FIRST LINEUP PRIMER AND CALCULATION INFORMATION
This page will walk you through entering your first set of lineups and then present some information about adjustments and sim accuracy.
LOGIN
From the main page, click on the “Transactions login page.” Enter your password and hit “submit password.” You will be taken to your team “transactions dashboard” page. Please note that your login will time out after 15 minutes; if it takes you longer than this to process your lineups you’ll need to log in again.
TEAM SETTINGS
Set your bullpen strategy and closer type here; read the descriptions on the page for more information. Please do note that the “best available” option can really over-use a pitcher in a run of several games. A pitcher with a good ERA but only 4 real innings might pile up 12 innings because he’s the “best available” setup guy, but he’s now at 300% overuse. You can prevent this by making sure the pitchers you use have lots of real innings or taking the “least used” bullpen strategy.
WAIVERS AND TRADES
There are no waiver claims for the first week; you can complete any trades in the second box.
PROMOTE OR DEMOTE/PITCHING
All rosters have been reset, so you’ll need to re-promote everyone you want to use. This will take a little time the first week, but from here on out you just add or drop a couple of players a week. Be aware that once you promote a healthy player if you want to take him off the roster you’ll either need to waive him or burn a free waiver, so be careful about who you promote. For the first week, this is a freebie, since we’ll set everyone to 2 free waivers for next week, but it’s good to get in the habit of promoting only the players you want to use.
Pitching settings are also set on this page. NOTHING IS SAVED until you click the “Save Pitcher Roles” button, so do make sure that you do that.
When you’re done setting the roster and pitching settings, return to the team dashboard.
LINEUPS
Do take a moment to read the instructions at the top of the page.
Make sure you select the lineup you want to work on and then click the “load lineup” button. You’ll know it’s loaded when the lineup you are working on appears in the box just below the “select lineup” drop-down list.
Add players from the bottom box by clicking on the “add” box and then click the “Add selected players to lineup.” Remember to make sure that the number of players you add plus the number of players on the lineup currently does not exceed 9.
Once all the players are on the lineup, you can set the order by clicking the “bump up” button to move the players around. This change will save automatically.
You can also change the position, baserunning, and pinch-hitting settings by using the drop-down lists. Be aware that these changes WILL NOT SAVE until you click the “process lineup drops and position changes” button.
If the changes aren’t taking or things are getting really weird, click on the “erase all and reset” button and start over.
You can save a little time by copying your lineup to other lineup types.
A change from the past is that you don’t need to set the bench order. The computer will only pinch-hit if the bench player is an improvement, and will use the best pinch-hitter first. This was true of the last version of the game too, and since these settings superceded the pinch-hit order it didn’t seem necessary to add the bench order for all the different lineups.
Do pay attention to the “info box” settings. They will tell you when your lineup is OK.
When all lineups have been set correctly, return to the dashboard.
You’re done!
KEY INFORMATION YOU’LL REALLY WANT
How do adjustments work?
Imagine the league batting average is .260, the batter is hitting .280, and the pitcher allows a batting average of .255.
First, the hitter’s average is adjusted to the average that they need to have to make their real average match their fantasy average over the next 25 at-bats. Imagine that a players’ fantasy average is .250 in 40 at-bats, but their real average is .275. To get to .275 by 65 at-bats (18 for 65), the player needs to go 8-for-25, or .320.
Next the hitter’s and pitcher’s average are subtracted from the league average.
Hitter=.320-.260= +.60
Pitcher= .255-.260 = -.05
These totals are then added to the league average: .260+.6--.05=.305
That’s the base chance a hitter has for getting a hit.
If either the pitcher or the batter is overused, the average is then adjusted for that.
All players get up to 110% of their real AB or IP. After that, the overuse factor is subtracted by 110%, divided by 2, and converted to a percentage. Example: A batter is at 135%. 135-110=25, 25 divided by 2 is 12.5, 100% minus 12.5 is 87.5%. The batting average is adjusted to 87.5% of its base chance. In this case, that’s .320 times 87.5%, which is .267. For pitchers, it adjusts the batting average up, not down.
Finally, the base chance is adjusted for the pitcher’s ERA. The adjustment factor is just the Real ERA divided by the Fantasy ERA, so if the pitcher’s real ERA is 4.00 and the fantasy ERA is 4.30 it needs to adjust down, so the factor is 4.00/4.30, or 93%. The base chance would be reduced to 93%, in this case .305 times 93% which equals 283.
The only other adjustment is pitcher in-game fatigue. All pitchers have a longevity factor, and when they exceed that factor in the game their performance goes down. The factor is just game pitches divided by longevity pitches, so if a pitcher has a longevity of 90 pitches but has thrown 95, the factor is 95 divided by 90 or 1.06. To complete the example, .305 * 1.06 is .323.
These same adjustments are applied to home run percentages, etc.
Some owners build a strategy around trying to take advantage of these adjustments, so just make sure no key players are over-used and then put their best team on the field.
How accurate is the sim after all these adjustments?
First, I want to talk about what’s reasonable to expect. As Crash Davis reminded us all in Bull Durham, there’s not a lot of difference between hitting .250 and .300. Over a 30-at-bat week, the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is 2.5 hits. So, a difference of 2-3 hits can swing a batting average 50 points.
In the simulations so far, the average fantasy batting average is within 30 points of the real one. This is about where it’s been with the old simulation. As always, the more at-bats the closer the number gets to where it should be. And keep in mind that the over-use adjustments mean that the average the simulation is trying to get to is NOT the real average.
Pitching. Oh, my. Pitching stats are notoriously unstable. I want to reflect a bit before talking about ASFBL.
In real-life, a pitcher’s WHIP explains 60% of the ERA. That means 40% of a pitcher’s ERA is explained by things other than the hits or walks a pitcher allows, or in other words, that the pitcher has no control over. These are things like: the defense’s ability to turn a double play or hold a runner to a single rather than a double, a runner’s ability to get an extra base off of a hit, the catcher’s ability or inability to prevent stolen bases and the baserunner’s ability or inability to get them, park factors, etc.
It is tempting to believe that good pitchers produce batted balls that are easier to field, induce “tailor made” double plays, and the like. A SABR officianado named Voros McCracken, now in the employ of the Bosox, has studied this extensively and has conclusively proven that this is not the case. Once a batted ball is put in play, there is no correlation between any pitcher ability and the play outcome. This has been the motivation for the extensive study of Defense Independent Pitching Statistics (DIPS).
For an ERA of 4.00, 40% is 1.5 runs. So, on average, ERAs should be within 1.5 runs of their real-life numbers. We do a little better than that, but ERAs within plus or minus 1 run are to be expected, especially for low-IP pitchers. Imagine the Crash Davis speech about pitchers: For pitchers with fewer than 9 IP (almost all the relievers through the first 3 weeks), the difference between an ERA of 2.57and 5.14 is 2 runs.