i Yall's rating system for undervalued players, i.e. Bonds, how do you factor in injury? isn't that a problem with Lajoie also?
Yeah, I factor injuries in my ratings. Obviously, the best I can do is to set the salary of a player based on his "expected" number of games. For Bonds, I "expect" 153 games, for Lajoie I expect 151 games. But this number is a bit artificial. For example, I downloaded the 13 complete seasons Lajoie played in the 100M Barnstournament this year. On average, he did play 152 games. In reality, he had:
9 seasons with 153 games or more
2 seasons at 151 or 152 games,
2 seasons well below that average (including a 129 games season, although the manager seemed to have forgotten Lajoie on the bench for some part of the season)
(it seems that my current team is currently having the bad roll: Lajoie already missed 20 games and my team hasn't played 50 games yet).
Also, although it does not affect much the ratings, I do also include for all players the contribution of the expected replacement player that will take place while the player is injured. For this, I consider a player whose salary is very close to 0.5M. For Lajoie, for example, my baseline remplacement is similar to Ray Morehart (the 0.57M card).For Bonds, it's Paciorek.
Obviously, if you don't pay attention and grab a really lousy second baseman, his very bad value might affect the team. Some cards are really bad out there, 12 games of say, Frank E Thompson facing right-handed pitchers and playing defense will cost your team 7 or 8 runs, pretty much off-setting the good bargain with Lajoie.
But what I see most often is the opposite: guys will spend over 1M on a sub that will play only 15 games, just to make sure Lajoie has a good replacement. But not spending that million on other players will also cost your team 7 or 8 runs, which also pretty much off-sets the good bargain with Lajoie.
The best one can do is make that 1M player useful: have him play 80 games at multiple positions, and/or make him a pinch hitter and/or a pinch runner. Or otherwise stick to the best value one can get near the 0.5M mark, and hope for the best.