RotoGuru - Baseball Feedback Archives

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Feedback

This page is devoted to feedback I've received from you. If you have a question to ask or a comment to make, send me an email and if I think it's of general interest, I'll post it here.

Guru:
I would like to offer my sincerest thanks to you, on 2 fronts. One for your blurb this morning. I am very glad you took a stand on SW and came down very hard on them. I believe in most situations you are a very fair minded, clear headed person. You see things from all sides, and then speak your mind. I think you have given SW the benefit of every doubt. Your statements this morning echo my thoughts exactly. Thank You very much!!

Now, as for the other issue, Thank You for setting me straight in regards to quitting SW games. You effectively laid the ground work as to who should quit and who should not. Although I did seriously consider quitting SW games (and I wasn't even affected by the latest problems, it really becomes an ethics and integrity issue), I didn't because of your post. So again I Thank You. Thanks for being so level headed. - Rich (8/18)

response from Guru:
I try to be as objective and fair as I can. And I try to keep in mind that this is supposed to be for entertainment and enjoyment.

But lately, I'm feeling like a masochist for continuing to come back for more and more abuse. I guess I'm just a glutton for "inconvenience".

Of course, if I could just convince everyone else to quit, maybe I could still win this thing. Hmmm.... - Guru

Guru:
I originally used the message board all the time, especially for Smallworld repricings, to get a grasp of what everyone else was thinking, since that's more important than my own personal opinion in a demand-based repricing game, a la Smallworld. However, once my team reached about $117 mil, and gains were no longer a priority since all my hitters were locked, I only checked the board once in a while. The most important factor though, is that it seems like baseball isn't the main part of the board, social activity is dominant. That's fine, I'm all for people having conversations on the boards, but personally... I don't care for it, it's boring. If the board was still relevant, (like the football one is presently, although it's still too early for football for me), I'd still check. It's too bad the Echelon -related boards aren't more popular... they're still useful. - Josh (8/18)

response from Guru:
To each his own. If nothing else, the message boards have certainly cut down on the relevance of this page, since I see it has been about 3 weeks since the last posted letter. - Guru

Guru:
How can you leave out baseballamerica.com on your page of fave links? Talk about valuable information -- top prospects from every organization and minor league player highlights updated daily! I have fifty places to go for yesterday's stats, I want to know the name of the guy putting up the numbers tommorrow! - Kris K. (7/28)

response from Guru:
First I've heard of it. Thanks. - Guru

Guru:
The 30-day SWP column for pitchers is very interesting today. Halama is 1st, but 10 guys have over 800 points in the last month [and Pedro should go over 900 or 1000 after today]. Thanks again for the new time frames on the charts. - John C. (7/7)

response from Guru:
I hadn't noticed Halama was that strong. He did have one more start than Pedro, but even so - quite impressive. If he ever pops up in the top 50, watch his price move! - Guru

Guru:
I think the five trade a week structure (as opposed to last year's 75 trade limit) means that people should be picking their teams on Monday nights rather than Tuesday nights. If you wait until Tuesday, now that most of the gainer action is with the double start pitchers, you miss their second start if they were Thursday-Tuesday pitchers if you wait to trade until Tuesday night/Wed. morning. - Jonathan F. (6/25)

response from Guru:
I agree, especially as pitchers dominate trading activity more and more. Waiting until after a pitcher starts can be a safe way to chase gains, but it's a lousy way to accumulate points. - Guru

Guru:
I see that in the last price change that (again) the changes seemed to be heavily weighed for performances of many days ago (e.g. Chili Davis losing the maximum from his NL tour from the bench). Any chance our assumption about the trading week going from Wednesday to Wednesday might be wrong? Certainly they make changes on Wednesdays, but maybe they are looking at stats from Sunday to Sunday, Monday to Monday, or some other time frame (and, because they are often catching up with the stats on Mondays, they do them on Wednesdays when they know they have everything else up to date).

I didn't find anything on the SW site specifically giving W to W as the trading week, but I may have missed something. Certainly, if you read the rules with a Sunday to Sunday week in mind the rules don't seem to be in conflict with this. - Fred C. (6/17)

response from Guru:
I think the key is that many people use their trades as soon as they're doled out. While it is possible that there's an earlier cutoff, the pitching price changes seems to track with starters on Wednesdays doing well, while starters from several days prior generally doing poorly. So I don't think the evidence really supports an earlier cutoff.

The same phenomenon was evident in football and hoops. I once thought that it could be a different trade cycle as well. But once I figured out that many people (though not necessarily Gurupies) were trading on Wednesday night, the patterns seemed to make sense. In fact, once I've gotten into that mindset, I haven't been overly surprised by most price changes of late - some of which would otherwise have seemed quite puzzling. - Guru

Guru:
I don't know if you noticed or not, but it looks as if Echelon Sports has made a correction to the points accumulated for the 6/13 pitching outing of Shane Reynolds. This was the Astros/Padres suspended game. His original total of +140 included +20 points for a completed game. Echelon has come back and shown a -20 point deduction on 6/15 to bring his net points to +120 for his 6/13 outing. As you stated in your 6/14 blurb, I guess we will have to wait to see if he gets points for a 'backdated' win. - Bob B. (6/16)

response from Guru:
It appears that Echelon bases points for each day on the change in year-to-date points for a player. So, if there is a point correction, or a retroactive scoring change, that impact gets reflected as points on the day the change is reflected in YTD stats. If so, then the points for the game continuation would go through for players on the July 23rd roster.

I wrote to the head guy at Echelon to suggest he clarify, but so far, no response. But I suspect that, unless they make some manual adjustments, it will happen the way I've described. If so, depending on when Reynolds is due to pitch around that time, he probably warrants some consideration, since he'll have that 30 BPP just waiting to be nabbed. Ditto for Wagner. - Guru

Guru:
I've had a recent problem with Assimilator. Yesterday on trying to get in to it, I received one Illegal Operation after another. I had recently added a NETSONIC accelerator and its recent behavior made it the suspect. I shut it off and bingo.. access problems gone..Anyone else having similar problems might do well to shut off any accelerator they have first.

Perhaps, you would not mind clearing up one thing for me..Echelon trading has me a bit confused. In selling a player at his listed price and adding to the available cap,.I almost always get a different total than it should be..I can't complain too much because it's higher as much as lower but the only thing that comes to mind is that it reflects the buying and selling at that moment...Comment? - Russ K. (6/16)

response from Guru:
When you sell a player in the Echelon game, you don't "get" his listed price. You just essentially release him from your roster, which means that the price you originally paid for him is now available to be spent once again. Meanwhile, your cap increases at a flat $20,000 per day.

The currently listed price for a sold player has no bearing on your available cap room. The game differs from SW in that regard. - Guru

Guru:
I'm taking a programming class, and I had a great idea for a program to write. Something like the Assimilator, except its a program you put in your players, and it calculates "up to the minute" SW points for your players. Since my work is on the computer, I just end up leaving a web browser open and search for my players. this could speed it up (since I SHOULD be working!).

Only think I can't find is a Live stats feed. Do any exist for free? Is there any feasible way for me to get stats up to the minute? - Matt (6/12)

response from Guru:
I don't know of any free live stats services, but I'll throw the question out for anyone. - Guru

Guru:
First, a rant: Are all the non-Rotoguru followers dunderheads? I was taking care of my son this week, and couldn't make changes to my roster. So I came back expecting to get killed on Lee Stevens and Mike Williams (negative SW points over 7 days) and Alex Rodriguez (FL), who had only 59 for the week. They all went up! Bottenfield. Tatis, and Cedeno were due for an increase with strong weeks, but nooooo--I lose on them! Maybe the fantasy baseball gods are telling me to start working more on getting my permanent players in place and not worry so much about roster increases as much.

What do you think about "awarding" negative points for ejections? Particularly for pitchers, the sudden dismissal is a negative strategy factor for the team which might be reflected numerically. - Fred C. (6/10)

response from Guru:
I doubt if ejections are reported by the stats services, which would make including it problematic. Even though the concept is sound, it doesn't seem to happen enough to warrant inclusion. - Guru

Guru:
Oh wise Guru w/ price formula, help me rationalize this paradox: Moyer, netted 6 less owners resulting in -$10 change Lima, netted 126 more owners resulting in -$120 change. - Mike V. (6/9)

response from Guru:
The key is that buys are first factored down so that adjusted buys equal total sells. This past week, that reduction was about 12.6%.

Moyer had 284 buys, 290 sells. After reducing the buys by 12.6%, his adjusted net trades total -42. Lima had 7395 buys vs. 7269 sells, which works out to an adjusted net of -806. This week the sensitivity factor was $100,000 gain per 671 net trades. So, Lima dropped $120,000 (-806/.00671), while Moyer declined only $10,000 (-42/.00671, rounded to nearest $10,000).

This example demonstrates how pitchers who are involved in a lot of "rotation trades" are modestly disadvantaged in the price change formula. - Guru

Guru:
I think the eggs are about to hatch for a huge monster to come storming through your site. When you first created the message boards Saturday, I was impressed and interested, thinking it would be cool to see other manager's strategies and concepts on the game. It seems it has become a hit on the site, and I observed there were at least 350 posts on the boards on Monday. The very unfortunate thing is that it seems the main "strategies" that some of these people are posting is basically about making money and trades for pitchers, and it seems they are hot topics too. That concept I think is very bad for the game. Although I'm sure a large percentage of the total amount of managers in both games that actually use your site isn't initially possible to make an impact in repricing and trades, I'm sure it will have booming popularity. The bad thing though is it will wear on the game's integrity, since word of mouth will spread to other managers(just like I learned about your site, through word of mouth), that these "hot players" for the week will be the pick of the week and if that hot player makes a lot of money(as is what seems to be every managers goal despite the fact that the game is supposed to be based on points, not money), the word will spread that they saw on your site predictions that the player will go up, and every week you will get more and more people looking in to see what player is the hot topic and that could directly lead to an impact on pricing.

I know you have good intentions on this message board concept but it seems it's going to be the town square for "Pick's of the Week: As seen on RotoGuru's site". I have yet to see a post the discusses high priced players vs mid price players in accordance to points, or starters vs closers. Unfortunetly it seems to be "who will go up the most money at third base", or "is there actually a catcher out there under $2million that will make a million next week?". It shouldn't be that way, and I know it would be very hard to control the subject matter but please see my point, because I actually do research and look at upcoming schedules more often for hitter matchups than "how many pitching starts can I get this week with 5 trades?", and to see this trend where all you need is literally one message to get other managers attracted to this one player the writer of the first post wrote, who could really be a bad player but intrest in that player could make it seem the opposite. - Mike (6/7)

response from Guru:
I think you're overreacting.

Although I don't have an exact count on the number of people who regularly use my site, it is a significant minority of SW managers. I suspect it is less than 1000. (I've never had any poll get more than 600-700 votes.) Of course, over time this will change - I hope.
I've seen many more players promoted on the message boards than could possibly be bought. Buying will be spread around.
For example, I just did a quick list of the players that were "hyped" as good buys in the first dozen messages or so. Here's the "hot players of the week" (listed in the order I jotted them down): Agbayani, Bush, Glaus, Millar, Steve Finley, Sosa, Mo Vaughn, Pedro Martinez, Odalis Perez, Todd Ritchie, Scott Williamson, Mike Williams, Nagy, Freddy Garcia, Jeremy Giambi, Beltre, Casey, Kapler, Brian Rose, Rocker, Nilsson, Robby Alomar, Jeter, Matt Williams, Randy Johnson, Griffey, Mondesi, Einar Diaz, David Bell, Alex Rodriguez, Preston Wilson, Chris Brock, Ortiz, Byrd, Suppan, Schilling, Lima, Kevin Brown, Jose Vidro, Damian Jackson, Rueben Rivera, Richard Hidalgo, Kris Benson, Dave Martinez, Henry Rodriguez, Pokey Reese, Varitek.
Hard to see how this will distort trading flows.
A lot of people who use my site will still be making (or have made) their own decisions.

But, we'll have to see how it pans out.

I share your concern, but while conceptually this seems like it could be a problem, I'm having difficulty getting very bothered by what I've seen so far. - Guru

Guru:
When you mentioned that you do not have Tim Duncan on your roster, I wanted to share this little information with you. Before last night's game, I was ranked 60 in the Smallworld playoff hoops challenge. I, unlike yourself, did have Duncan on my roster and figured I was in for a reasonable drop in the standings. However, to my pleasant surprise, I am ranked in the 30's today. That means at least half, if not all, the top managers in the world have Tim Duncan and I think it will be very hard to catch up to these people without him. Granted he had foul trouble yesterday, but that doesn't happen too often. But again, if the Blazers get swept, it may be pointless to get Tim now. - Spark (6/5)

response from Guru:
Actually, by the time the finals roll around, it will be tough to gain fast on anyone. There won't be that many reasonable combinations of active players to pick from. If you're going to make a move up the rankings, better do most of it before the June 16 trades are passed out, because from that point on, most teams should be pretty well stocked.- Guru

Guru:
Do you think that the Most Added/Dropped on ESPN Fantasy page and Who's Hot and Who's Not on USA Todays Fantasy page are good tools to determine who will make the biggest gains on Wednesday (SW price change day)? I haven't yet used these as indicators because I've just recently stopped spot starting and instead using my trades to gain cash. What do you think? - Nut (6/5)

response from Guru:
They're probably OK, at least at pointing out potential guys to consider. But I think the top 50 player lists at the game sites can still be as useful as anything. - Guru

Guru:
In some of your articles you have used 2.5-3.0 SWP/$M in your calculations. I believe that number seriously decreases as your roster value increases and that each manager needs to look at his cash value and determine when strictly additional cash has reached a diminishing return. Of course you always have to protect against a major cash loss due to injury, poor performance of players, not picking up someone hot. Griffey showed people still buy hitters. (His upcoming series in Colorado was a driving factor in picking him up). - Steve H. (6/5)

response from Guru:
Agreed. When I was working with the graph last week, I realized that the marginal benefit - particularly along the efficient frontier - reduces to 2.0 SWP/$m/EG and even less. This makes it even more challenging for gains trades to overcome the expected point potential of an extra start from a stud pitcher. - Guru

Guru:
With Griffey's latest price increase, I realize that we are reaching a point in the season where so many managers are starting to buy expensive players. I think that using the player's price history might start really become useful. Take Chipper Jones for example. He is the hottest 3rd baseman right now, and soon I expect him to take over the overall lead from Matt Williams who has cooled down. Anyway, when he gets there, he should skyrocket in price, because right now, only a handful of managers own him. So, all of the expensive players who have yet to get hot, like Biggio, V Guerrero, Piazza, McGwire and Belle should soon be guys, who, early in the season would never increase in price because they were too expensive will soon become very attractive players. - JK (6/4)

response from Guru:
Belle, eh? Well, maybe.

Not sure any of these guys will ever "skyrocket" unless they have a mammoth day or week, but they will all probably be moving up gradually throughout. - Guru

Guru:
Gains Gains Gains.... Seems like it's this time of the season again. People are rotating pitchers with their trades so the net gains are canceled with the net loss. The other positions are seeming to be neglected by the masses and have shown paltry gains for the week. Griffey benefited from Green's injury, gaining 3 shiny quarters but I doubt will be able to hold on to those for any significant length of time considering there are many up and coming stars for a fraction of Griffey's going rate. Take the money and run!

As Guru pointed out Max Pitchers vs Max Hitters, pitchers win every time. As far as strategy, I have been doing some calculations on team positioning and it seems that although everyone thinks they understand it, pitching is still definitely underrated. Try to follow my twisted logic, I will leave out the math to make it a bit more simplistic. There are 14 players on a team. 5 of them are pitching. Pitching vs Hitting. Pitching gives you bigger point production for equal $$ vs Hitting. This is the key area to concentrate on, the ratio is 5/14 when it comes to pitching positions vs hitting positions thus making each pitching position that much more valuable and each hitting position less valuable. With this reasoning you can see why although players like Freddy Garcia, Brian Rose and Ron Villone seem like GREAT buys at the price they are at - and don't get me wrong they do have excellent SWP/EG/$$ - but what most do not realize is that are taking up a VALUABLE space in your TOP point producing category . The question you have to ask yourself is, why would I use up one of my top point producing spaces, on a pitcher who does not give me the most points possible. You don't. Save your money by filling your hitting with the GREAT "SWP/EG/$$" players especially in the outfield where those type players are abundant. And spend the money for the positions that get you the most points - pitching. You have to have the $$ to execute such a plan so I hope you followed the "Gains Gains Gains" mantra. - Joel S. (6/3)

response from Guru:
I'm not quite sure what your point is - other than to get your letter posted (which seems to have worked). You appear to think you are agreeing with me, but then many of the supporting comments seem internally inconsistent, or at least out of synch with what I've recently been saying. So maybe you're writing to disagree with me?

As I pointed out in my graph article, pitching dominates hitting at the lower prices. So unless you have enough cash to buy all the best players, it seems like your money is better spent on cheaper pitchers combined with more expensive hitters. You can get more points with the more expensive pitchers. But you pay a price for that. - Guru

Guru:
I have a suggestion. I think that the number of "big games" (20-30 point days, or whatever value you think is a big day) over a course of a season should be kept as a statistical tally or percentage. This will prevent owners from hopping on the bandwagon of a player who has had some monster games only to follow those high scoring games with a little two or three day slump. I guess it could be considered as a little consistency statistic. We all know that Griffey is more consistent than Canseco, for the most part, let's have a statistic to prove it. How about taking the number of big games and dividing them by eligible games? I'd like to hear your feedback on this subject. - Chris (6/3)

response from Guru:
I'll give it some thought. A single game stat might not be so useful, though, since you seldom pick up a player for only one game. Perhaps a measure of weekly variability would be more appropriate.

I'm currently working on the stats reports to include options for alternative stats categories. Hopefully I'll have something released later this month. - Guru

Guru:
All I want to know is if everyone has gone and filled out their All Star ballot yet! Let's do our part to make sure guys like Luis Gonzalez and Shawn Green get the shot at starting that they deserve. - Jared (6/3)

response from Guru:
You can vote online at allstarvote.majorleaguebaseball.com. - Guru

Guru:
For those managers looking for a decent way to pick up gains and starts, you may want to try this strategy. I'll warn it is unconventional, but, "no guts no glory": I trade both early and late in the week, usually using 3 trades on Thursday nite to pick up pitchers starting Friday and then 1 or 2 more trades Tuesday nite for position player maintenance. I currently have 2 pitchers I hold every week and have held over the past month. What I do is on Friday nite, I pick up pitchers for starts, but then just hold them for the week. Since some managers are actively trading starts, at the price update they are usually holding pitchers that go on Wednesday. By looking at schedules and doing just a bit of research, I usually end up positive on gains for all my pitcher slots every week. That still doesn't solve what pitchers to pick though ... For managers not needing gains anymore, I would NOT recommend this... - Craig (6/3)

response from Guru:
Duly noted. - Guru

Guru:
Before stumbling onto your site my ideas on a pitching rotation constituted of trading every pitcher every two starts. I think your way might be a bit more efficient, but I'm not sure my calculations are correct. What do you say?

I just picked up John Rocker, and it got me thinking about how having a closer might help make a rotation more flexible. For instance, you have Martinez and Schilling going on the same day, so trade Rocker for Schilling and the next day Martinez for Rocker. This allows you to swap starters pitching on the same day, getting both of their starts, and getting the save opportunities of a closer, though losing one day for the closer. - McN (6/2)

response from Guru:
It also means you have used two trades to get only one extra start - and that assumes that Rocker doesn't pitch on his "off" day. Bottom line - I don't see what you've gained. (You also have to have enough cash to go from Rocker to Schilling. If you keep this much cash around all the time, you're squandering a valuable resource.)

For more discussion on efficient ways to rotate pitchers, see the Pitching Rotation article I wrote last year. - Guru

Guru:
Where can you find the complete 1999 MLB amateur draft on the web?, I remember seeing it one year but can't remember the site. - Kramer (6/2)

response from Guru:
Majorleaguebaseball.com - Guru

Guru:
In regards to trading pitchers for starts, from a gains standpoint you would need to pick up the power pitcher who had two starts LAST week, which should net you an increase every week, but you would effectively lose 1 start each week to people trading for points. The thing to figure out is how much of an increase can you get? - Rob T. (5/29)

response from Guru:
So why wouldn't you buy that pitcher at the beginning of the week? A start is a terrible thing to waste! - Guru

Guru:
This is my first year of playing fantasy sports. I have always been a fan of the big 3 (Baseball, Football, Basketball), but never played the fantasy versions. I finished 19th in basketball this season, but I am currently struggling big time in baseball. I have my salary built up to 86+ million, but can't put my pitching staff together! I tried for the last month to have 2 ace pitchers, and 3 medium range pitchers, and saw my world and division rank still sink. It seems like I always get that hot pitcher at the end of his hot streak. The past 2 weeks I have changed my strategy to just 1 ace, and 4 medium rage pitchers, and thus focus my attention on high profiled hitters.

My question is, do you feel that loading up with good hitters first, ace pitchers second is a better way to attack this game? My view on this, with a Griffey, Arod, Alomar, you know what you are getting for the money, with the pitchers, there are lots of times that during a month stretch, a $800,000 pitcher, example Brian Rose, gets more points than a 11 million dollar pitcher, example David Cone.

Like I said earlier, this is my first season, and I can tell you right now, these darn pitchers drive me nuts!!! - BSK (5/27)

response from Guru:
This letter came in last week, before I posted my latest article, in which I said I favored holding cheaper pitchers. One slot for a "stud" makes sense, though, since you can use that slot for rotations. - Guru

Guru:
I found another effect of the new trade data.

I have a nice warm feeling knowing that at least 32,703 of my competitors got "Bottenfield-ed" last night and I didn't. - Mike V. (5/27)

response from Guru:
Kent argue with that. - Guru

Guru:
After many hours of calculating numbers and formulas, trying to figure out the dreaded smallworld repricing formula turned out to be easy. All I had to do is go to RotoGuru and read his explanation! I never really had to lift a finger, but at least I was pretty close with my own formula.

Now what does all this new information tell us? One very good use is for us as managers to see how risky a player is in general. For example, Russ Ortiz is a Neutron bomb right now with almost 75% of active traders owning him (another Guru assessment). Even if only 1/3 of the players that own him decide to sell him for a less riskier player, or even rotate him with a Paul Byrd (comparable price and value) his price drops 1,000,000 and seemingly out of nowhere --BOOM-- you lose a bankroll. At this point of the season, that's about 300 SWP at the current average.

How do we prevent this? We don't, but atleast we now can see how damaging a potential player can be and avoid holding on to a player to long even if he is doing well. It's a big circle, if you get out before it happens you are actually making it happen faster.

There are many ways to use this very important stat. This is just one way we can use the new information given to us. Others such as how to make $$Gains from players like Freddy Garcia once you see where he stands in the total # of teams owning him stat can be useful. But that's for a later note. This game keeps getting better! - Joel S. (5/25)

response from Guru:
We may not become better managers. But we'll have a better idea how we screwed up. - Guru

Guru:
Re: your 5/25 blurb closing. I've heard of groundskeepers leaving the infield grass a bit long to aid pitchers (again, see Wrigley Field), but this is the first instance I can recall where the staff left the backstop grass unshorn in order to change the outcome of a game. - Britt (5/25)

response from Guru:
Taking the art of groundskeeping to a new level, I guess. - Guru

Guru:
Since I am old and and risk averse, I find that the new information is indeed influencing my decisions in making trades. A player with a high net buy number has to have a better chance of price deterioration than appreciation, no matter what his recent stats are. I'm not suggesting one should avoid these popular players, but their vulnerability has to be considered. Chili Davis is still putting up numbers, but I think that there are a significant number of people that will sell him if for no other reason than to do something different. - Mike V. (5/25)

response from Guru:
You've got to know when to hold 'em, and know when to fold 'em.

(Sounds like a good title for a song, doesn't it?) - Guru

Guru:
I enjoyed your piece on Small World Baseball pricing. I agree that it's useful information, but it's hard to find a lot of precise uses right now. Still, it's nice to know more about how the prices become what they are.

I browsed a number of prices to see how many times they were traded and sold and found something interesting. Did you notice how many times that star players who are out for the season were bought and sold? By the fourth and fifth weeks, Moises Alou and Andres Galarraga still were involved in a rather high number of transactions. Kerry Ligtenberg still is getting bought and sold occasionally. I can understand this happening some by accident. After all, we've all accidently sold or bought somebody once or twice in a season. But it's funny to wonder what some what some of the people playing this game are thinking. - Mark (5/25)

response from Guru:
What they are thinking, or if they are thinking? - Guru

Guru:
In your article on the SW price formula, you closed with "But it is cool to really know how this all works, isn't it? "

YES, IT IS !!! For your information, my analysis verifies yours exactly. Although I wasn't privy to the total buy and total sell data for each week, I knew it was part of the formula ( just used a ratio determined by using examples). I still think there might be a weighted effect of buying and selling (a player bought and sold many times seems to gravitate towards a lower salary, while a player never bought has an unchanging salary). What I am looking at is likely the effect of many new buys and and subsequent sells. See Roy Halladay, for example. He's had 22,000 buys and only 19,000 sells, but his price is $360,000 below its starting point.

Regarding the big movers this season, it's difficult to analyze since the biggest upward movers have yet to crash. Beltran and Garcia can't go below the $500K where they started, so they are not interesting, Ortiz is not close to crashing yet, and Chili is just starting to show the effects. Their salaries will fall below their starting points if they are gradually sold off. On the opposite end, there hasn't been that much focused selling. This is probably due to the number of "new buys" coming in each week.

If I were creating a formula for salary changes, I would probably include a small upward factor for the "number of holds", the number of managers holding a player and a small downward factor for "inactivity". This would allow players who are bought and hold to retain their value better and allow players who are not bought (overpriced!) to come down in value each week, maybe to a level where they might become attractive. But this would be in a perfect world, of course!!!

Again, thanks for all that you do to make sure that those of us that have no life (i.e. "hooked on SW baseball"!!) are allowed to remain that way. - Rich M. (5/24)

response from Guru:
You raised an interesting paradox in the middle of your discussion. If a player has no activity at all, his price will remain the same. But a player with 10,000 buys and 10,000 sells will drop in price, since the buys will be factored down to compensate for new teams - whether or not any of those new teams drafted that player.

My example is admittedly an extreme one. But as more and more teams move toward a pitcher rotation strategy, there will be a lot of pitchers experiencing offsetting buys and sells. If new teams continue to emerge throughout the summer, then these rotation trades, which would generally involve and offsetting buy and sell within the same week, might actually have a slightly depressing effect on prices. We'll have to wait and see how material that turns out to be.

As I've said many times, I would definitely include more data in the price change process. The current process only directly takes into account the impact of two decisions: buy, and sell. It does not consider the decisions "don't buy" and "don't sell", which can be equally powerful. If my hypothesis is correct and Russ Ortiz is really on about 75% of all active rosters, then his price has probably reached close to the highest it can go. If 75% of the teams that own him continue to hold him, this is a very strong signal that his price is still too low. If his price were really at "fair value", then he should be getting sold by a fair proportion of teams. So no sells should push his price higher, while modest sells should probably leave his price unchanged. That way, he really would have a chance to reach a value which is comparable to others with similar performance.

The flip side is that "no buys" for a player who is barely owned should trigger a price decline, since this is a strong signal that the price is too high. (Of course, if the player is already cheap, then it probably just means that he sucks, and no price change is warranted.)

The most unfortunate thing is that no new data is needed to factor in this additional information. It is already implicit in the existing buy-sell data. So you'd think including these "market signals" would be a slam dunk. - Guru

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