Given the basic league scoring rules I posted in Fantasy Baseball 2008 – Introduction, a few interesting observations come to light.

In the 40 man league we can see that there are 4 statistical categories that favor releivers and 3 that favor starts. For relievers, especially closers:

• S – Saves
• WHIP – (Walks + Hits) /Innings Pitched
• K/BB – Strikeout to Walk Ratio
• ERA – Earned Run Average

Saves should be obviously a reliever stats. WHIP should seam reasonable as a reliever stat as well, but to back it up with some data of the top 25 pitchers in projected WHIP, 23 are relievers and only 2 are starters, Johan Santana (7th) and Jake Peavy (20th). J.J. Putz, Jonathon Papalbon and Takashi Saito are the top three relievers, all with projected 0.92 WHIP. K/BB is a little more evenly distributed between the top 25, with SP edging RP 13 to 12. However, of the top 10 there are 8 RP and only 2 SP, and the numbers drop off quickly. For example the top K/BB projection is 5.46 for Rafael Batencourt, 10th is Bob Howry, at 4.20 and 25th is Scott Baker (SP) at 3.51. ERA might not seem as obvious but, considering their role relievers consistantly put up great ERA numbers. Of the top 25 ERA projections there are only 3 SP, Johan Santana (16th), Jake Peavy (20th) and Brandon Webb (23rd). The top 3 relievers are Jonathan Pabelbon, J.J. Putz, and Joe Nathan. By comparision Pabelbon is projected at a 2.00 ERA where Webb is projected at 3.10.

Starting pitchers have two obvious statistical categories in their favor, W (wins) and K (strikeouts). The final category PCT (winning percentage) is pretty much a toss up between relievers and starters. Looking at the projections, Justin Verlander is looking at a 0.720 PCT (18/7), while J.J. Putz is looking at a 0.714 PCT (5/2).

Given all of this info it is clear that a team could dominate by selecting the top closers and avoiding starting pitchers. This is not quite what I did, but here is what I did do.

Notice, I have more SP than I originally planned. This was mostly due to the fact that once I started picking up RP other owners realized what I was doing and snatched up the better ones quick. So I addapted a little and switched to SP. I think this is good overall given that SP are more prone to injury than RP. I will definately need depth at SP. By my rankings I was able to pickup 5 of the top 25 pitchers with 3 more in the top 75 only Jake Westbrook lies out of my top 100, and he had a great outing yesterday in spring training going 6 innings, 8 K, 0 H, 0 BB, 0.00 ERA. Overall in spring training he is 3-0 with 14 IP and an ERA of 0.00.

The 21 man league was quite different. The roster for the 40 man league is set once a week. However, daily changes are available in the 21 man league. Therefore, I am able to get 2 or 3 extra starts a week based on rotation and matchups. Two of the 7 statistical categories in this league are irrelevant, CG and SHO. The league leader in SHO Brandon Webb had 3 SHO with 4 CG, only Roy Halladay has more CG at 7. It just doesn’t make sense to chase these categories since they happen so infrequently. Saves and Wins are again RP and SP categories respectively. K and L are largely SP dominated while ERA is RP dominated. Personally, I feel this leagues pitching categories are a little goofed. As I stated before, the key to pitching in this league is getting as many starts a week as possible. That being said here is how my draft went.

Notice I included my reserves, Dontrellee Willis and Ubaldo Jimenez, since I will be trying to pitch them each week as well. Ubaldo may look like a week pick, but remember he only pitched 82 innings last year and should pitch 180 or more this year. Dontrelle might also seem like a weak pick. I picked him up due to his move to Detroit, which should give him plenty of run support this year. I think he will have a much better year this year than last year. I would like to trade Jenks for Pabelbon or Putz, but I’m sure that will need to be a multi-player deal.

My next column will address the hitters and the strategies I took into each draft.

Until next time–

3Monkeys

Popularity: 21% [?]

Well it is March again time to get into Fantasy Baseball mode for about 6 months. This year I am participating in two leagues and perhaps a third. I definitely was able to prepare more both time and quality wise. I hooked up with another avid baseball fan this year, Will Watson. Will has agreed to write a blog on all things sports for 3Monkeys, Austin Sports Guy. We consulted about our draft strategy for about a week before the drafts, focusing on both overall player talent, fantasy potential and league scoring intracasies. It was a loose definition at best, but we did take particular goals into each draft.

The first draft was an online Yahoo draft. In this league you would draft 21 players 16 starters and 5 reserves. Position requirements and scoring categories for the hitting and pitching positions are as follows:

• Hitting: C/1B/2B/3B/SS/OFx3/Util
• Pitching: SPx2,RPx2,Px3
• Reserves: 5 Players

• Hitting: R/2B/3B/HR/RBI/SB/AVG
• Pitching: W/L/CG/SHO/SV/K/ERA

This scoring system breaks from the traditional 5X5 by adding 2B and 3B for hitters, and ignoring WHIP and adding L, CG and SHO for pitching. That being said, we used a plain vanilla cheat sheet to rank our player giving extra credit to those that had better than average or exceptional output in the categories not considered in traditional 5X5 scoring leagues. We further refined our strategy by noting the positions that had the least exceptional player, followed by the least exceptional players plus above average players (position scarcity). This was a shallow draft so some of our decisions were based on depth.

The second draft was a live draft of 40 players in which you must fill out your starting lineup of 23 players before drafting 17 reserves. Potition requirements and scoring categories for the hitting and pitching positions are as follows:

• Hitting: Cx2/1B/2B/3B/SS/MI/CI/OFx5/Util
• Pitching: Px9
• Reserves: 17 Players

• Hitting: R/HR/RBI/SB-CS/AVG/TB/OBP
• Pitching: W/SV-BS/K/ERA/WHIP/PCT/K per BB

Again this league breaks from the traditional 5X5 scorint system a bit by modifying saves to net saves (SV-BS) and adding winning percentage (PCT) and K’s per BB. For hitting SB is modified by net stolen bases (SB – CS) and adding total bases (TB) and on base percentage (OBP). Again we adjusted for the scoring system idiosyncrasies and position scarcity. We also allowed for the fact that this would be a deep draft. This basically meant we were going to totally give up on a position in order to get better quality players across the board and take some risk on rookies or players that may or may not be called up during the season.

In my next installment, I will break down the pitching side of the draft.

Fantasy Baseball 2008 – Pitcher Draft

Until next time—

3Monkeys

Popularity: 10% [?]

As a follow up to Finding the first 20 terms in the Fibonacci Series, next in the 3Monkey Golf series — Determining if a number is prime. The following is a fairly simple Perl one liner to do the trick. I’m interested in seeing implementations in other languages. I will be posting follow ups with the best submissions from both Golf challenges at the end of the week.

Perl Code

perl -wle'print(1)if(1xtarget_number)!~/^1?$|^(11+?)\1+$/'

Character count = 36

Golf Rules:

Please note that use og characters such as > and < require escaping as & lt; and & gt;
If you have difficulty posting your solution please email me the solution at stacy (at) 3monkeyweb (period) com and I will make sure it gets posted.

Good luck, and until next time.

-3Monkeys

Popularity: 30% [?]