Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

There have been some good and logical reasons given in various threads against usage based pricing.
But a couple points. No formula by itself is ever going to achieve accurate pricing for all cards.
Neither is have a handful of people arbitrarily decide which cards should be adjusted up or down.

The solution to me is still simple. Start with a formula that establishes a price for all new cards. Then periodically adjust that price based on usage. That means we all influence the pricing. We essentially say who is under or over priced based on usage.

But usage does not have to be simply the card was used in 90% of leagues so it should go up. Or used in less than 10% so should go down. Computers are great at crunching numbers so why not let them be crunched? Usage could be based on actual usage as in player A got 20 plate appearances so was not used much or got 700 plate appearances so was used a lot. Ditto for pitchers. A pitcher who was just a SP place holder and pitched no innings was not used and thus should not matter. Pitchers who got 300 innings was used a lot. So if usage were based on factors like innings pitched and plate appearances then it would accurately reflect if that player's price should go up or down.

Such a model would also address players tossed on to the bench in high cap leagues just because you had the money to spend because since they are bench players and not actually used they would not accumulate plate appearances artificially driving up their usage stats.

This makes far, far too much sense to ever be implemented.
Very good idea.

Great idea! Usage based on ab and innings. What about platoon players and relievers?

CTStough wrote:Great idea! Usage based on ab and innings. What about platoon players and relievers?

Platoon players aren't as valuable as guys that will play 162 games, so they should end up worth more than bench warmers and less than full time players. That may work itself out. Say hello to $2.5M Jay Alou

There will have to be a number of innings for both SPs and RPs that reflect above or below to have salaries raised or lowered. 1 inning lights out closers might go down in value while R4 and R5 guys may end up fairly priced if they get 200+ innings in every league. That may make Murray a less attractive option if he's at $8M (or whatever).

How would usage pricing deal with multi card guys?

Platoon players would by the very nature of not playing full time thus getting fewer at bats receive an adjustment somewhere the guy who is never used and the full time player. Similar for relief pitchers.

If the comparision were made as much as possible within a player type should work itself out. Relievers who pitched far more innings than other relievers, say 350+ might go up while relievers never used might go down.

This method may not be perfect and may need further tweaking. But it is probably better than adjusting based on how many leagues a card was used in. The goal is to price according to how valueable our actual usage patterns say the player is.