Valuation Theory 401

[AllstonRockCity]

After reading all of the valuation theory articles, I was left wondering something I've never considered before. Specifically, in the Making the Theorectical Practical article, the author discusses tweaking the player pool to account for your specific league bias. In the example the MI pool was used. If you league puts a premium on MI's and will pay more for them, then specific tweaks to the CVRC can be made to account for your league's tendencies. (i'm trying to be vague as I'm not sure what the final decision re: questions on proprietary material was).

Here's the question: in our AL only keeper league, we already have ARod and Longoria, we do not have a 1st baseman. Should we perform the aforementioned tweak in the CVRC and have those #'s alongside the 'untweaked' #'s? If we already have 2 of the best 3B's and don't plan on buying another one, should we discount 3Bs all together and funnel that extra $$ to all other positions, where we actually need to spend that $$?

[Todd Zola]

FYI -- there was a new piece posted Saturday discussing the CVRC in great detail.

Though I have not yet had the time to REALLY play around with the CVRC with respect to keeper leagues, something else you can try is to remove all the keepers from the pool, adjust the numbers needed at each position and adjust the salary budget to match what money is available. I do plan on writing a primer to do this.

You can also do this same thing and make the number of 3B be 0 to take all money away from the 3B and have it distributed elsewhere.

But something to really keep in mind is in general, all bets are off when it comes to having a program set bids for keeper leagues. You really have to react to the dynamics on your own. People's bids will be set by their keeper list, what they need in terms of positions and stats. If they believe they have some built-in profit, they feel they can overspend in certain areas. There is no way a program can make that decision for each owner.

But in general, yeah, if you don't need a 3B, pump up the value of all other positions.

Assuming you have your UT open and can legally throw out the name of a 3B, sometimes it is a good strategy to throw out the top 3B for $1 early, to make sure no one else gets a real bargain at a position you have filled. And if the price is right, put him at UT, though the price would have to be really right.

I'd suggest checking out the new essay, that may give you some more ideas.

[alleyoops]

I don't think you should totally discount the 3B, as you might wind up putting one in your UT (assuming you have UT, and it's open). Probably not a desirable thing to do from a strategic standpoint, but heck, if you can get Aramis Ramirez for $10, are you going to pass? $12? Many of the 3B's have some value to you until your UT is filled.

[Todd Zola]

The idea is to have multiple lists, one with raw values without any keeper considerations, another having keepers removed and a third with keepers and all 3rd baseman removed.

I allowed for the possibility of buying a 3B to play UT when discussing tabling 3B for bidding.

[AllstonRockCity]

I love the idea of having those 3 lists side by side, thanks Todd.

When I remove all the keepers am I already factoring in inflation? In other words, I would not need to calculate inflation myself then apply it to the numbers generated by running the CVRC w/ the keepers removed.

Yes, we could fill our U w/ a 3B, but there is no bench (reserve system) and the W.W. is as scarce as scarce can be inseason, so it would help our flexibility having a 1B or OF in our U.

[Todd Zola]

I'll be talking about inflation in an essay sometime in the next couple of weeks. I hope to find the time to "tool" around with the CVRC and verify the way I think inflation can be handled indeed "works", with the explanation of the quotes coming with the essay, but as you can imagine, the quotes are due to there being no right answer, the computer again cannot predict the tendencies and biases of your league-mates.

[AllstonRockCity]

FYI -- there was a new piece posted Saturday discussing the CVRC in great detail.

Though I have not yet had the time to REALLY play around with the CVRC with respect to keeper leagues, something else you can try is to remove all the keepers from the pool, adjust the numbers needed at each position and adjust the salary budget to match what money is available. I do plan on writing a primer to do this.

I'd suggest checking out the new essay, that may give you some more ideas.

Time to hijack my own thread here, sort of

First, I do realize that you, Todd, are away this weekend and I understand if it takes a little while for you to answer this, I have time.

Second, if any of the questions I'm about to ask will be covered in the bolded 'primer' just tell me so and I'll wait for that. Our freeze lists aren't due til 4-5-09 so I really can't even do any of this until then, but.........

I've read the primer a few times and played around with the CVRC, and yes, thank you, it was a great piece that definately gave me some ideas and some new views on the player pool. It also gave me more questions.

1. If I'm using the 4 pools approach and I want to remove the keepers and all the 3B's, am I just telling the CVRC that there are less positions to be filled in the league than there actually are? Its an 11 team league so a minimum of 33 1B/3B need to be drafted. Lets say 13 CI's get kept. That leaves 20 CI's left. Lets assume that 10 are 3B. Do I then just tell the CVRC that there are 10 1B/3B to get the $$ from the 3B's I don't care about funnelled to the 1B's I do care about? (or is it funnelled to everyone else?)

2. Using the 4 pools approach again: When I'm removing the keepers how would I set up the "league set up" tab? My guess would be to tell the CVRC its a 1 team league, calculate the available $$ left myself, plug that into the budget (what does 1 do about the % hitting split?) field and then just put the # of players needed at each postion into the appropriate fields.

3. I love the idea of having the 3 lists (raw, keepers removed, keepers and 3B removed) side by side. Will the aforementioned primer help with formatting this in some way, or is there a lot of cutting and pasting and then double check in my future? (i have limited Excel accumen)

4. Lastly, (yay!) I'm completely sold on calculating category targets based on the # of stats that the draftworthy player pool will provide, as per 'Winning Tendencies'. However, before I got this far into the CVRC I would just use the generic HitterProjections and get the # of HR's, etc. from that. I'm assuming that Excel can probably do this for me right from the CVRC, but how? I'm also assuming that this is necessary because the player pool I generate with 11 teams having 2 Util's each will be different than the generic AL only 12 team player pool that is used in the HitterProjections.

Sorry this was so long. I spent a few hours yesterday playing with the Primer and the CVRC and wanted to get this all out there before I forgot it or just plain confused myself. And again, if its gonna be in the primer, just tell me when its coming and I will patiently wait.

Thank you very much in advance.

[Todd Zola]

FYI -- there was a new piece posted Saturday discussing the CVRC in great detail.

Though I have not yet had the time to REALLY play around with the CVRC with respect to keeper leagues, something else you can try is to remove all the keepers from the pool, adjust the numbers needed at each position and adjust the salary budget to match what money is available. I do plan on writing a primer to do this.

I'd suggest checking out the new essay, that may give you some more ideas.

Time to hijack my own thread here, sort of

First, I do realize that you, Todd, are away this weekend and I understand if it takes a little while for you to answer this, I have time.

Second, if any of the questions I'm about to ask will be covered in the bolded 'primer' just tell me so and I'll wait for that. Our freeze lists aren't due til 4-5-09 so I really can't even do any of this until then, but.........

I've read the primer a few times and played around with the CVRC, and yes, thank you, it was a great piece that definately gave me some ideas and some new views on the player pool. It also gave me more questions.

1. If I'm using the 4 pools approach and I want to remove the keepers and all the 3B's, am I just telling the CVRC that there are less positions to be filled in the league than there actually are? Its an 11 team league so a minimum of 33 1B/3B need to be drafted. Lets say 13 CI's get kept. That leaves 20 CI's left. Lets assume that 10 are 3B. Do I then just tell the CVRC that there are 10 1B/3B to get the $$ from the 3B's I don't care about funnelled to the 1B's I do care about? (or is it funnelled to everyone else?)

When using customize, you never want to use 1B/3B, 2B/SS and UT/DH. You only want one of the standard 6 positions.

In your case, putting 10 in 1B and 0 in 3B should do what you want. if you want guys like Youkilis, Huff, Davis and Blalock in play for your 1B, you need to change the MVPOS to 1B.

Any remaining KEEPER 1B needs to be removed from the player pool. IN THIS SPECIFIC INSTANCE, you can do it by changing the position to 3B as it will not be recognized since there is a zero for 3B. If you were not eliminating all 3B, you would have to physically remove the player from the pool. DO NOT DELETE, highlight the player and clear contents. It is OK if there is a gap in the list.

2. Using the 4 pools approach again: When I'm removing the keepers how would I set up the "league set up" tab? My guess would be to tell the CVRC its a 1 team league, calculate the available $$ left myself, plug that into the budget (what does 1 do about the % hitting split?) field and then just put the # of players needed at each postion into the appropriate fields.

You need to keep the teams the same. Removal of the keepers was explained in #1. You enter the number of players STILL LEFT TO BE DRAFTED under the customize menu. Here is the tricky part and the part I need to play with. In order for the money to work, you need to adjust the $260 team budget. For this, I am going to assume the same proportion of hitters and pitchers are kept. Add up the actual keeper price of all the keepers, hit and pitch. Divide this by the number of teams. Subtract that from $260 and enter that in the place of $260 on the League Set Up page. The total amount of money to be distributed is calculated as #teams x team budget, so this will adjust the available money to not include the keeper money.

3. I love the idea of having the 3 lists (raw, keepers removed, keepers and 3B removed) side by side. Will the aforementioned primer help with formatting this in some way, or is there a lot of cutting and pasting and then double check in my future? (i have limited Excel accumen)

It is very simple, will take less than 5 minutes. Check back in when you get this far

4. Lastly, (yay!) I'm completely sold on calculating category targets based on the # of stats that the draftworthy player pool will provide, as per 'Winning Tendencies'. However, before I got this far into the CVRC I would just use the generic HitterProjections and get the # of HR's, etc. from that. I'm assuming that Excel can probably do this for me right from the CVRC, but how? I'm also assuming that this is necessary because the player pool I generate with 11 teams having 2 Util's each will be different than the generic AL only 12 team player pool that is used in the HitterProjections.

The CVRC will not do anything with respect to category targets, sorry. That is next on the agenda, Gary and I are having some talks how we want to do this.

As for targets, league history is probably best for you. Do you have 15 active players? Is the only difference an addition of a second UT with no other players affected?

[AllstonRockCity]

When using customize, you never want to use 1B/3B, 2B/SS and UT/DH. You only want one of the standard 6 positions.

Thank you for clarifying. I do realize this, its why you change all the 3B to 1B and then plug 1B into the "league set up page" when using the 4 pool approach. The words I typed on the page didn't match the words in my head.

The CVRC will not do anything with respect to category targets, sorry. That is next on the agenda, Gary and I are having some talks how we want to do this.

As for targets, league history is probably best for you. Do you have 15 active players? Is the only difference an addition of a second UT with no other players affected?

Yes the addition of the 2nd U is the only change.

And yes I've calculated the percentage of each stat that has historically been needed to finish 3rd in every category per year, then averaged those percentages. Then I just multiply this by the number of projected HRs in the draft worthy pool and voila, theres my target.

I wasn't looking for the CVRC to provide the target, I was hoping that there was an Excel function where I could total the HR's, etc. directly from the specific 165 player pool that I've created. For example on the values page it lists the $$ contribution by category. I thought perhaps that there could be a function that converts the HR$$ into the number of HR and I could then total that to get the total number of HR's that the draft worthy pool is projected to hit.

It is very simple, will take less than 5 minutes. Check back in when you get this far

Will do.

And can I just say thank you again. I know your busy this time of year and that this post was on the long side, but your quick response is much appreciated.

[Todd Zola]

I wasn't looking for the CVRC to provide the target, I was hoping that there was an Excel function where I could total the HR's, etc. directly from the specific 165 player pool that I've created. For example on the values page it lists the $$ contribution by category. I thought perhaps that there could be a function that converts the HR$$ into the number of HR and I could then total that to get the total number of HR's that the draft worthy pool is projected to hit.

Yes, the infamous vlookup that has been discussed in other excel/CVRC threads will do the trick for you in about 5 minutes, maybe less.

I'm stuck on a plane with a blinking warning light -- they say we will take off soon. We'll get you hooked up next week.

[AllstonRockCity]

I'm stuck on a plane with a blinking warning light -- they say we will take off soon. We'll get you hooked up next week.

Thanks again.

Have a good weekend, SanDiego right? shouldn't be too hard.

[Todd Zola]

Not quite, Chicago on way to Cleveland. But they got us here.

[AllstonRockCity]

hmm, yeah, those cities are just a little different than SanDiego. i guess, just pretend your in SanDiego (without the flip-flops)