every player in the game based upon the 5 basic fantasy scoring categories. Plugging these stats into the tool, we can determine the position with the most depth, or said another way, the best average stats:

SS- 100%

3B- 92%

1B- 79%

OF- 73%

2B- 36%

C - 14%

The percentages listed next to each position are the percentile values when compared with the leader, the shortstops. As an example, read the third basemen line as follows: In 2007 third basemen were, on average, 92% as valuable as shortstops. First Basemen were 79% as valuable, and so on.

What can we do with this information? A sound strategy next spring will be to wait on shortstops as there are many solid to great ones available. Let’s say you are targeting one of the big three – Hanley Ramirez, Jose Reyes, and Jimmy Rollins – and all three are off the board earlier than you wanted to take them, or before you had a chance too. Do not panic, the position is deep, and even if Troy Tulowitzki (finished 4^th) is taken, realize that Carlos Guillen, Khalil Green, and Derek Jeter are of almost the same value and still available.

The opposite holds true as well. The outfielders have been on the decline for several years now, and 2007 was no different. Yes there were stars at the position (Matt Holliday, Magglio Ordonez, Eric Byrnes) but once you go into middle ranks of the position the talent level drops precipitously.

Another way to look at is this. The average fantasy league (12 teams, 14 batters) drafts 18 shortstops and 64 outfielders. The shortstop in the 25^th percentile is the 13^th or 14^th best, and correspondingly the 25^th percentile outfielder is ranked around 48^th. Comparing the players with these rankings from 2007:

SS-Edgar Renteria: .332 AVG, 12 HR, 87 R, 57 RBI, 11 SB

SS-Miguel Tejada: .296 AVG, 18 HR, 72 R, 81 RBI, 2 SB

OF-Austin Kearns: .266 AVG, 16 HR, 84 R, 74 RBI, 2 SB

Would you rather have Renteria or Tejada at short, or Kearns as one of your outfielders? Obviously, the shortstops are more valuable and if your goal is to obtain a decent shortstop (as opposed to an elite one) it make sense to wait on the pick. Further, use the draft picks on outfielders because the lower ranked shortstops outperform similarly lower ranked outfielders.

A picture is worth a thousand words. First, a graph of SS vs. OF in terms of the score the player rater gives for each. Since there are more outfielders than shortstops, we need to adjust to give the two positions an identical scale. To do this, we’ll go back or percentile idea and compare the players of similar percentiles (i.e., the 9^th ranked SS vs. the 32^nd ranked OF, both of the 50^th percentile).

It doesn’t look like much at a glance, but there is a discernable difference between the two positions. First and very obvious is the fact that the top SS are much better than the Top OF (1). This is followed by a fast drop in SS rank where the OF’s perform better between percentiles 22-50% (2). Then, the two positions are roughly even through percentile 78% (3) before SS takes the lead through the last ranked player. To show the tail more clearly, here’s a blow up of percentiles 61 - 100

In summary, the shortstop position is strong at the very top and the very end – either grab an elite one (Ramirez, Reyes, or Rollins) or wait till the end when you will get more value out of a lower round pick.

PS. Knox had requested something, well, a little less in depth and I had every intention of doing so. But, when I come across something I hadn’t thought of before, I have a tendency to get a bit carried away. In this case, it was comparing the progressive scores of the positions as they go from the best to worst. It is something I will most assuredly look into in more detail this winter as I think the application on draft day could be tremendous once we adjust the rating curve for 2008 projections.

Hi Everyone, Lou here from the Baseball Lab. As you know from Sooze and Ian, while Knox is away testifying in front of George Mitchell’s investigation, he hit a few us up to keep his readers from rebelling.

I am not much of an ‘up to the minute’, daily events type blogger. Rather I prefer to look back at the past (sometimes 100 years, sometimes last week) or peek into the future (projections!) but hopefully I can do as good a job as Knox, Sooze, and Ian. I’ll be making one post today, later on this morning, about some interesting trends in the shortstop and outfield ranks, showing why it’s best to draft one earlier than the other.

In the meantime, why not take a minute and complete Tom Tango’s survey, the 2007 Scouting Report by the Fans for the Fans. Share your knowledge, have some fun.