2019 Preseason Blog Series Part 2: Rule Changes!

Paul got some face time with the 18 time major champion recent, Jack Nicklaus. NBD

OK y’all (yes I say y’all now sometimes), we’ve been very steady in this league for a few years now. Early in Floored we would make sweeping changes every year or so with regards to roster positions or making this a keeper league or trading draft picks, but the last few years we’ve settled into this comfortable niche we’re in now. It’s time to shake things up.

We know more now than we did 12 years ago when Floored started. When I set up this league’s categories I was a 19 year old punk who had never heard of a standard 5by5 Rotisserie league. I didn’t know how to calculate slugging percentage and I had certainly never heard of a quality start. It made sense to that frat boy that we should count a players Hits AND his batting average. Pitchers? Sure Earned Runs AND  Earned Run Average make a ton of sense.

We can do better.

Some of these ideas are radical and game-changing, so they may be best (like MLB’s proposal to add the Designated Hitter to the National League) to go into effect next year, after everyone has the chance to run their team this year knowing what is coming. More on this later.

I’ve elicited requests from a few league members who have been more vocal about wanting to modernize our scoring system, but as always, this is a democratic league (with regards to game play at least) and I want to at least get a feel for league temperment on these things. For those that don’t want to read a full blog post on this, I’ll simply put the changes here and if you’re interested you can read the pros and cons below. Reply to the email I sent out with any comments and your votes:

1. Remove Hits and add Slugging percentage (SLG)
2. Change Stolen Bases to Net Stolen Bases
3. Remove Earned Runs and add Quality Starts
4. Change Saves to Saves plus Holds

Hitting:

Remove Hits and add Slugging percentage (SLG):

First of all let’s get on the same page with terms. Slugging percentage is the total number of bases a hitter achieves per at bat. If a guy hits a home run, that is 4 total bases, a double is 2 total bases, etc. During Barry Bond’s peak of 2001, he had an .800 slugging percentage. Epic. League average SLG last year was .409.

The pro argument: Hits and Batting Average are redundant, therefore by counting both we are are double-dipping  somewhat unnecessarily.  Yes it values a certain kind of player, one that hits for a high average (i.e. a lot of singles), but this does not mimic real baseball. Real baseball teams care about getting on base and hitting for average, but they need hitters that can generate power and move playaers around the bases with a high slugging percentage. Note that by bringing in SLG, we will in essence have all three elements of the ‘triple slash’ accounted for in our scoring: Batting Average/On Base Percentage (since we count walks)/Slugging Percentage. The triple slash is a powerful evaluation tool for players and it would improve the ability for our league to promote actual baseball talent instead of guys that hit a bunch of singles or hit at the top of the lineup so they get more at bats and more hits.

The against argument: things are better the way they’ve been…if you’re into that kind of thing. Some MLB teams do value singles hitters, notably ones before the steroid era or this year’s Kansas City Royals. So us valuing them too isn’t unprecedented, it’s just not in line with the standard of MLB player evaluation.

Change Stolen Bases to Net Stolen Bases:

A Net Stolen Base (NSB) total is the total number of Stolen Bases (SB) a player has minus the number of times he’s caught stealing.

The pro argument: MLB teams have become more savvy of the NSB stat the last few years as sabermetrics show that the value of the SB is greatly diminished if a player is caught stealing more than 20% of the time. So, teams are stealing less because that is a difficult success rate.

The against argument: knowing how often players get caught stealing isn’t as sexy as raw SB totals. Also, this stat is harder to keep track of for the casual fan. While it’s more in line with real baseball to track NSB and chances are most players will have fairly close to the same success rate (other than the outilers, of course)

Pitching:

Remove Earned Runs and add Quality Start:

What is a Quality Start? A pitcher that starts a game, goes at least 6 innings pitched, and allows less than 3 earned runs

The pro argument: counting Earned Runs and Earned Run Average is again double dipping. The unintended consequence is that is makes starting pitchers less valuable, even after our attempt to make them more valuable by increasing the minimum number of innings pitched. By adding the Quality Start category, this makes starters more valuable by giving them another category to contribute in. Starting pitching is more valuable to MLB teams (look at Wins Above Replacement totals for starting pitchers vs relief pitchers). Floored should value Starters the same way too.

Some in the league wanted to remove the Win category, here is why I’m not putting that on the table, MLB teams play for the win stat, pitchers often go only 5 innings with their team in the lead so that the pitcher can earn that stat. Also, relievers can still add marginal value by getting the occasional win. I’m personally OK with the elite pitchers getting both a quality start and a win sometimes because that implies they added value to their MLB team that day, they deserve to add value to your fantasy team too.  Also note the number of quality starts has been trending down as analytic use has increased and teams learn that pitchers are less effective the third time through the batting order and therefore they don’t make it to the 6^th inning as often. So if we were to remove the Win Category and replace it with Quality Starts, we would not be gaining as much real world mimicking value as the intent would be to do so.

The against argument: this is a game changing idea. This would shift some of the balance of power in our fantasy league from relief pitchers to starters, even though it would bring us closer to the industry standard for fantasy baseball (and industry standard rankings for that matter) and real baseball. As has been argued above, double-dipping isn’t something to be recommended.

Change Saves to Saves plus Holds:

Per baseball reference: A hold is granted to a relief pitcher who enters a game with his team in the lead in a save situation, and hands over that lead to another reliever without the score having been tied in the interim.

The pro argument: there are only a handful of pitchers who are a reliable source of saves, whereas there a number of players who are good pitchers who deserve to be owned in fantasy leagues. By opening up this category to saves plus holds, good middle relievers like Chad Green or Andrew Miller can contribute in more than just the K/ERA/WHIP categories.

The against argument: Holds aren’t a perfect stat. If a pitcher enters a game with a 3 run lead, allows two runs and the bases to get loaded, but leaves the game before the tying run crosses, he gets a hold. Also, the best middle relieves aren’t necessarily brought in for Hold situations, sometimes the game is tied when they are needed and they won’t get a hold then.

OK that is four pretty big rule changes. I want to get feedback on these before we talk about when we would implement them, and that will likely be handled more Executively by me with input from whoever wants to give it (I just don’t want to go through rounds and rounds of votes).