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

There is one huge mistake in DD but having learned the hard way, I much prefer to watch others grab this guy. I got burned once, but it was my own fault for not doing due diligence.

We all know that Foxx is the 6th best card and most regular live draft guys know that Maddux isn't a first round pick either. Don't get the DD part about Maddux, it lists him has 6.05 in Polo'41 vs lefties...Glad to see that you're on board with those assessments and that you also don't endorse Jeter as a second round pick. Now you just need to realize that Willie Mays is much better than your WAR for him.

Just to show you that I put my money where my mouth is with Mays. In the current Barnstormers I was in first place through the first three events. My 4th team was an unmitigated disaster, although Bonds managed to hit 100 hrs and the team nailed a personal best with 499 homeruns. Before last nights games I was only tied for 1st in the Barnstormers with HankO, largely because of this team which I append here: http://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1460052

I loved this team when I drafted it but dropped Pascual for Sam McDowell who someone else had dropped. I even got rid of Jeter for Banks to afford Sam. I really thought he was the perfect addition to a very solid team. But no, he went 0-12!! So yeah, I do get to drop one team from the final standings but it put me in a situation where I had to be very careful to get a playoff team in Round 5. Here is my attempt to do that and it involved Willie Mays as my first pick. I tried to correct my McDowell issue from the last team and got 4 very solid righthanded starters for my park. But Mays was the key guy, along with McGwire. Their 3R and 4R respectively make them the top two picks for a Minute Maid team as you are gonna see a lot of righties and they are needed to make people think twice about throwing Pineiro et al. against you. Albert Belle's 7M dh card was also a key deterrent for Minute Maid teams but with his new card...

I should add that my 4th round team was about 8 games under .500 most of the season until the last batch of games against my division mates. Thus when I drafted my Minute Maid team, I really put serious effort into it, in part because I want to finish 1st (as I did the same year DONFESQ won the tournament). Because it was an autodraft, I probably didn't get the best team in the league but perhaps 2nd best. But the team lives or dies with Mays. So far it lives. http://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1462475. And it's been doing a bit better of late since McGwire managed to drag his batting average north of the Mendoza line.

Here are the league "Awards" to date:

W.Mays(THE) 378 C.Kershaw(LIM) 115
T.Hafner(SED) 362 D.Leonard(GRE) 93
J.Foxx(SED) 216 G.Hecker(SED) 51
B.Bonds(SLE) 138 R.Johnson(TAC) 20
B.Ruth(140) 103 T.Keefe(BEA) 10

Mays is tied with Bonds for the lead league in HR's, is 3rd in runs scored and 5th in RBI, he is 4th in SLG and 5th in OPS. And did I mention he fields and runs rather well.

The mistake about Maddux on DD is to be found here:

http://www.diamonddope.com/pool.cfm

This is the list I downloaded and calclated all the stats.

I'll comment on Mays later, but thanks for the comments

Marc: Diamond Dope seems correct with Maddux. If you look at Maddux without ball park effects on DD he is 8.05 vs lefties for hits. If you look at him in Polo '41 DD has him with 6.05 hits vs lefties and if you look at him in Forbes '57, he has 10.3 hits vs lefties. I don't assess him as a first round pick, not so much because of his stats, but because I just won't take a pitcher in the first round much anymore. I used to take him as early as 7th pick but the results weren't adequate. And I've had better results with Pedro anyway, despite Maddux having the better card.

Re. Foxx being the sixth best card. I just want to stress something that is perhaps already clear for you. There has never been a doubt for me that Foxx is the 6th best card in the set, in absolute value. Even though Lajoie is severely underpriced in SOM, his salary is still at least 1M under Foxx, according to my rating system.

But this is not the question I try to answer. To illustrate, I'll take the latest draft that you posted on Anatomy of a live draft. In that draft, Cano, Homerun Johnson, Olerud and Goldschmidt were all available by round 16. The question, then, is: in a world where you have access to a Goldschmidt-Olerud or to a Cano-Johnson platoon, which card in the first round will give you more between Foxx and Lajoie?? In this very instance, Lajoie would have been the better choice in the context of a neutral stadium (hr 12/12). This is the question the WAR system tries to answer, and I think that Foxx and Lajoie are virtually equal when you consider the replacement value you could draft late in 200M.

Of course, the challenge is to rightly define the replacement value at each position. But I feel it's far from clear that Foxx is the better choice.

Re. Maddux, not sure what I do wrong, but In the link I provided, DD yields me 2.05 on-base vs lh where we should read 6.05 on-base, plus stadium singles.

Re. Mays We have a point of agreement that his 11.69 card is better in most leagues than his 12M card. But yet, this 3R card is pretty weak vs lhp: his offensive card vs lhp is not even in the top 200 of ATG. Another key aspect about his evaluation is his arm. The data I'm relying upon, which is mostly based on 20XX, is that there is little benefit from having a -5 arm vs -3 arm. A -3 cf will have more outs on the bases than a -5, but will also yied more runners to advance, so it is almost a wash. A -13 clutch also costs him a few positions, although this could be offset a little bit if he hits 3rd.

But Mays does score a lot of runs and knock in a great deal too which is what matters most to me. And I would think he is routinely in the top 20 in at least one of those two categories, much less the top 200. And playing all three OF positions is with a 1 (-5) is nothing to sneeze at. Bottom line though, a five tool super stud with 13.5 natural homeruns against righties is an extremely valuable commodity.

In my last 250M league to finish I had Mays' 65. He hit 71 hrs., knocked in 148 and scored 127 despite only hitting .284 with an OBP of only .335 and that was playing in Metro '71, friendly to right handed hitters but by no means a hitters paradise. The worst I have seen from him on my teams was 48 homers with a .250 BA and still had 100+ rbi's. I get that he doesn't hit for great average and his OBP is nothing to write home about either at 200m+ leagues, but who cares if he is hitting 50-80 hrs and knocking in 130+.

My screen still shows Maddux ranked 5th overall. Am I supposed to be seeing the update?

The other thing with Mays and the -5 arm, no way that is the equivalent of a -3 arm. Here's why. Certainly you are correct that the -3 will throw out more baserunners than the -5, hell a +1 might throw at more than a -5. But holding guys to one base at a time on hits, particularly if the trail runner is prevented from advancing on many throws sets up a lot more gba opportunities. This is most effective in parks like Petco, and at lower caps, where every base is at a premium. Back in ATG II and III, for example, outfields with guys like Musial in LF, Furillo or Clemente in RF and Speaker or even Geronimo in CF were quite successful at 80 and 100M, precisely because the game became one base at a time for the other team.

The other thing with a -5 arm with Mays, for example, in right. Then it becomes cool to start Ashburn or Combs in CF and then Mays will rack up the assists, either that or teams won't be running so much on the armless CF'ers.

Mucho Gracias, Senor Mark. Now to attempt to use all of this. Good stuff.

good stuff! thanks!