ATG9 Salaries - the Egregiously Overpriced Cards

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Pricing Mistakes – The Egregiously Overpriced
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Although there are under-priced cards in ATG8 that need to go up in ATG9, there a ton more cards that cost too much. These are the cards that will doom your team to mediocrity (NOTE: list does not include any third basemen or catchers)

11.71 -- '27 Babe Ruth, RF (13.07) -136
10.10 -- '15 Bryce Harper, RF (11.53) -143
10.02 -- '57 Willie Mays, CF (11.11) -109
9.03 -- '93 Ken Griffey Jr., CF (10.15) -112
8.63 -- '49 Ralph Kiner, LF (10.64) -201
8.55 -- '07 Magglio Ordonez, RF (9.62) -107
8.31 -- '01 Luis Gonzalez, LF (10.15) -184
8.23 -- '99 Mark McGwire, 1B (9.54) -131
7.82 -- '02 Vladimir Guerrero, RF (9.53) -171
7.63 -- '96 Brady Anderson, CF (8.78) -115
7.60 -- '99 Bobby Abreu, RF (8.78) -118
7.44 -- '41 Pete Reiser, CF (8.56) -112
7.05 -- '98 Andres Galarraga, 1B (8.23) -118
6.76 -- '61 Roger Maris, RF (7.88) -112
6.59 -- '05 Andruw Jones, CF (8.05) -146
6.49 -- '07 Matt Holiday, LF (7.87) -138
6.15 -- '10 Jose Bautista, RF (8.08) -193
6.05 -- '01 Lance Berkman, LF (7.08) -103
6.05 -- '26 Bibb Falk, LF (7.13) -108
5.90 -- '32 Don Hurst, 1B (7.04) -114
5.73 -- NeL Superman Pennington, 1B (6.80) -107
5.68 -- NeL Pete Hill, CF (6.92) -124
5.51 -- '77 Ken Singleton, RF (6.84) -133
5.49 -- '99 Sammy Sosa, RF (7.19) -170
5.47 -- '54 Larry Doby, CF (6.97) -150
5.44 -- '03 Garret Anderson, LF (6.48) -104
5.38 -- '97 Edgar Martinez, 1B (6.59) -121
5.18 -- '06 Omar Vizquel, SS (6.26) -108
5.04 -- '01 Mike Cameron, CF (6.65) -161
5.02 -- '96 Billy Hamilton, LF (6.14) -112
4.81 -- '89 Ruben Sierra, RF (5.95) -114
4.65 -- '95 Dante Bichette, LF (5.71) -106
4.64 -- '69 Tony Oliva, RF (5.80) -116
4.57 -- '60 Roberto Clemente, RF (5.59) -102
4.45 -- '27 Lloyd Waner, CF (5.52) -107
4.41 -- '55 Ted Kluszewski, 1B (6.07) -166
4.23 -- '80 Ken Singleton, RF (5.30) -107
4.22 -- '05 Paul Konerko, 1B (5.36) -114
4.18 -- '96 Paul O'Neill, RF (5.54) -136
3.98 -- '69 Rusty Staub, RF (5.78) -180
3.90 -- '24 Cy Williams, CF (5.28) -138
4.50 -- '75 Pete Rose, LF (5.52) -102
3.61 -- '66 Willie Stargell, RF (6.00) -239
3.52 -- '70 Don Buford, LF (4.77) -125
3.46 -- '79 Dave Kingman, LF (4.73) -127
3.25 -- '15 Clyde Milan, CF (4.33) -108
3.20 -- '27 Bob Fothergill, LF (4.48) -128

There's some room for argument there - luckyman liked '10 Jose Bautista and '49 Ralph Kiner has some value when used strictly as a DH, but generally, these cards are never used and for good reason!

While I agree that most of the cards in the above list are overpriced, the magnitude of many of the suggested adjustments seem egregiously inflated. In general, I suspect that most of the proposed adjustments are between 30% and 50% greater than what is actually warranted. And to suggest that owning one of these players dooms one's team to mediocrity is pure hyperbole - at best. Actual player value is highly elastic and subordinate to intended usage and context. So while I'd like to see a 12M '27 Ruth and a 10.5M Bryce Harper, I think those cards would be definitely underpriced at the suggested pricing levels. The ultimate litmus test of pricing accuracy is usage. Can't recall the last time the '27 Ruth card was used in a league, so a reduction there would be most welcome; just the magnitude of the reduction is in question. Kiner is used quite frequently as dh and finds his way onto many winning teams, particularly at higher caps, so I would definitely question the need for such a massive reduction in his salary.

for me personally don't think repricing matters so much--
id much prefer some game engine improvements as that hasn't really happened in a decade or so from what I can tell

Kiner doesn't seem to fit in with the others on this list, at least not to me.

Kiner is used quite frequently as dh and finds his way onto many winning teams, particularly at higher caps, ...

Like I said these are first draft salaries. One of the adjustments is for players like Ralph Kiner who have higher value when used exclusively at DH. But even at that, 10.64 is too high for a card with those limitations. I have never, ever had Kiner on any of my teams.

For some perspective, consider these two HOF rightfielders.

Current Salaries:
2002 Vlad Guerrero - 9.53M
1963 Hank Aaron - 7.60M

Should be...
1963 Hank Aaron - 9.18M
2002 Vlad Guerrero - 7.82M

A manager who chooses Vlad over Hank is giving away 3.29 of salary cap on a single card.

It all does bring up a point as I tried to allude earlier on methods being card-based or usage based.
If the goal is to widen the usable player pool, a completely usage-based model could also be used for repricing and adjustments with every version.

For each primary position, or overall if desired, calculate mean usage rates, weighted by salary cap environment prevalence (so that we don't normalize to a 150M cap for instance). This should normalize it to the most prevalent cap.

Then, choose a narrow target range around that weighted mean, and adjust salary to adjust usage to the mean. The range is used as an acknowledgement that the amount of salary tweak is art more than science, would need to be modest, and done with each ATG version.

It could not be used for anything but adjustments to initial salary determinations, but if it were done for all (non-first time) cards for every version, it would reinvigorate interest in all cards, and give gradual corrections versus drastic shifts.

Out of all those players, the only two I have ever used was Kiner a few times and Vlad once.It would be fun to try new ones.

Would usage rate pricing cause .50 scrubs that get used all the time to see their price rise far beyond their usefulness?

Absolutely, unless there were some manual controls.
I think there probably should be some salary floor that we leave alone everything below it, but who knows what that is, 1M? Hence the caveat it is more art than science.

Which is true for a card-based deterministic pricing scheme too. There is inherent ambiguity because as you and maybe charlie and druid pointed it—context is everything.

Interesting! I would say the "market" more or less reflects this - the cards listed above rarely get used. I NEVER see that 13.07 Ruth kicking about.

The most notable exception is Kiner, who gets used a lot. Also, Bryce Harper gets put to pretty good use at $100m. I use him pretty often when I miss out on Ted Williams in the autodraft.