Week 21: The Home Stretch

Erin’s first birthday party was yesterday. Dean was a proud pappa watching Erin not get any cake in her many thigh-rolls that he would have to clean out later during bath time.

Year to Date Power Ranks
TOTAL			HITTING			PITCHING
1	Michael	3.86	1	Dean	2.88	1	Michael	3.50
2	Dean	4.07	2	Max	3.13	2	Arthur	3.83
3	Max	4.07	3	Dave	3.88	3	Brian/Josh	4.33
4	Dave	4.57	4	Michael	4.13	4	Paul	4.50
5	Paul	4.93	5	Paul	5.25	5	Max	5.33
6	Arthur	5.64	6	Matt	6.88	6	Dave	5.50
7	Brian/Josh	6.07	7	Arthur	7.00	7	Cory	5.50
8	Cory	6.36	8	Cory	7.00	8	Dean	5.67
9	Matt	6.79	9	Keith	7.00	9	Matt	6.67
10	Keith	7.64	10	Brian/Josh	7.38	10	Keith	8.50

Max stepped up huge this week, pouncing on a somewhat down week from Michael to not relent his 4^th playoff spot with one week to go. Paul, Arthur, and BJ are all still very much alive with one week to go. Max plays Matt who has taken the initiative to put some work into his lineup this week. Dave took a bit of a step back with a down week of his own. His own playoff spot is also not assured yet and he has a far more difficult matchup against Arthur, though he does have a 6 game lead on 5^th place. Every team in the league is a part of a matchup this week with playoff ramifications, it’s what we all would want on April 1^st. Bring you’re A game.

Despite the somewhat down week, Michael did jump into the 3s in the power ranks for the first time this year. It was a long climb up from being in 9^th place after week one but he is now in (somewhat arbitrary) elite power ranking tier with one week to go. Paul also made a jump out of the middle tier to be on the edge of the upper tier. We’ll see if that momentum is enough to carry him to the playoffs.

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As we evaluate the changes we made to the league this year, it’s time to look back on the data. What changed? What can we do differently next year? What is projectable?

The first thing we’ll need to keep in mind about any year over year analysis is what has happened in MLB at large this year. MLB teams are scoring 4.86 runs per game, this is up over 0.41 runs from last year, the single greatest change in runs/game since 1976 to 1977 (3.99 to 4.47). This year’s change is even more than 2000 to 2001 when the runs per game went from 5.14 to 4.78 as the Steroid Era came to an abrupt end. There are a number of reasons for this, the change in the baseball, the increased emphasis on launch angle and in MLB teams emphasizing power hitting, but the result is the same: MLB teams are scoring more runs now than we expected.

So let’s see what that did to our league stats:

Floored League Averages by Year	HR	AVG	ERA	MLB HR/gm	MLB League AVG	MLB Runs/game
2012	9.48	0.272	4.27	1.02	0.255	4.32
2013	8.83	0.275	3.48	0.96	0.253	4.17
2014	7.99	0.269	3.24	0.86	0.251	4.07
2015	9.04	0.271	3.34	1.01	0.254	4.25
2016	10.59	0.273	3.49	1.16	0.255	4.48
2017	11.42	0.271	3.80	1.26	0.255	4.65
2018	10.17	0.265	3.52	1.15	0.248	4.45
2019	12.73	0.269	3.95	1.40	0.254	4.86

What you see here is that even thouh we changed our rules up this year to infuse power into the offense, and more starters into our pitching, our league trends have mostly followed MLB trends. When MLB home runs dipped in 2014, so did ours. When MLB runs/game jumped up this year, our league ERA did as well, by a nearly identical margin. As legaue wide batting average has stayed flat, so too has ours, even with the change in league format this year to de-emphasize high-batting-average players.

The moral of the story is, if you can project what MLB is going to do next year, you will have a leg up on the fantasy league going into the draft. Starting pitching became less valuable in the middle tiers this year, because everyone was giving up more runs. So if you can find the starting pitchers early on that would be elite, you were at an advantage. Meanwhile, drafting a power hitter early on was less valuable this year because there are so many home runs coming from the back of everyone’s roster. Not shown here is league stolen bases. While this is only one out of fourteen categories in our league, if you can find a power hitter that also steals bases, it puts you at an advantage to not have to own stolen-based-focused players like Dee Gordon or Mallex Smith who will put your offense at a disadvantage because they will not have the power that everyone else has. This idea is why Ronald Acuna will be ranked as a top 2 player next year. His combination of power and speed puts his owner at a major advantage at more categories than most other first round picks will.