Yo, Adrian! Don’t Sell High

JPops asks: I received an offer of Lyle Overbay and Chien-Ming Wang for Adrian Gonzalez in my 16-team MLB 5x5 roto league. I need pitching help. Should I make the deal? Shoeless Joe would not make this deal (and note that Shoeless Joe’s e-mail back to JPops was sent before Gonzalez’s three-run jack last night). And here’s why: First, in 2/1 or 3/2 trades, Shoeless Joe almost always tend to favor the side that includes the best player in the deal. Wang and Overbay are fine players, but Gonzaleeeezzz (if only Harry Carey was alive today to butcher his name) is the best fantasy player in the bunch. Secondly, remember, when making uneven deal that has your team getting back more players than you are giving up doesn’t mean that this deal is just Overbay and Wang for Gonzalez —it’s Overbay and Wang for Gonzalez and XX player, ie, the player you need to drop to accommodate the trade. More on this in a minute. As for Gonzalez, the former first overall draft pick in 2000, Gonzalez smacked 24 homers to go with a .304 average in his first full season last year. He’s already got 7 dongs and 23 RBIs (a club record in April for the Padres) in the short 2007 season. And while he plays at a deep position and a pitcher’s park, Shoeless Joe wouldn’t sell high for a middling starting pitcher and average starting first basemen. While Wang will get wins, Shoeless Joe doesn’t think he’ll repeat his sub-4.0 ERA and 1.31 WHIP from last season. And because his game is seriously devoid of K’s, that makes him a one category pitcher in Shoeless Joe’s opinion. While pitching depth may be hard to come by in a deep 16-team league, Shoeless Joe just wouldn’t sacrifice a young stud like Gonzalez for Wang. And it’s unclear who JPops would be dropping to accommodate Wang. Shoeless Joe a tough time believing that there’s a large difference between Wang and the guy currently on JPops roster or a guy who could be obtained off waivers. If it looks like your team needs wins, their might be a guy like Tim Wakefield or Livan Hernandez floating around your waiver wire. And don’t forget the young studs like Tim Lincecum, Homer Bailey, or Adam and Andrew Miller, who will probably be called up and be assets THIS fantasy season.

Resisting Sucker Trades

This is the time of year during which the first bad fantasy baseball trades are completed. Inordinately, a good portion of these trades are wildly uneven. A good deal of those responsible for these trades right now are managers prematurely pressing the panic button on quality players. Generally there are two reactions to uneven trades. The most common is for a number of managers to veto the proposed trade. Thereafter, for the rest of the season, it turns into "veto" revenge, where everyone vetos nearly any trade that comes through, thereby essentially making free agency the only way to improve a team. The next most common reaction is for leagues to take the philosophy that vetoes should be reserved only for cases of suspected collusion. This often results in a race to find someone willing to make a terrible trade - the only offers you see are obviously unacceptable to the informed. While Doc Gram prefers this to a veto-happy league, too often in these cases, the winner is determined not by who knows baseball the best, but who is most adept at taking advantage of the least informed managers in the league. Doc Gram calls it "Find the Sucker." Doc Gram acknowledges this is part of the game - being the better negotiator, tricking other managers regarding your intentions, and doing whatever is necessary within the rules to improve your team. But nothing is more frustrating in the first few weeks of the season than having carefully gathered what you think is a great team only to see your efforts put at risk by a competitor acquiring a slow-starting top 20 pick for someone chosen in the 14th round who happened to have a hot April. In these cases, the ignorance of the worst managers in your league - the Suckers - can be the biggest determining factor in who ultimately wins the league. There's no use bitching about it, really. Once one of these trades has occurred in your league, if you weren't smart enough to be the one responsible for the heist, all you can do is use it as motivation to win in spite of the stacked odds against you and the skewed competitive balance in your league. So Doc Gram will focus on prevention, like any good doctor would. Here are five signs you are being offered a Sucker trade. If you know the signs, you could be saving not only your team, but also maintaining the competitive balance of your entire league. 1. The trade involves sending fewer of your players away than the number you get back. Usually this is a "3 for 2" or "2 for 1" trade. While these sometimes can be perfectly fair, in most cases early in the season, the value received by the team getting more players isn't much higher than if that team traded an equal number of players and picked up the next best guy available in the free agent pool. So when evaluating these trades, look at the worst of the players you're being offered and ask yourself if there is someone equal or better in the free agent pool. Even if there isn't, you have to value the worst extra guy in the trade based on the difference between his value and the next best free agent player. Too often, Suckers just add up the stats on each side of the trade and come to the conclusion that they're getting more production than they're giving up. What they should be doing instead is also adding in the stats for the best free agent at the position to the "giving up" side of the equation, not to mention considering what you're losing out of the player you'll have to drop to accommodate the extra guy coming over. If you do this, giving up a star for two slightly above average players starts looking a lot less tempting. Overall, winning in fantasy baseball requires consolidating the most talent possible into each roster spot - it's not like fantasy football where bye-weeks and injuries make depth the more important asset for much of the year. So these type of trades nearly never make sense, in Doc's opinion. 2. The person making the offer keeps stressing this year's stats in his emails. This is probably a good sign that the guys that the manager is offering are currently overachieving and he's trying to sell high. Nearly every major league player will have two or three weeks this year during which he outperforms his peers. Weeks 1, 2 and 3 are no more important to the standings and no more predictive than are Weeks 4, 19 or 22. What's predictive is 3-5 year player track records (go into stats from the minors in the case of youngsters), player age, season-long opportunity, and health. 3. The person making the offer is telling you that you urgently need a stat category or you'll be out of it. As said earlier, we're barely 4 weeks in to the season. Nothing is urgent at this point unless you have major injuries or are coming off of a horrible draft. Your opinions on your players should not have changed yet. 4. The offer made to you has sat open for more than a few days. Smart managers don't leave well-balanced trade offers open too long because they know that you could hit accept at a moment's notice should there be an injury to one of the players that you'd ship over in the trade. If they're willing to leave an offer on the table indefinitely, and they're still making other moves in the league, it probably means they think they'd get the upper hand on the proposed trade by a longshot. 5. Your counteroffers are ignored. If you think you've been offered a trade that will help with some immediate needs but you're not sure you're getting fair value overall, go back with a very fair counteroffer. People looking for sucker trades often won't even respond half the time, and if they come back with something even more uneven, you know you're being tested. Don't fall for the "last chance/final offer" line either - you'll get another chance at the player 99% of the time someone says this.

A-hole, or Merely an Ingrate?

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=335 Doc Gram is starting this post with a link to Christina Kahrl's recent column on Baseball Prospectus' "Unfiltered" blog. He encourages you to read it, especially if you buy the Prospectus each year. Just so you know, the editor listed first on the book cover thinks your love of fantasy baseball is at best, corroding the game. Doc Gram's not sure why Kahrl decided to stir the pot. He doesn't mean the one simmering with the tomato sauce she writes about preparing - he means the pot of steaming, horseshit-laden ungratefulness that she ladled upon the BP website. Like an Altria executive clucking her tongue at the cost to taxpayers resultant from caring for lung cancer patients, Kahrl proceeds in her post to snipe her colleague Will Carroll for caring about his fantasy team while whining about how there are no "points" in real baseball. Guess what? There's no REVENUE FOR YOU in "real" baseball, either. Unless Kahrl believes they're going to make the New York Times' bestsellers list selling 200-500 copies to the insular MLB execs who actually move the game and give a shit about what some lady cooking tomato sauce thinks. Maybe Kahrl figured that by admitting up front that it's not necessarily in her best interests to be posting what she did, she could escape this response from readers like Doc Gram. She also consults a thesaurus to come up with several euphemisms that have a similar effect to saying "no offense, but..." before you call someone an asshole. Or maybe she figured she should be controversial because bloggers wouldn't be able to resist the urge to object in posts like this one. But the fact remains that Kahrl's congealed arrogance did not allow her to resist the urge to hide her disgust for her own audience - and she plainly bit the hand that feeds her. So here's the back of that hand, Christina. No offense, but you're a pompous asshole - not because you think fantasy baseball might be bad for baseball fandom. But because you couldn't just shut up about it and eat the meal that fantasy baseball is putting on your table. Next time, do a crossword puzzle while you wait for your sauce.

Free Jonny Gomes

Several years ago, Baseball Prospectus started a grassroots effort to “Free Erubiel Durazo.” It’s hard to believe now, but in the late '90s, Durazo was a stud prospect for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Late to arrive to the U.S. from Mexico, Durazo absolutely destroyed minor league pitching as a 25-year old and was the prototypical Billy Beane type of player — high OBP guy with tons of power. But he also produced Ty Cobb-like batting averages his first year in the minors. Seriously, check out this dude's minor league stats. Ridonkulous. Arizona quickly promoted him and he didn’t disappoint. In 155 AB’s as a rook, he hit .329 with 11 dongs and an OPS of 1,016. Oh my. Durazo went into 2000 as the full-time starter at first base for the D’Backs and picked up right where he left off during his debut, peaking at .346 and a 1,090 OPS on May 7 of that year. But it was all downhill from there. Durazo went into a deep slump and the D’Backs eventually demoted him. From 2000-2002, Durazo would only average 197 ABs for the big club, while shuttling to and from the minors and spending his age 27 and 28 seasons playing backup to the aging and overrated Mark Grace. The guys at BP were obviously horrified by this. Guys with Durazo’s track record deserve more than one chance and the D’Backs never gave it to him. Sure, they were contenders in those days and even won a ring, but it wouldn’t have killed them to find out what kind of player Durazo really was. Durazo eventually got out of Arizona, shockingly signed with the Oakland A’s, and made a full-time DH for 2003 and 2004. He acquitted himself pretty nicely as born-again full timer, but he was never became the guy that BP hoped for. Durazo is now out of baseball after a last minute cut by Oakland this spring. Which brings me to Jonny Gomes of the Devil Rays. He’s got a very similar profile to Durazo, without the Honus Wagner averages in the minor leagues. He broke through with Tampa Bay in 2005, hitting 21 homers in 348 ABs. Last year, he started like gangbusters, hitting 11 homers in April, before a shoulder injury caused him to go into a horrid free-fall, before they finally ended his season with surgery in August. You would think that given his 2005 and early 2006, an organization like the Devil Rays would be more than happy to pencil Gomes back into their lineup for 2007. Think again. Gomes barely even made the major league roster this spring, with the Devil Rays going all in with their young pups – Elijah Dukes, Delmon Young, and BJ Upton. With Ty Wiggington apparently a fixture at first base, it looks like Gomes is in for a lost season barring a couple injuries or bad slumps by the young'ins. He’s 26 years old. His time is now. Either the Devil Rays should play him or trade him to a team that needs a power hitter —the Nationals perhaps? It wouldn’t surprise anyone if he was playing across the Bay by July. Somebody needs to give 500 ABs to Gomes and it needs to happen now before he gets Durazo’ed. Free Jonny Gomes!

Baseball HQ vs. PECOTA

Posting has been a bit fluffy lately, so here's one for the stat geeks. Before the season, Doc Gram did an analysis of the projections provided by the creators of two of the most popular annual baseball books for fantasy leaguers- Baseball Forecaster and Baseball Prospectus. The purpose was not only to get two perspectives on each player, but also to determine market opportunities, based on knowing which managers in his league rely on which sources more. In the graph here, the lines are actually made up of points, one for each player, along the x-axis. The red lines refer to projections made by the folks at BaseballHQ.com. The blue lines refer to the projections Baseball Prospectus provides based on PECOTA. To normalize the two projection sets for comparison, Doc Gram kept it to those players for whom both sources projected stats, and used a third source for estimating 2007 MLB ABs. Then, a secret formula was applied the same way to both sets of projections, to create a meta score that we'll call mgSCORE, which represents the y-axis. The yellow line is a simple average of the two projections for each player. The player all the way to the left is Albert Pujols, as he achieved the highest scores for both sources; the player all the way to the right is some scrub you don't give a shit about. Anyway. When you look at the graph, the places where the blue points and red points are furthest away from the yellow line essentially represent the largest disagreements between the two expert sources. The first big blip from the left is Derrek Lee, who Ron Shandler loves and the Prospectus people only like. Players like these warranted the most attention from Doc Gram during pre-draft preparations. A few more where BP and BHQ are pretty far apart include David Dellucci, Gary Sheffield, Hideki Matsui, and Bartholemew Bonds. Doc Gram will provide some more details on some of these types players over the course of the season, using 20-20 hindsight to rip on whoever's conveniently wrong as of that day. But for now, it's interesting to note one trend in the graph. PECOTA projections seem to be more conservative than Shandler for the top 250 players or so, and more aggressive for the rest. This would indicate that PECOTA is predicting that more overall production may come this year from players who go undrafted by the fantasy world. This seems realistic given the fact that the average major leaguer is now nearly 29 - older than the average has been in years. Maybe the folks at Baseball Prospectus are thinking that this is the year some of those younger guys will start to get their chances.

Snap, Crackle, Drop?

Doc Gram is growing very impatient with his favorite player named after a breakfast cereal. Coco Crisp seems to have lost his Pop. With another 0 for 5 last night, Coco looks absolutely soggy in milk. He was touted as a cheap source of 20/20 potential by a couple of the fantasy expert sources, with 15/15 a more likely bet. Not only has he failed to hit the weight of the average 6th grade girl, he's looked nearly clueless at bat and reached base at a pathetic .171 OBP. Waving helplessly at terrible pitches, sending juicy fastballs bouncing to short; it's not pretty. Boston fans are beginning to clamor for Willy Mo Pena. Unless Coco can put together a couple multi-hit games soon, he may be riding the pine and fantasy managers may be searching for other options. His doppelganger seems to be youngster Chris Young of the Diamondbacks, but he's also off to a slow start and has a minor groin strain. Alex Rios is probably held in most leagues, but may be underrated by his owner and acquirable on the cheap. Doc Gram thinks at least two of these three guys will accomplish his 15/15 mission this year. As for Crisp, hold on to him on your bench for at least few more days. Remember that we're barely two weeks in. And that Willy strikes out about twice Mo' often as Coco.

We Do It All For the Love Y'all

Just wanted to give a shout back out to three fantasy baseball bloggers that were generous enough to provide a link to the Moonlight Gram this week. We were lucky enough to be graced by the blessing of Roto Authority, likely the Web's most popular independent blog that exclusively focuses on fantasy baseball, as well as Fake Teams, which provides useful commentary on all areas of fantasy sports, and finally, MLB Fantasy Advice, which is a bit lesser-known but an extremely well-written blog that's great about sticking to providing immediately actionable information. With over 1000 visitors to the Moonlight Gram yesterday, Doc Gram and Shoeless Joe both felt great to see that a certain phrase rang true: "If you build it, they will come."