Our update this week is short and sweet, but may be helpful as you prepare for your Scoresheet league draft. While we’ve shared our keeper preferences over the past few months, we recognize that we are but three lone voices shouting Braff-style into the abyss. However, now that the public keeper deadline has passed, we have some quantifiable information that tells us more about the true nature of keepers.
One of our own, Ben Murphy, developed a tool that measures whether players are currently rostered in Scoresheet leagues, and then aggregates these findings together into an average ownership percentage. So here, for the first time, are the Scoresheet average keeper rankings for 2015.
Now that we’ve introduced the tool, let’s back away from the conclusions for a bit. Are we sure that we’re measuring 2015 keepers? Almost certainly not. There are enough private leagues, root leagues, and leagues with strange formats that keepers come in all sorts of forms and are kept at all times in the year. Think of this sheet as more of a best guess as to the relative percentage that a player was kept. You can find that number on the spreadsheet in the “% Owned” column, which measures how often each player was kept on an American or National League Scoresheet roster.
So, now that you have this information, what can you do with it? Try it out as an additional crowdsourcing tool. If you have a player who you’ve kept who hasn’t been kept in most other leagues, you can assume that you’ve overvalued him compared to the average. Conversely, players who have been kept in a number of leagues may generally be more desirable in trade. These rankings may also be worth perusing during the draft. More generally highly regarded players may be more likely to be taken early in your draft, while players who are kept in fewer leagues may be more likely to be available as a potential sleeper in later rounds. Try it out, and see if there’s anything you can glean from it! We’d be interested in hearing from you.
This Week’s Podcast
This week, the Outcomes show off their newfound superpower of developing a system-wide keeper list, and use it to kick off what is likely to be the first Round 14 mock draft in fantasy baseball history. Curiously, they do not use it to wish for better superpowers.
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That isn't to say that you can't find oddities in these rosters. 87% of you kept Billy Hamilton? That's a bold stance!
Addison Russell appears to have been kept in 253 leagues, or 10.3%. Wait, what? That would give us 89.7% of the leagues which protect one guy or have dumb children in them. Also, it gives us about 2500 leagues total.
There are enough other similar weirdnesses that I think I misunderstand what at least one of the columns meant. (I thought it meant: Number of leagues kept in BL/AL/NL, then percentage of time kept.)
Could you clarify what the numbers mean for the slower readers? Thanks.
Addison Russell is a good example. He has been kept in 253 leagues--51 of 60 BL leagues, 180 or 202 AL leagues, and 22 of 213 NL leagues. Since he's an NL player, that's the number we're using. 22/213=10.3%.
The numbers make more sense when you filter for AL or NL leagues beforehand. You can most clearly see the difference when you look at Jon Lester and Max Scherzer. Both players crossed over to the NL this year, but Lester is kept in 11.7% of leagues, and Scherzer in 61.5% of leagues. The difference? Scherzer's time in the trenches as an Arizona Diamondback.
Does that make sense to everyone?
However, I am concerned as to how it handles leagues that haven't sent in their protection lists, leagues that have started drafting already, and cross-overs.
It needs to ignore leagues that are not down to their protection list yet or have completed their drafts. Perhaps, they should eliminate leagues with over 20 players per team.
Secondly, the percentages for players who crossed over should be measured against the leagues they left not the leagues they are in now. Otherwise you are just looking at leagues that have started drafting already or have special opposite league keeper rules - which some do. . . or you are looking at leagues with a guy such as Scherzer who has crossed back over - and thus give a misleading stat.
This is interesting, thank you, but needs these couple of tweeks.