Debate - Part 3 (draft strategy)

What lessons can we take from the debate and apply to draft strategy? Well, when examing a player's field goal and free throw percentages, you must also take the attempts per game into account. If you just rank players based on the 2 percentages categories and the 7 other "bulk" categories, your rankings are not accurate.

Yahoo more or less ranks players based on the 9 categories without taking the attempts/game into account. So their rankings are also not accurate. For example, a couple years ago Kyle Korver was ranked in the top 15 by yahoo for the current season. Korver had great percentages, tons of three pointers, and low turnovers. He was a good fantasy player that year, but not even close to the top 15. Yahoo was over-valuing him b/c they didn't take into account that his high percentages had very little weight. On the opposide side of the spectrum, some big men with horrible FT%'s get very awful yahoo rankings even though they may take very few FT attempts. These players can end up ranked worse than 200 and usually go unnoticed when people comb the free agent market sorted with the best ranks first.

So, how can you best prepare for your draft? Well, you're in luck! I updated the google document I posted a few days ago (see the post "2009 NBA Projected Statistics") to now include columns for the 2008 FT and FG attempts per game.

How should you use these columns and rank the players? Well, let's save that for another post.

Debate - Part 2

Despite Bob's superiority to Al in 5 of 9 categories, it seems many of my friends would prefer to have Al on their rosters. Since Al and Bob both take few field goal and free throw attempts per game, their percentages will not have much influence on a fantasy team's overall field goal and free throw percentages. However, a difference of 1 three pointer is very significant (The average player makes approximately one three pointer every 2 games). I think this is pretty much the right answer.

However, if your opponent has only players like Al, then a team full of Bob's would be better off adding another Bob rather than an Al to have the best chance to beat the Al's.

Debate - Part 1

In a head to head fantasy basketball league with the standard 9 categories, would you rather have Al or Bob on your roster? These stats are Al and Bob's per game stats. You can assume that each player will earn exactly these stats in all 82 games this upcoming season.

Name	FG%	FT%	3PT	PTs	Reb	AST	STL	BlK	TOs
Al	39%	84%	3	10	5	4	0	1	2
Bob	40%	85%	2	10	5	4	0	1	2

As you can see, Al and Bob are identical except in the first 3 categories. What do you think?

2009 NBA Projected Statistics

Many people do their draft analyses using last years statistics. They know the players won't perform exactly the same this year, but last year's stats are usually the best option available for pasting into spreadsheets.

Anyway, what fantasy gurus should really base their draft strategies on is this upcoming year's stats! We don't know what those will be, of course, but John Hollinger at ESPN has projected them for every NBA player here: http://games.espn.go.com/fba/tools/projections?display=alt

If you checked out the ESPN link, you might be thinking, well, this is nice, but this isn't in a good format, how do I get this nicely into excel? Well, I did that for you and I am sharing the spreadsheet as a google document which you can get here (and be sure to thank ESPN and John Hollinger): http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pJpMiQ2orc3QVsbYa_lSAGA

Enjoy!

By the way, don't draft your players based on "Hollinger's Rank". That would be a bad idea, especially if you are participating in a league based on categories like Yahoo's fantasy basketball leagues. If you are wondering why you should not draft based on the rank alone, please read my fantasy basketball posts from September 2007.

great leadoff hitters can do amazing things

Say you're in a fantasy baseball league with the following 12 categories: 6 pitching (W, L, SV, K, ERA, and WHIP) and 6 batting (R, RBI, SB, K, TB, and OBP). These are the categories we have meticulously chosen in my super competitive work league.

Anyway, say your fantasy baseball team is loaded with 4 or 5 great relief pitchers (perhaps you spent rounds 3 - 6 of your draft on closers). Your "bullpen" is able to win saves, ERA, WHIP, and losses (because you don't have any starting pitchers) every week. Given that you somehow were able to acquire 4 or 5 of the best 15 closers in baseball, what should your offensive strategy be to best insure that you win your matchup each week?

B.J. Upton, Grady Sizemore, Brian Roberts, and Hanley Ramirez are the only batters so far this year to amass over 30 stolen bases and have on base percentages above .375. They all kind of strike out a lot (all on pace for well over 100 this season). However, if you could acquire 2 of these guys you would be in great shape. Imagine you were able to get 2 or 3 of these guys in your first 3 rounds of a draft. You could then get your 4 closers and then pass on your next 15 picks. If you played 2 of those lead off hitters an no other batters, you would likely win SB, OBP, and K's every week. Even though the leadoff hitters I mentioned strikeout a lot, any 2 of them will strike out less than 9 other random players combined) A team of 6 players could dominate any other roster of ~20 players. Think about it!

P.S. In fantasy baseball playoffs, you don't even need to win 7 of 12 categories. If you tie 6-6, the tiebreaker is ERA, so with 4 great closers, you only need to win 2 offensive categories to advance. Just use 1 offensive player and go for OBP and low strikeouts. You could win with just 5 players...