200M DRAFT RANKING by WAR...work in progress

Great stuff Marc. I could lose a day looking at this. Please do not inform my employer that this is how I will be spending my day today.

Interesting stuff. I have some serious quibbles with some of your ratings. But that's what makes horse races.

I'm personally not a proponent of thinking in this way- but appreciate your posting for all and am happy that maybe we have a variety of processes for which we feel are best in constructing a team.

Always interesting stuff! One thing I'd like to see is the $9.99 Cobb rated. I think he may be more valuable than the $11.41 Cobb simply because he can play RF

Yes, Steve, one flaw with ranking players in any fashion is deciding where to put guys who are rated at multiple positions. There are less WAR available in RF than in CF, so that Cobb card likely shows up as a better CF than RF. Similar arguments apply to Dihigo, some of the Ott cards, the 5R Mays card, and the dual position Junior card.

Awesome stuff.

.....however, as much as I agree with about 99.9% of that top 24 rank list I always find it HARD to pass on Ted Williams if I'm picking 9 thru 12.

...in fact I've never see him go later than 14...but then again, I don't let him


Good stuff.

Actually, there is no reason why I shouldn't list multiple cards, like Cobb, Ott and Mays, I'll update the list soon with this information.

Posting one player for every position, like posting Dihigo value at first base, second base, outfield, etc, is more tricky, because to establish WAR, I need to establish a replacement value at every position, and to do so, it's much easier to set Dihigo at one position. WAR depends heavily on the value of the best replacement player, this is why Dihigo has his best WAR value at second base, but technically, his best position is probably first base.

BTW, I don't know if I wrote this, but the replacement value I used is the average value of the 13th to 16th best player on one side. Consider 2nd base. If I assume that Dihigo is best used as 2b, my ranking has Jackie Robinson with the 12th best card vs rhp (for recall, the assumed environment here is hr rating 12/12--also recall that I assume some at-bats vs lefty relievers, aound 10%). So the replacement value I considered is the average value of Lazzeri, Kent's 7.82 card, Gordon and Doerr, a nose in front of Knoblauch. The logic is that the replacement player should be a guy you could easily draft in the late rounds. I do the same vs lhp. The value of replacement value also serves for the replacement value when players are injured. When Lajoie is out because of injury, I assume you have a player who has roughly the 15th best card vs both lhp and rhp, so think of Lazzeri or Knoblauch. If your replacement player for Lajoie is Doerr, then Lajoie true expected WAR is likely to be lower because Doerr vs lhp has a pretty poor card. So lastdruid is right that, If Matt Williams is your replacement player for an injured Schmidt, than Schmidt expected WAR willl not be as great as my ranking Indicates.

It is true that there is fewer WAR at rf than any other outfield,but my own analysis is that it's not that big of an issue. For example, if I list players according to my WAR ranking for all eligible outfield positions (excluding players who drop defensive ratings by 2 or more, like Walker in centerfield), I have Cuyler set as 20th best card vat rf, 22th best card in lf, and 25th best card in cf. If I look at the 25th best card in rf, his WAR is only 0,4 WAR under Cuyler. But to consider Cuyler 25th best card in cf is a stretch, since there is a motivation to not let Musial and Harper at cf ( they lose more than 1 WAR by switching positions). For what is worth, when I looked at this year Barns tour, the player with the highest WAR vs rhp not drafted in rf was in several leagues Strawberry, in cf Mercer went undrafted many times, and they were generally better than players that went undrafted and eligible in lf. So bottom line, even though it's true that there might be an argument to provide an extra 0.3 WAR for players eligible at rf, given that this difference is small, I preferred the simplicity of considering outfield as one position for WAR consideration.

Also, promised but still not delivered, I will list the rankings for Petco, 20-20 hr, Minute Maid and Shea. I've been lagging with job stress and now vacation, but will do it soon.

Marc--
great stuff. wow. very thorough.
thank you big time

hope you are getting paid to do this......

A few words,

1-I have made some adjustments in my model. The WAR value of first basemen and outfielder have been improved compared to the other positions, because of a change in the way I determined the replacement value for these positions. Jimmie Fox now stands with the 6th best overall card. I think this change is a rejoinder with the opinion of vets. I will change the first post at the end of the week: if Foxx is not overall 6th, you have the old version.

2-I have found out and corrected a few mistakes in the diamonddope download sheet. Maddux for one is highly affected: DD listed him with only 2.05 on-base vs lh, when in fact he allows 6.05 on-base vs lh. This mistake moves him out of the first round selection. Killebrew is another one whose data was way off. I had already corrected the obvious mistakes (some players had double digits in single or homerun chances). If you are aware of other mistakes in DD, please send it to me.

3-I also made a few adjustment about WAR value for pitchers, after analyzing 22 200M seasons that were playded in 2015 and 2016 Barns tournament.

This allows me to write a few words about how WAR is estimated for pitchers. If you are quickly bored with methodology, skip the rest of this post!!!

Setting the value of pitchers in WAR is even more difficult than for offensive players.
First, my model projects an ERA and estimates how many innings were pitched for every pitcher, and then I project how many runs will be saved by using this pitcher relative to a replacement value. So basically, there are two issues: 1) am I estimating the value of pitchers correctly? 2) Am I setting the correct replacement value (for recall, WAR is about wins over replacement value, so the model needs that I establish a replacement value, but it also make sense from a GM perspective because it's akin to estimating the value of players you draft in early rounds or high on your drafing list relative to players you can get in late rounds or that you get by default in the automatic draft).

To answer the first question and check if my model was valid, I needed data so I downloaded all the 200M leagues from the 2015 and 2016 Barns tours. This amounts to 22 seasons. To simplify the discussion, I will compare my model to the data from the 22 200M seasons mostly for right-handed starting SP who start on 3-day rest--lefties and 4-day rest pitchers are more complicated to estimate---I further exclude Ford, Arrieta and Greinke among a few others from the discussion since these cards were introduced recently and I had no data for them from the 22 seasons I downloaded.

To give an example, based on a 9/9 single and 12/12 hr environment,my model estimates that Maddux ERA** is expected to be on average 5.32 (and NOT 5.09, as it was initially written in the first post, after correction of the DD error) and to throw 275 innings in a course of a full season of 200M leagues (my model did assume only 40 starts though, for ease of simplicity). 275 innings might seem low, but I thought that there are more early exits in 200M leagues, and there are usually at least one very good reliever in every team to pick up when Maddux gets fatigued later in the game.

Maddux' performance from the 22 simulated seasons on average was 40.8 starts, 294 innings, and an ERA** of 5.34. So my model nails the real ERA** but indeed underestimated a bit the number of innings (for the record, I also checked the stadium ratings, and it was indeed within units of 9/9 and 12/12 for singles and homeruns respectively for home fields of teams owning Maddux).

There are of course expected variations from one pitcher to another, so I regrouped the pool of rhp *SP pitchers into 4 categories based on the ERA estimated in my model, but I choose the delimitation also so that it broadly respects the SOM salary structure:
i) Maddux, the 11M guy and the best predicted ERA among *SP
ii) The high 10M group which includes W. Johnson, Alexander, the 1997 Pedro card, Walsh, Mathewson;
iii) The low 10M group: Joss, Tiant, 3-finger Brown, Sutton, to whom I added K. Brown and Dizzy Vance because my model expects them to have similar ERA;
iv) The rest of the pack

For the high 10M group, my model also nailed the ERA** (on average, projected 5.74 vs simulated 5.67), but also underestimated usage by roughly 20 innings, just like it did for Maddux.

For the low 10M group, my model again nailed the ERA** (on average, projected 6.17 vs simulated 6.14), but for this category, the usage in terms of innings pitched was also perfectly estimated by my model.

As for the rest of the pack. My model was also very close to reality. The three best pitchers from the rest of the pack as defined above are Clemens (the 9.53 card), Paige and Marichal. In the 22 simulated seasons, Marichal, at nearly 5.90, was the best, but he could be perceived as an outlier since his use is severely limited to low-homerun environment. Clemens had the best performance after Marichal, but Paige was a bit off, although his performance was surprisingly based on only 14 seasons.In terms of usage, my model was very close to reality. Many pitchers had 37-38 starts so cases were my model underestimated the contribution of a pitcher was very rare.

My model was not as precise for pitchers who need 4 days of rest, but this was expected since they are more likely to be spot starters. Hecker's ERA was probably the most overrated by my model, perhaps this could be because I underestimated the impact of his poor hold rating. Something to explore. As expected, lefty pitchers had, dollar for dollar, worst ERA than rhp. I estimate the difference to be 0.3

For the second question about how to determine WAR replacement for pitchers, I first had to determine a pool of pitchers that fit the definition. If the 11 other teams fulfills their starting rotation, say two teams go with a 5-men rotation for the 10 or so valuable 4-day rest pitchers, and the 9 other teams choose the 36 best cards to create 4-men rotation, then one could argue that the pool of pitched ranked between 46th and 50th or so in my model could be considered truly replacement players.If I limit again to rhp *SP, the 4 best SP after rank 46 in my model are Radborne, Dean Chance, Bradley, and Taylor. None of them went drafted in more than 16 seasons, which is a sign that they are regularly left out of starting rotation. Their combined ERA in the simulated seasons were 6.60, so this is the value I took as replacement.

**I write about ERA, but technically, both in my model and in the observed data, I include both earned and unearned runs in the calculation, so my numbers will be a bit higher than if you specifically look at your player's ERA as provided by SOM stats.

My current top 36 WAR, based on "neurtral stadium". Players on the same line can be considered virtually equal (less than a quarter of WAR) and should be selected based on other strategies or likeness.

1. Babe 8.4 WAR
2. Bonds Gibson 7.7 WAR
4. Hornsby 6.4 WAR
5. Mantle 5.5 WAR
6. Fox Morgan Brett Charleston Lajoie 4.8 to 4.6 WAR
11. Bagwell Gehrig Williams Vaughan Maddux 4.4 to 4.2 WAR
16. Schmidt 4.1 WAR
17. Pedro in a 5-men rotation (but consider him lower if you mix *SP 3.9 WAR
18. Thomas McGwire Duffy Barnes Mauer 3.7 to 3.6 WAR
23. Dimmagio Beckwith as 3rd Speaker Walker Dihigo as 2nd 3.5 to 3.3 WAR
28. Simmons, Piazza, Kiner, Kershaw 5-men (same warning as Pedro) 3.1 to 3.0 WAR
32. Larkin Mays 11.69 card, ARod (2005/2007) Harper, Cobb 11.41 card, Wells, Alexander 2.8 to 2.6 WAR

BTW, I want to be on record that I don't recommend drafting Jeter in any of the first two rounds!!