Treating Hitting and Pitching Inflation Separately

[KalkTheKalk]

Simply, is it worth it? If the two inflation rates are significantly different, do people actually pay attention or do they auction as if there's one overall inflation rate. Anything else interesting to know about different hitting/pitching inflation rates? Thanks.

[Todd Zola]

"By the book", they should be tracked independently, but when it comes to keeper leagues, I throw the book out the window.

I'm on record and discuss in Platinum how I feel the conventional treatment of inflation is not very practical. The normal calculation applies it linearly and anyone who is in a keeper league with any significant inflation knows more money goes to the top players. We provide a primer describing how to tweak our value calculator to mimic the effect, but even that is primarily a nudge, you have to do it more intuitively than anything as all it takes is one or two guys that are looking for trading chips thus bid whatever it takes to get the best players.

I prefer to balance two considerations with the overall goal of accumulating a certain amount of stats in mind.

1. What can I likely trade for from rebuilding teams during the season
2. How can I build up my own stats while getting some low priced trading chips, with the intent on converting them to in-season help as teams dump.

In a away, focusing too much on "inflation rate" distracts me from being able to properly recognize the ebb and flow of the auction.

But this is just me and I wholeheartedly admit that this approach relies a ton on experience, so I trust my intuition.

[KalkTheKalk]

Thanks, Todd. I'm with you that knowing your league is a top requirement.

When you bid in a league that's heavy on hitting inflation without much pitching inflation, have you found that others (whether or not they mathematically track inflation) will pay more inflated prices for hitters than pitchers, or do they tend to spread the extra money across the board? If things go even, I'll likely pay for hitters first as there will be even better pitching bargains later. But if others only spend extra on hitting, I might go more heavy on pitching, because, well, it's a better price.

[Guest]

The one thing I might suggest acts as an issue breaking out inflation is if your league splits are different than you project. If you're at 69/31 and your league splits 64/36, you're going to show inflation later in the auction where it really isn't. My recommendation would be to either use a more conservative split, or make sure by the time you get done with the 10-15 dollar players you stop looking at inflated values. This has been an issue in my leagues consistently where splits move around and later in the draft the values are showing me that every pitcher should go for a dollar because we're out of pitching dollars and hitters at a real inflated amount, and yet it's not actually happening.

[Rob Leibowitz]

I wrote an article last year when I was with the guys on categorical inflation. It essentially took the portions of value from each category and proportionally reassigned them as inflation. It works in theory, but is still very subject to the caveats Todd and Gary mention. Also unless you are using a draftworksheet (it and the other kinds were/are in my old sheet that used to be posted here) it was essentially impossible to do it by hand. As Gary points out correctly -if I am calculating it in the draft and looking at it specially, i really only pay attention it to it early on in the draft when there are alternative options to stat sources out there.

This past weekend I was in two keeper leagues and I simplified what I brought with me for the first time in a long time. I still had my laptop where I tracked rosters and budgets and also kept an area on the same sheet (not having to switch tabs at all) where I could alter my own roster slot by roster slot budget assignments easily on the fly but that was it. Otherwise I went in with a grid with pre-inflation values on it.

It was a very enjoyable approach as I essentially ignored inflation from an exactness standpoint, but instead just focused on where the pockets of value were, recognized where similar stat providers were in relation to each other on the grid, and budgeted those roster slots accordingly. Then throughout the draft, I spent as needed to acquire the players I wanted. If I didn't like a price and there were still options available, I moved on, let others purchase at those prices, and then had less competition on the remaining options. So my advice is to relax a bit more and don't get too caught up in hard and fast values, remember the variance inherent in skill sets and projections!

I would go onto say that I think I did the least price-enforcing I have ever done, just concentrating on my own needs instead and reacting to what was available. I'll probably use this same method at Tout Wars in a week, though whether Todd and I price enforce each other remains to be seen!