If this is an example of "flyover country" humor, give me the coasts!

I think it is an example of a columnist who is out of ideas, or that the sports page has too many pages.

Maybe I'm not the typical person here.

But since I started lurking at BTF obssessively and reading up on sabermetrics I've actually played LESS fantasy baseball. In 2007 BTF had me so engrossed in baseball that I actually stopped looking at my fantasy team for weeks at a time, and I have no plans to do any fantasy baseball in 2008.

I have never had the slightest interest in fantasy baseball. Real baseball is hard enough to understand and follow :)

I played fantasy baseball once. Two seasons convinced me that there are only about three starting pitchers every year who are guaranteed to even have good (and healthy) fantasy seasons, let alone great ones. And that you need two really good starting pitchers to win. Which is totally random and means that fantasy baseball is totally random too, unless you're in a keeper league. So, that was it for that.

The second year I came in last but did lead the league in ERA by a wide margin since I got so disgusted with all my starters being injured that I picked up nothing but relievers for several weeks. Thank you Keith Foulke.

Example: Yankees fans and ESPN’s Bill Simmons.

Oh...you can't think of a better example than that, Strohl? Maybe someone you know real closely? Think about it. Harder.

I've got every one of Bill James's books and I've never played fantasy baseball or football. I never thought it was interesting enough. And most of the people I've met who do play fantasy baseball aren't particular fans of sabermetrics or Bill James. But, hey, stereotypes are for avoiding thinking.

Once I understood why one adds OBA and SLG together, I just don't find the typical fantasy stats very interesting. Still a Reyes fan though.

I would say that there is definitely a subset of statheads who are into fantasy baseball (see Voros) which could very well be the "Hyper-analytical head case" group. He isn't saying all people who read Bill James are in this group, nor all people who play fantasy baseball are in this group. He is saying that this group has these traits, not all those people who have some of those traits are in that group.


For the record I did play ESPN fantasy baseball for two years, won it both times (still have the T-Shirt from the first year, they gave stupid decals the next year). But gave it up during the third season, it was just too much work for such little reward.


I disagree with Mr. Attucks, or I should say that is far too simplistic. Sure drafting pitchers can be a crap shoot and with 9 other guys it makes it less likely that you are going to have a handful of studs when you start the season. But that is what trades, waiver wire, and free agency is for. I always drafted horribly, the first year I had practically all of the Philadelphia Phillies starting rotation (hmm Ogea and Spoljaric)to start the season and the next season I had guys like Gagne and Yarnell. I always started off at the bottom and had to make transactions to get to the top. You can definitely build yourself a staff after the first month shakes out you just can't be attached to players. You aren't building a team of guys, you are building a team of stats.

it was just too much work for such little reward.

the work IS the reward

Which was why it was too little. Spend two hours daily scanning box scores, reading updates on players, scanning the waiver, and working trades, and for what? So your team has a .410 batting average that day? Or your guys hit 4 homers instead of two?

I like fantasy baseball for its social components. I like analytical approaches to baseball because they give me something to think about between games. And I like watching and playing baseball because the strategic structure, competitive elements, and physical execution all appeal to my sensibilities about how sports ought to function.

I played "fantasy baseball" exactly twice. The last time was in 2001. With two months left to go and with my team languishing well back of the leaders (I was something like tenth or twelfth out of twenty), I crunched some numbers and made the trade that vaulted me into second out of those twenty teams: I traded Barry Bonds (who was having a pretty good year that year, as you may recall)... straight-up... for Bartolo Colon.

I was so disgusted by my success -- through recognizing how divorced from reality the fantasy baseball was -- that I have never once been seriously tempted to play it again. I don't begrudge others their enjoyment -- not in the least! -- but I wanted to succeed through doing the sorts of things that I wish my favorite team's general managers did, not by gaming the system. (Not that I have a problem with gaming a system, but that's not the fantasy baseball experience I wanted).

I've played baseball sim games, but for some reason I've never found "fantasy baseball" per se to be all that intriguing. I find it hard to quantify why exactly, but I think it has something to do with the peculiarity of rooting for individual players entirely outside the context of a team -- that distorts part of what I find appealing about the game in the first place.

You might say this is somewhat at odds with, say, my handle, which does not say (for instance) "Atlanta Braves #1 Fan". But if you did:

1) You'd be taking the process of handle selection way more seriously than I did.
2) I did say I found it hard to quantify.

I'm in a keeper league with friends, head-to-head. Traditional rotisserie format was too much of a grind, but with head-to-head, it's a lot easier to stay involved for the long haul -- if you're in the bottom half of the standings, you can still play spoiler at the end. Some trash talk and trying to leverage managers against each other in deadline deals make it worth it.

The keeper aspect also prevents lost years from being completely pointless, which is huge for me.

Add to this writer's list:

The "I've never played fantasy baseball snob."..........Jeez

Once I understood why one adds OBA and SLG together

Can you explain this to me? I don't understand how adding two statistics with different denominators could really make any sense, let alone why in this particular case this is ideal.

I play in a pretty deep head-to-head keeper league with semi-modern stats (e.g. a walk or HBP counts the same as a single, etc.) and I can now understand the people that think regular rotisserie baseball leagues suck. The stats have no relation to real value, and randomness is a huge factor (though still less than fantasy football). However in a league like mine, the long term strategy aspect makes it much cooler and builds a lot of involvement in your team.

Can you explain this to me? I don't understand how adding two statistics with different denominators could really make any sense, let alone why in this particular case this is ideal.

I understand where the "different denominator" argument comes from but to me it misses the point. You're adding together two numbers that represent two significant goals of an offensive player: getting on base (avoiding outs) and advancing runners (slugging). Mathematically there are problems beyond the denominators. Both stats include avoiding outs. But, to me, since that is SO important, I don't mind it showing up twice.

Certainly OPS isn't ideal. I don't think many people remain who would say it is. What it does do - and what I think the poster is saying it made him realize - is demonstrate that BA and raw stats have significant flaws. When OPS was introduced, it was one number that combined features you want in an offensive player and, most importantly, it emphasized avoiding outs. It would have been just as significant a development, I imagine, had OBP itself risen to fame (and, of course, many baseball people for the last 120 years have realized OBP is really important. I had an American Legion coach who used to preach that he cared more about OBP than BA and he was anything but a math geek). In fact, I'd argue that you have learned 90% of what sabermetrics has to offer if all you've learned is that you should look at OBP rather than BA.

In other words, in the case of OPS it isn't about the numbers and the math (that is your inner geek talking). It's about what the two stats represent and why mixing them is a good way to rate a player's offense. Once you've decided that concept is important, you can get to the details of how best to mix the stats. But having different denominators is only a problem if you are fixated on the math. And, as MSM says, the math isn't whats important. It's the philosophy in the stat rather than how it's derived that is key.

Example: If you hear cheering at the bar at random—and sometimes inappropriate—times, it’s a fantasy team cheer.

The most bizarre cheering I've heard in a bar type setting was at the sports book in Laughlin, Nevada during the first round of the NCAA basketball tourney. A group of us had gone up to do some gambling and partying about 10 years ago. After a few of us had done badly at blackjack, we sat at the sports book to watch the games, and you could drink for free if you had a betting slip in front of you. So we played some $10 tickets to keep the drinks coming. One game in particular stood out...it was Maryland vs some .500 team that won their conference tournament. Maryland was up by something like 13 points with the clock running down(the spread was 14). Their point guard was just over the half court line dribbling lazily, unmolested by the other team waiting for the clock to run out the last 30 seconds, and nearly everyone in the sports book was yelling at Maryland to shoot!

So if you hear "cheering at inappropriate times", it might be because somebody has some money riding on the game.

So if you hear "cheering at inappropriate times", it might be because somebody has some money riding on the game

In the 1977 NCAA Final Four semifinals, in an era before the 3-point shot rule, North Carolina was a 2 point favorite over UNLV and was winning by 3, when UNLV sank a "meaningless" layup that clearly came after the buzzer, but was allowed to be counted without any protest from Dean Smith, because it didn't affect the outcome of the game. They showed the replay on TV and the announcers all agreed that the shot shouldn't have been allowed, but nobody took it any further than that. This was back when the semifinals were both played on Saturday afternoon.

That night I was sitting in the upper rows of a Knicks game at the Garden, and was recounting all this to my girlfriend, when what seemed like a dozen people---all perfect strangers to me, and mostly to each other---turned in my direction and started talking in the most conspiratorial tones about the referee's having been "on the take," and how the game was "fixed," etc. Of course every one of them had apparently bet on Carolina, but I got the strong impression that none of them had any interest in the Tar Heels once that game was over.

I never got into Fantasy Sports--I worked at a Fantasy Sports accounting company for awhile and found it so boring that my boss would find me asleep drooling on the transaction orders.

He didn't fire me because I had invited him into our computer simulation league. I found that much more interesting because since the games were actually play-by-played, our research was actually based on real world GM principles instead of an arbitrary system.

Fantasy baseball is fun and all, but the real fun lies in What If Sports' Hardball Dynasty. Running your own franchise is extremely addicting.