Rounding Third: Playing Time and Dollar Values

Jeff Erickson

Jeff Erickson is a co-founder of RotoWire.com and the only two-time winner of Baseball Writer of the Year from the Fantasy Sports Writers Association. He roots for the Reds, Bengals, Red Wings, Pacers and Northwestern University (the real NU).

Posted on Monday, February 20, 2012

PDF Version

Column Archives

Playing Time and Hitter Dollar Values

Projecting a player's value includes two major components - projecting a player's skills, and projecting his playing time. When we do our projections and dollar values, a common response we get is that I have a particular player, usually one that has well above-average skills, ranked too low. In most of those cases, it's because I have him projected to miss more than a handful of games. Usually that projection is because a player has missed a good chunk of games in multiple seasons prior to this one, or in some cases because they have a pre-existing injury. My belief is that most people underestimate the effect of those missed games.

It's readily apparent to see that problem with counting stats. Fewer games equal fewer homers, stolen bases, runs and RBI. But as RotoWire colleague Charlie Zegers demonstrated last week, there's also a good multiplying effect with ratio categories like batting average as well. Not all .300 batting averages are created equal. We have Allen Craig projected to hit .308 this year, and Shin-Soo Choo to hit .293. But because Shoo is projected to get 552 at-bats and Craig just 321, Choo actually gives his fantasy owners more value in the batting average category in a standard 12-team mixed league.

The cumulative effect is also understated. To give you an example, I recently upgraded Ryan Howard's projection on the basis of positive news on his rehab from his torn Achilles' tendon. Initially, I took an extremely conservative position on him (though given how out of line it was with others' projections, perhaps I was the aggressive one - maybe "cautious" was a more apt term than "conservative".), projecting him to miss roughly half the season. It seems now that his return will occur roughly sometime in May, so I've given him 30 more games in his projection, from 75 to 105. Let's look at the change in the results:

	G	AB	AVG	R	HR	RBI	SB	$value
Before	75	282	.266	44	17	59	0	-$3.48
After	105	395	.266	62	24	83	0	$5.36

It's a pretty extreme change in his value. More often than not, any adjustments I make to a player's projected playing time will not be so extreme - in Howard's case, he received a 40 percent increase in playing time, leading to a dollar value change in nearly $8. But it illustrates how much of a swing there can be.

Here's the problem with this exercise. Projections are notoriously difficult to accurately project to begin with from a skills standpoint, because even when we break them down at the component level (batting eye, power, speed), the output doesn't necessarily translate for our game. We can get a player's OPS nearly down cold, but if he gets 10 fewer homers and 20 more doubles than we expect, that isn't necessarily a great projection for your fantasy purposes. Adding in the playing time aspect is another level of alchemy. Some players have existing injuries, and of course we have injury and playing time histories, but even then, enough fluke injuries hit to create a high error rate. Yet as we progress through spring training, the difference in drafting one player against another often hinges upon that playing time projection. I tend to believe it would be irresponsible not to discount certain players like Josh Hamilton or Nelson Cruz on the basis of their respective injury histories.

To that end, we'll also keep adjusting out projections throughout spring training, as job battles and health statuses come into clearer focus. Once we know a player's role and his progress in recovering from injury, we can get a slightly clearer picture of what might happen during the regular season. For a good start on what battles we're paying attention to, please check out Brian Pelowski's Job Battles article. But don't expect wholesale changes in our projections for many of those job battle resolutions - a decision made on March 25th can quickly get reversed on April 25th.

To account for the uncertainty in this exercise, I wanted to come up with a "per at-bat" set of rankings - what might happen if we projected equal plate appearances for every hitter. Obviously that won't happen in real life, and moreover, not every player would improve linearly with more playing time. Platoon players (often, but not always) are platoon players for a reason. The idea here is that we might see some chances to find value - a player that otherwise doesn't rank high but shows up on the second list could be a nice endgame pick. Further, if you disagree that a certain star should be discounted because of his injury potential, you can see how he might slot with a full projection. To do this, I'm using his Standings Gain Points as my unit of measure - that's the starting point for my dollar values. The actual equation is (Total Standings Gain Points / At-Bats) x 100 - basically, I wanted to move out the decimal point two places to make it a little more decipherable. This was done for standard 12-team mixed auction leagues, with a 60-40 hitting/pitching split as the starting point. I'm listing the top 76 hitters (76, because the 76th player, Domonic Brown, is an interesting illustration.). I highly encourage you to do this exercise on your own and go deeper - spending some time playing with the numbers can lead to other discoveries.

Playing Time Neutral Rankings

Rank	firstname	lastname	pos	VALUE	PerAB
1	Matt	Kemp	OF	$39	4.631
2	Carlos	Gonzalez	OF	$31	4.434
3	Jose	Bautista	3B	$27	4.325
4	Albert	Pujols	1B	$32	4.315
5	Ryan	Braun	OF	$14	4.307
6	Miguel	Cabrera	1B	$30	4.210
7	Justin	Upton	OF	$30	4.154
8	Hanley	Ramirez	SS	$24	4.007
9	Jacoby	Ellsbury	OF	$32	3.963
10	Joey	Votto	1B	$28	3.956
11	Troy	Tulowitzki	SS	$26	3.952
12	Curtis	Granderson	OF	$24	3.904
13	Evan	Longoria	3B	$26	3.882
14	Josh	Hamilton	OF	$19	3.868
15	Mike	Trout	OF	$2	3.793
16	Desmond	Jennings	OF	$21	3.753
17	Nelson	Cruz	OF	$17	3.742
18	Brent	Lillibridge	OF	-$4	3.704
19	Allen	Craig	OF	$2	3.684
20	David	Wright	3B	$21	3.668
21	Shin-Soo	Choo	OF	$21	3.668
22	Adrian	Beltre	3B	$18	3.664
23	Mike	Stanton	OF	$21	3.661
24	Prince	Fielder	1B	$24	3.652
25	Andrew	McCutchen	OF	$23	3.644
26	B.J.	Upton	OF	$21	3.620
27	Brett	Lawrie	3B	$22	3.604
28	Mike	Napoli	C	$17	3.586
29	Robinson	Cano	2B	$26	3.554
30	Adrian	Gonzalez	1B	$24	3.551
31	Brandon	Belt	1B	$5	3.550
32	Matt	Holliday	OF	$19	3.545
33	Alex	Rodriguez	3B	$13	3.545
34	Alex	Gordon	OF	$20	3.531
35	Ian	Kinsler	2B	$22	3.521
36	Paul	Goldschmidt	1B	$11	3.505
37	Paul	Konerko	1B	$18	3.488
38	Brett	Gardner	OF	$13	3.487
39	Craig	Gentry	OF	-$9	3.467
40	Coco	Crisp	OF	$12	3.466
41	Aramis	Ramirez	3B	$15	3.445
42	Jose	Reyes	SS	$22	3.441
43	Eric	Young Jr.	OF	-$4	3.439
44	Jason	Bourgeois	OF	$1	3.435
45	Jay	Bruce	OF	$19	3.426
46	Everth	Cabrera	SS	-$9	3.398
47	Michael	Cuddyer	OF	$19	3.395
48	Dustin	Pedroia	2B	$23	3.383
49	Kevin	Youkilis	3B	$11	3.381
50	Ryan	Howard	1B	$5	3.370
51	Carlos	Santana	C	$23	3.347
52	Ryan	Kalish	OF	-$8	3.340
53	Chris	Heisey	OF	$0	3.316
54	Mark	Teixeira	1B	$20	3.312
55	Yoenis	Cespedes	OF	$11	3.305
56	Lance	Berkman	1B	$9	3.287
57	Rajai	Davis	OF	-$3	3.277
58	Elvis	Andrus	SS	$17	3.252
59	Carl	Crawford	OF	$17	3.248
60	Jason	Heyward	OF	$11	3.218
61	Corey	Hart	OF	$12	3.214
62	David	Ortiz	DH	$12	3.211
63	Tyler	Greene	SS	-$10	3.192
64	Ryan	Lavarnway	C	-$3	3.190
65	Matt	Joyce	OF	$9	3.186
66	Michael	Bourn	OF	$19	3.183
67	Mike	Morse	OF	$11	3.174
68	Will	Middlebrooks	3B	-$18	3.169
69	Drew	Stubbs	OF	$16	3.157
70	Ben	Zobrist	2B	$15	3.132
71	Mark	Reynolds	3B	$13	3.125
72	Jarrod	Dyson	OF	-$14	3.122
73	Chase	Utley	2B	$12	3.117
74	Hunter	Pence	OF	$18	3.115
75	Adam	Jones	OF	$16	3.112
76	Domonic	Brown	OF	-$11	3.107

There are a lot of the usual suspects at the top, though you can see the effect of the projected Ryan Braun suspension. But you can also see a number of outliers pretty quickly. In many cases, that player that stands out does so in a particular category, such as with Craig and his batting average, or Chris Heisey and his home run rate, or Craig Gentry and his stolen bases. With a full slate of at-bats, chances are that production would slow down in that one particular category, and would drop dramatically in the categories where that player doesn't excel.

The other common theme we see here is younger players showing up that don't yet have full-time jobs. Mike Trout obviously would be worth a lot more if the Angels committed to him from Day 1 this season, as the most prominent example. Though he also falls under the weakness in this exercise - speed guys tend to be overrated here. Many of them can get their stolen bases in part-time action, but they are unlikely to improve across the board with full-time action. That's the case both with Gentry and Jarrod Dyson, to name two players. I think with the next iteration of playing-time neutral listings, I'd have to dial down the value of the stolen base considerably.

Finally, the depth of your league determines how actionable this information can be. For instance, in a 10-team mixed league, every single hitting spot is going to be filled by a full-time player by each team, and there will be plenty more full-time hitters on the waiver wire if-and-when a player gets hurt or loses a job. So you can afford to take a few more chances in your draft - Josh Hamilton is worth more of a risk, but it's so much easier to replace him when you have to put him on the DL. On the flip side, some of the really short-time players like Domonic Brown or Eric Young Jr. aren't going to be draft-worthy at all without any sort of playing time. You're better off just watching the playing time situations for each team during the season and pouncing on them off the waiver wire if and when their time comes.

Top Fantasy Baseball Player News

Jim Henderson: Leaves Game With Hamstring Injury

Oswaldo Arcia: Demoted To Triple-A Rochester

Curtis Granderson: Fractured Knuckle From HBP

Rafael Betancourt: (Groin) DL Stint Still Possible

Michael Cuddyer: (Neck) Activated From DL

David Freese: (Thumb) Back In Lineup Friday

Mark Teixeira: (Wrist) To Begin Rehab Next Week

Fantasy Baseball Resources & Tools

2013 Rankings
A list of the top fantasy baseball players to draft in 2013. Overall and positional rankings.

2013 Auction Values
A guide to help you figure out how much to bid for each player.

2013 Cheat Sheets
Compact, easy-to-use cheat sheets for your fantasy baseball draft.

2013 Projections
Projected 2013 stats for hundreds of baseball players.

2013 Keeper Rankings
A specialized set of rankings for 2013 fantasy baseball keeper leagues.

2013 Custom Rankings
Fantasy baseball rankings that can be adjusted to fit your league.

Login Help

Rounding Third: Playing Time and Dollar Values

Jeff Erickson

Fantasy Baseball Resources & Tools