Champs: Who is your highest priced offensive player?

Anybody want to take the lead on, oh, I don't know, pitching and defense maybe...

here is an all 1's team I am trying, early on but kinda meh.

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1415760

it's plus 35 in runs scored but too weak vs lhp.

But that was way better than this:

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1411711

That's 1016 walks/HR for, minus 480 against. Peeps, that's 536 net walks +homers garnering 77 wins.

Inconceivable. Maybe it was the bad Tulo-Stanton combo.

This leads me to believe that walks and homers are priced out of the equation this year.

Maybe you should look at Carlos Santana, one of the single worst priced player according to my ratings. He didn't hit his weight in your season.

But more generally, it's a sabermetrics truth that, the lower the scoring environment, the more valuable hits are (vs walks). And I think there is a consensus that it's been harder than ever, in 20xx, to score runs in the recent years. So, if SOM has not modified its formulas, then "hitters" have never been more valuable, and "walkers" are not as valuable as they used to be.

Final thing: there is a danger in having Figgins as a leadoff hitter (at least in a dh league): you then have one of the worst offensive player at the top position, the player with the most potential at-bats . Once the first inning is past, the lead-off has almost as much rbi opportunities than any other position except perhaps 2nd and 4th spot. The advice in "the (sabermetrics) Book" is to have your three best offensive players at the 1st, 2nd and 4th spot.

I talk from experience, my current Tour team has Figgins as lead-off and it's struggling offensively. Not the sole reason of course, but I believe that decision was not optimal.

I had Figgins in another team that was non-dh, and this is a much better fit---with pitchers hitting, the lead-off has much lower rbi opportunities, especially if opponents walk intentionally the 8th hitter in clutch situations. But we're getting into micro-management.

"But more generally, it's a sabermetrics truth that, the lower the scoring environment, the more valuable hits are (vs walks). And I think there is a consensus that it's been harder than ever, in 20xx, to score runs in the recent years. So, if SOM has not modified its formulas, then "hitters" have never been more valuable, and "walkers" are not as valuable as they used to be."

I agree with this. Figgins should always hit 9th. The "second leadoff guy". Extending the inning back to the top of the order is his main value

I just did a quick run through on the 26 80 M league-winning teams in the current Players Championship.

Average Top Hitter Salary - 9.26 (Trout 4, Stanton 4, Rizzo 2, Brantley 2, Marte 2 plus 13 others)
Standard deviation - 2.01

Average Top Pitcher Salary - 6.72 (Arrieta 3, Hernandez 3, Lester 2, Richards 2, Zimmermann 2, Sale 2 plus 12 others)
Standard deviation - 1.38

I may expand this to include all teams making the playoffs in each league.

* Missed One top for Marte, so average will be slightl;y higher

Defense ? Pitching? We don't need no stinkin' defense and pitching...
http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1416919

Good thread. So many ways to put a team together. In the tour this year I had Brantley on a 60m team!- 17% of the total salary on one player- 94 wins , but lost in the semis.

Marc:

Regarding Santana, I think you may have missed the point. Santana had 100 walks and 25 each homers and doubles. His "value" in a ratings sense was not relevant. I wasn't going for the team with best ratings. I was going for the team that would generate maximum walks and home runs. I know he can't hit for average.

Regarding the scoring environment, you can't do much better than 800+ runs. I led the league in offense by over 30 runs! Going by pythag records (third best in the league) this team should have made the playoffs as a wildcard with 86 wins. However, 19-32 in one run games is more indicative of bad luck/dice than anything else, and the pitching strategy of fewest walks/homers is not optimal with this set.

I kind of already knew that, but these late in the year silly-season experiments keep my interest up.

Marc and Steve:

Figgins only moved to lead-off late in the season. When you have only three guys hitting righties, having Figgins batting 9th (with .400+ OBP) doesn't do any good there. It was a move to mix things up. Again though, 800 runs of offense was not the problem with this team.

Spider:

Thx for running the numbers on the tour!

Some food for thought...

Let's say the ideal line-up is 6-6-6, 5-5-5, 4-4-4 (i.e, a "long" line-up of middle priced value guys). When you have tour level managers chasing the middle, the chain naturally expands to 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 as the middle dries up. A smart manager might even "chase" the edges instead of competing in the middle. I wonder if this is why the tour leagues averaged having a high priced player by a full dollar more (non-dh leagues would raise the price too).

I don't think the tour leagues invalidate the observation. (And, it is just an observation after all! This isn't an attempt at some grand unifying theory or a new Secret Formula!! The old one holds up just fine, thanks!!! ) The observation is that, in my opinion/view/finished leagues, Champs managers in this set appear to be favoring the value in the middle rather than opting for the high dollar superstar.

For those of you on the "I like Trout!" side of the fence, I'd like to hear the arguments for. So far I'm not sold on his value as has been presented.

Or we can move along to pitching and defense if you prefer...

Haven't used Trout this year, but I do like Cutch. In fact, this team was built on Cutch, Turner(finally got him ONCE) and Ortiz

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1413885