Note: This applies to teams trying to compete in all categories. For
"punting" categories and other draft techniques, see our notes on
"Weird Drafting” in our essay on Final Draft Prep Notes.
Valuing Apples and
One item that our system does is to separate the values of pitchers and hitters. A basic mathematical matrix dictated a ratio of 70% of salary to hitters and 30% to pitchers. The reason for this is that hitters have 3 "absolute" categories and 1 "average" category while pitchers have 2 "absolute" categories and 2 "average" categories. For definitional purposes an "absolute" category is one in which the player can only help you (e.g. HRs) while in an "average" category a player can help OR hurt your team (e.g. ERA). A standard team will have 14 hitters times 3 "absolute" categories (i.e. HRs, RBI, and SBs) equaling 42 production units, and 9 pitchers times 2 "absolute" categories (i.e. wins and saves) equals 18 production units. Thus, the optimum is to spend 42/60 of your salary cap on hitters and 18/60 on pitching. This ratio may be changed if your league uses different or more categories. Also, we are not saying that this is the ONLY way to win, simply that it is the method dictated by mathematics. We know of one league where an owner ignored HRs and RBI, spent all of his salary on pitching and base stealers and won, but this would be a difficult strategy if 2 or more owners tried it in the same year.
Also, pitchers are a less predictable commodity for our scoring purposes so such a strategy can be a recipe for disaster. That same owner tried the same strategy the next year with essentially the same players and finished 7th. Remember, you need pitchers, you just cannot count on them given the categories we use.
As a further example we need to look no further than the
Actually, this is a recurring theme. Look to your own leagues. Determine the two teams that spent the most on pitching and the two that spent the least. While there are always aberrations, in most leagues one of the two teams that spent the most on pitching will not even generate an average point tally in the pitching categories. Combined those two teams may barely be average. The teams that spend the most on hitting do better than average in the hitting categories about 75% to 80% of the time. Heed this lesson well.
However, over the past couple of years we are starting to see another phenomenon. This is the polarization of salary allocation. By this we mean that as more teams search for ways to win we are seeing more teams leave the established "norms" of salary allocation. The net result of this is teams in the middle are getting left behind.
Look at the two charts below. We took the 2 LABR leagues from 1997 and divided the teams into 3 tiers. The four that spent the most on pitching, the four that spent the least and the 4 in the middle. What we see is that the "hitting" tier did the best but the "pitching" tier was second while the middle of the roaders were basically road kill.
The first chart shows the average allocated by each group to hitting and pitching respectively and then where each group finished in the AL or NL respectively in the overall standings, offensive standings and pitching standings. It then shows the percent of the group in the top 4 and bottom 4 in each league and category and the top 6 overall.
The second chart shows the same formats except it looks to point totals
rather than placement in the standings. Since we are looking at two leagues
there are 8 teams in each tier, 4 from each league. Also, since teams tied for
4th place overall in the AL, the number of teams shown in top 4 finishes are 9
(not 8) and therefore the total allocation is 112.5% on that line.
|
CHART 1 - FINISHES BY SALARY ALLOCATION TIER |
|||
|
|
Top 4 Offense |
Top 4 Pitching |
Middle of the
Road |
|
Offensive
Allocation |
75% |
57% |
68% |
|
Pitching
Allocation |
25% |
43% |
32% |
|
Finishes -
Overall |
1,2,4,4,5,6,7,10 |
1,2,3,4,8,9,12,12 |
3,6,7,8,9,10,11,11 |
|
Finishes -
Offense |
1,1,1,2,3,4,5,7 |
3,4,5,7,9,10,10,11 |
5,6,8,8,9,10,12,12 |
|
Finishes -
Pitching |
3,3,4,6,9,10,10,12 |
1,1,2,6,7,7,8,11 |
2,3,4,5,8,9,11,12 |
|
% Top 4 Overall |
50% |
50% |
12.5% |
|
% Top 6 Overall |
75% |
50% |
25% |
|
% Bottom 4
Overall |
12.5% |
37.5% |
50% |
|
Top 4 Offense |
75% |
25% |
0% |
|
Bottom 4 Offense |
0% |
50% |
50% |
|
Top 4 Pitching |
37.5% |
37.5% |
37.5% |
|
Bottom 4
Pitching |
50% |
12.5% |
37.5% |
This first chart dramatically shows a couple of things. First, that 3 of the
4 teams that spent the most on offense ended up in the top half of the league's
standings. Next, is the correlation between the salary spent on offense and the
results. In both leagues, 3 of the 4 teams that spent
the most on offense ended up in the top 4 teams in the offensive categories.
None ended up in the bottom four. Interestingly, of the eight teams that spent
the least on pitching, 3 of those eight finished in the top 4 in the pitching
points in the two leagues. Finally, out of the 8 teams that spent the most on
pitching one actually ended up in the bottom four of its league in just the
pitching categories and 3 of the 8 finished in the bottom 4 overall.
|
CHART 2 - AVERAGE POINT TOTALS |
|||
|
|
Top 4 Offense |
Top 4 Pitching |
Middle of the
Road |
|
Ave Pts - AL
Overall |
57.500 |
54.125 |
44.375 |
|
Ave Pts - AL
Offense |
32.625 |
22.125 |
23.250 |
|
Ave Pts - AL
Pitching |
24.875 |
32.000 |
21.125 |
|
Ave Pts - NL
Overall |
54.625 |
52.500 |
48.875 |
|
Ave Pts - NL
Offense |
32.250 |
24.750 |
21.000 |
|
Ave Pts - NL
Pitching |
22.375 |
27.750 |
27.875 |
On chart 2 we see that the teams that spent the most on offense generated the most overall points in both leagues and the most offensive points in both leagues. Note that in the NL, the teams that spent the most on pitching did not generate the most pitching points.
Basically these charts again show that putting your salary on offense is still the best way to go but if you want to spend on pitching go high, not to the middle.
Now, back to our system where we go a step further since we break out the value by category. Thus, the sum total of player worth in hitters BA, pitchers RATIO and ERA is zero (since all players will be the average). The total value allotted to each of the three absolute hitter’s categories is 14/60 while the value assigned to the 2 absolute pitching categories is 9/60 of the total salary cap. In this manner your hitters will generate the same amount of points in HRs as in RBI which is as it should be since your league will award the same number of points in each category.
However, this does not mean that an individual player does not receive value in the average categories. It only means that some get positive value and others negative value (since they will actually hurt your team) and in total the sum of those values is zero.
Other Reasons to Use a 70/30
We have asked our customers in past years to send up their league’s rosters at the end of the draft. (We urge you to do the same this year). Based on studying those leagues we determined that the best split was 70/30. We did this by calculating the standings based on the make-up of the teams at the conclusion of the draft. Certainly trades play a large role in determining who will win a league, but for these purposes we were only trying to ascertain the best draft strategy, not who is the best trader.
Over the years we have studied over 600 leagues. In those leagues the average team spent 65% on hitting and 35% on pitching. The average team also finished in the middle of the standings. If that is what you are shooting for, by all means follow that strategy. Our survey shows that 80% of the "Money Teams" followed a 70/30 split. We define any team using 68-72% of it’s salary cap on offense as trying for a 70/30 split.
As yet another example, we can look to the
Another reason to use the 70/30 allocation is to equalize the risk of loss due to injury. It should not surprise anyone that pitchers spend more time on the DL than hitters. Thus, every salary unit spent on your pitching staff generates fewer "active days" than a salary unit spent on hitting. We have looked at the injury histories for the last few years and pitchers comprised about 61% of the DL time while they make up only about 44% of the spots on the 25 man roster.
To break this down further, it means that the average pitcher will spend about 2.3 times as many days on the DL as the average hitter.
We also found that each pitching spot lost approximately 16.40% of its value to injuries. Each hitting spot lost only 7.08% of its value to injuries. (17.2% and 6.95% in 1999 respectively)
Therefore, if we use a 70/30 allocation, how much of that salary is lost to hitting and pitching? Assuming 260 salary units we have the following:
Hitters (260 x .7) x .0708 = 12.89 salary units lost
Pitchers (260 x .3) x .1640 = 12.79 salary units lost
If we used a 60/40 split:
Hitters (260 x .6) x .0708 = 11.05 salary units lost
Pitchers (260 x .4) x .1640 = 17.06 salary units lost
As you can see, the more salary you allocate to hitters the less you will lose to injury. However, since you also need to compete in the pitching categories, we must allocate enough to pitching to obtain some valuable pitchers. Co-incidentally, the break even point to equalize your DL losses falls on the 70/30 split.
One item to note for 1997 is that the percentage of time the pitchers were down was a little lower and that may explain why salary allocated to pitching in the LABR drafts did better than usual. In 1997 pitchers comprised 47% of the opening day rosters and accounted for 58% of the time spent on the DL. Thus, in 1997 the average pitcher was only on the DL 1.55 times as long as the average hitter as opposed to the historical norm of 2.3 times. We expected that to portend a big pitching injury year in 1998 and it was. In 1998 pitchers spent an average of 16.9% of their time on the DL (4.4 weeks per pitcher on opening day rosters) versus 8.8% of DL time for hitters (2.3 weeks per position player on opening day rosters) For 1999 those percentages were 17.2% for pitchers and 6.9% for hitters.
Below is a worksheet to use to determine the correct salary allocation for your leagues based on the categories you use and using a simple mathematical matrix.
# of Absolute hitters categories
times # of hitters per team
= Hitters Factor (HF)
# of Absolute pitchers categories
times # of pitchers per team
= Pitchers Factor (PF)
Salary Allocation Offense HF/(HF+PF) =OFF %
Salary Allocation Pitchers PF/(HF+PF) =PIT %
Following is an example of a league with 14 hitters and 9 pitchers which uses 4 absolute hitting categories (home runs, RBI, runs and steals) and 3 absolute pitching categories (wins, saves and strikeouts)
Absolute hitters' categories (4)
Times no. hitters per team (x14)
= Hitter's allocation factor (56)
Absolute pitchers' categories (3)
Times no. pitchers per team (x9)
= Pitcher's allocation factor (27)
Salary Allocation Offense = HF(56)/(HF+PF) (56+27) Thus 56/(56+27) = 56/83 = 67.5%
Salary Allocation Pitching = PF(27)/(HF+PF) (56+27) Thus 27/(56+27) = 27/83 = 32.5%
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