To force or not to Force....

[rotodog]

i am Just wondering how some of you members do valuations..

Do you Force positive value on all positions including scarcer positions to show positive value for the minimum amount of players at that position?

Or do you prefer to show positive "Actual value" for only 10 of the 24 catchers you need to draft in a 12 team NL league for instance.

I personally like to see if I am drafting a negative valued player and not a forced positive player. I realize that 24 catchers will indeed have positive value on draft day because we all need 2 catchers, but if I can have 2 projected positive value catchers in the mid/lower tier I feel better. How do the rest of you handle this?

My point of view is coming from an auction draft as opposed to straight draft where the dynamic is a little different, but not far off..

To force or not to force......that is the question...

[Hambowen]

For me I say Force. Having your valuations as close to what will really happen in an auction to me is most important. 24 will go for positive value so I have 24 doing just that in valuation.

I change for league dynamics as well. 1 league is very stars and scrubs oriented so I take what % of players normally go for $1 in that league and extract all the extra value from those players and put it towards the top 20% of the player pool. Ultimately this may not be needed as I know the league dynamic and know enough not to leave myself with too much money at the end but having this as close to reality as possible always seems better to me.

As a note I in no way do my own projections. I take what smarter people then me do (aka Todd) and just make it work for the dynamics I need. So others may be better equipped to answer this.

[viper]

for catchers, I tend to use a system that forces catchers above their UTIL values. CRCV does this but it still comes up with only 27 or so positive valued catchers in a 30 catcher league.

My only straight draft leagues are three NFBC leagues. With no scarcity aside from catching, I use the CRCV variation with 30 catchers and 180 non-catchers, usually assigning 1B to them. I do this because the way CRCV handles replacement players is by a position by position basis and I want that slight variation eliminated. This 30/180 assignment eliminates any MI scarcity factoring. I plan on checking what the dollar values are under both scenarios and seeing if the difference if worth worrying about given. I use a tier concept anyway and really have no clue if a player is a $14 or $13 dollar players although I will know their relative ranking within a single position. In a 12-team league there is a slight MI scarcity factor but it is small. My other leagues are all auction and pretty much either AL-only or NL-only. Here I'll just let CRCV generate values.

More important to me is do I assign "1" to each category or do I bump HR to "1.2" and cut SBs to "0.8". This can make tier differences especially for extreme player in either category [like Howard/Dunn and Tavares/Figgins].

[rotodog]

for catchers, I tend to use a system that forces catchers above their UTIL values. CRCV does this but it still comes up with only 27 or so positive valued catchers in a 30 catcher league.

My only straight draft leagues are three NFBC leagues. With no scarcity aside from catching, I use the CRCV variation with 30 catchers and 180 non-catchers, usually assigning 1B to them. I do this because the way CRCV handles replacement players is by a position by position basis and I want that slight variation eliminated. This 30/180 assignment eliminates any MI scarcity factoring. I plan on checking what the dollar values are under both scenarios and seeing if the difference if worth worrying about given. I use a tier concept anyway and really have no clue if a player is a $14 or $13 dollar players although I will know their relative ranking within a single position. In a 12-team league there is a slight MI scarcity factor but it is small. My other leagues are all auction and pretty much either AL-only or NL-only. Here I'll just let CRCV generate values.

More important to me is do I assign "1" to each category or do I bump HR to "1.2" and cut SBs to "0.8". This can make tier differences especially for extreme player in either category [like Howard/Dunn and Tavares/Figgins].

thanks for the insight Viper. I usually keep the 1.2 .08 weights as I remember reading the origination of those concepts that Todd wrote about..It made sense .. I think in essence, you dont want to devalue steals actually (even though its what your doing) but its an adjustment so that you dont end up winning the steals category by paying for the steals.....
There was some correlation he made once to not "getting your moneys worth" on draft day with steals as opposed to other categories....

[viper]

I think steals are tough to project. We all know that Jose Reyes is going to steal a bunch of bases but it could be 50, 60 or 70. Now the average NFBC total for SBs is about 140 or 10 per player. And here I am projecting a player whose SB totals could vary by as much as 20 with essentially an even chance. Now look and Pat Burrell or Adam Dunn who hit their HR projections every year.

Now will I draft Reyes where I have him ranked? Of course I will. And the rest of my draft for SBs will be built around those 60 SBs I hope he gets. I feel a whole lot more comfortable with the 30/30 I would get with Sizemore than the 15/60 with Reyes.

[Todd Zola]

Our philosophy is pretty well documented. I'm no longer of the mind to pound my first and convince the masses it is my way or the highway like I may have done a few years back, but I am quite adamant in my belief that the PROPER way to do this is to value only the useful stats which are those above the replacement level player or the worst player drafted at each position. Technically, the worst player drafted at each position on a roster earns $0, but we have to pay a buck so valuing against the player right below that, or the replacement level is what we do.

The lowest draft catcher has poorer baseline stats than those of the other positions, so the adjustment for catchers to get useful stats is not as steep, so more of his stats are useful and hence get value. This is why the exact same stat line for a catcher and a non-catcher have different value, the catcher being higher. And this is also why the stats of a $1 non-catcher are superior to those of a $1 catcher.

I talk about this in an early blog piece as well as in the Platinum essays.

In today's player pool, the replacement is such that only 2 pools are necessary as the replacement level for all non-Catchers, even in mixed leagues are virtually the same.

With respect to the CVRC yielding 27 catchers, the above statement is a little misleading as the reason why this is the case is fully explained, it has to do with a marginal pricing adjustment we need to use to size the overall player pool properly, which sometimes results in the pool being short a small number of catchers. HOWEVER --- There are ALWAYS the requisite catchers priced just below $1 ($0, -$1) which are fundamentally $1 catchers so the CVRC indeed properly does this positional adjustment.

That said, if you do not agree with this philosophy, the CVRC tutorial details how you can value the entire pool without any positional considerations.

[alleyoops]

The lowest draft catcher has poorer baseline stats than those of the other positions, so the adjustment for catchers to get useful stats is not as steep, so more of his stats are useful and hence get value.

You confused me with the "not as steep" part. I understand the idea behind using the replacement level player as a base, and agree with that. But are you saying that the values for all C's above that are not adjusted up by the same amount? For example, let's say without the adjustment (i.e. using the same baseline for C's as the other positions), McCann would be worth $15, and the 24th C would be worth $-10 (hypothetical). Does CVRC add $11 to all C's? Add $10? Would McCann now be valued at $26 or $25? Or is the adjustment non-linear (i.e. not that steep - meaning he'd be valued at less than that)?

[viper]

I wait for Todd's answer but I understand this as if the replacement RUN total for a non-catcher is 40 but for a catcher it is 25 then that non-catcher gains value for ever run scored over 40 while a catcher gains value for each run over 25.

If you look at the total pool as one singular position, it seems you are effectively augmenting the catchers numbers by the difference between the replacement numbers for catchers as compared to that of non-catchers.

Now Todd can tell you the truth and I too will learn.

[Guest]

What Viper said.

[alleyoops]

Yeah, I'm sure it's not as simple as adding a fixed dollar value, although the end result might actually closely approximate that, doing it as you suggest. The questions remains, though. In that example, are 15 R added to each C, then the values calculated? Or is there some "smoothing" that is done, to make it "not as steep"?

[Todd Zola]

Sorry, bad choice of words with not as steep.

All I meant was a lower number of stats needs to be subtracted out from the catchers than the other positions. The same number is taken from each.

If the replacement catcher hits 5 HR, 5 HR are taken from every catcher. 30 raw HR = 25 usefule ones. 15 raw HR = 10 useful ones.
If the replacement non-catcher hits 10, 10 are taken from every non-catcher. 30 = 20, 15 = 5.

5 is not as steep as 10.

Sorry, that word might have connoted something else unintended.