Week 6: So you’re saying there’s a chance?

 

Brian and his lady friend, Cassie, took a trip to Asheville a few weeks ago. While he was away Josh has gone out and had a very good fantasy year for team BJ. Imagine that.

2020 Year to Date Power Ranks
TOTAL			HITTING			PITCHING
1	Michael	3.64	1	Dave	3.00	1	Michael	2.83
2	Dave	3.79	2	Paul	4.00	2	Max	3.50
3	BJ	4.21	3	Michael	4.25	3	BJ	4.17
4	Paul	4.29	4	BJ	4.25	4	Paul	4.67
5	Arthur	5.50	5	Arthur	4.75	5	Dave	4.83
6	Dean	5.57	6	Dean	5.50	6	Ryan	5.50
7	Max	6.07	7	Keith	6.50	7	Dean	5.67
8	Ryan	6.21	8	Ryan	6.75	8	Arthur	6.50
9	Keith	7.21	9	Cory	7.38	9	Cory	8.00
10	Cory	7.64	10	Max	8.00	10	Keith	8.17

It was Dave’s turn to make a run at the top this week. Putting up a .319 AVG this week with a 3.1 ERA and 5 Wins, Dave made a big jump up the ranks. He sat in first place on Saturday night and through most of Sunday sending Michael screenshots…until Michael finally had some starting pitchers throw and his hitters woke up to reclaim first place by end of week. It’s been a very inconsistent season for Michael. He will likely keep bouncing around all the way through the rest of the year. The other big jumper this week was Paul. Paul hit .328 on the week with 17 HRs to lead his surge into the top 4, and as we’re about to get into, this was a very key move.

How late is too late to make your move this year? I looked back at 8 years worth of Floored data to see how much teams have moved in the Power Ranks from week 5 to week 9 (remember this year we arbitrarily split the first week into two weeks so this year’s week 6 is about as many ball games as years’ past week 5). Here is what I found:

The average power rank of the first place team by week 9 has been 3.54, the best was 2.57 (hello Dave’s keeper year 2016), the worst was 4.07 in 2013.

The average amount any team moves from week 5 to week 9 has been 0.61 ranking points, up or down. I also checked what the max one team each year did, this averaged 1.42 points of movement. So on average, someone would move up or down 1.42 points every year. The maximum anyone moved from week 5 to week 9 has been 1.79, this has happen twice….in 8 years. If you drop that threshold down to 1.64, that many points of movement has happened four times. So realistically, we can expect someone to move 1.4 power rankings points this year…and maybe someone will move 1.7 Power Rankings points.

Where does this leave us?

First lets take the most likely scenario: the first place team will be around 3.5 and someone can move 1.4 points, so a team would need to be no lower than 4.9 power ranked right now to be in contention. Congratulations Michael, Dave, BJ, and Paul. We’re already down to a four team race.

OK now lets take the extreme scenario: the worst first place score has been 4.07 and the biggest move has been 1.79, so anyone down to 5.86 is still in it. Hello Arthur and Dean.

So to Max, Ryan, Keith and Cory. Challenge accepted?

-------

Checking in on our volume stats and there are some clear correlations between teams that are at the top of the rankings and the volume they have put up: 

Manager by Power Rank Order	AB YTD	+/- from AVG		IP YTD	Innings off 675 IP pace
Michael	1115	22.8		252	75.07
Dave	1117	24.8		220	107.17
BJ	1120	27.8		248	79.07
Paul	1074	-18.2		261	66.07
Arthur	1118	25.8		285	42.07
Dean	1093	0.8		225	102.17
Max	1067	-25.2		213	114.07
Ryan	1073	-19.2		135	192.17
Keith	1077	-15.2		211	116.27
Cory	1068	-24.2		151	176.07

 

Regarding At Bats, 5 of the top 6 teams are all above average in At Bats. Think about it, a player can only hit a home run or get an RBI if they have an At Bat, so you want to maximize the number of At Bats to keep your scoring up. While 22 or 27 At Bats off of the league average At Bats doesn’t seem like a ton at first glace (2% off of average), keep in mind this is about the margin for most fantasy categories for each place (as in, second place in RBIs is about 2% behind first place in RBIs, etc). Maximizing hitting volume is crucial.

The pitching volume correlation has been more inconsistent this year, despite my expectations. While t top 7 teams in IP are also the 7 teams in the power ranks; the inconsistency comes in because Arthur leads the league in IP, but not only is he only 5^th overall, his pitching power rank is 8^th. So his IP volume has not worked out. Also, Max sits in second place in the pitching power ranks but is only middling in the Innings Pitched totals. This opens up the conversation about pitching strategies and replacement level pitchers and how bad streaming pitchers have been that we can leave for another blog, but for now I just wanted to point out that the top tiers have pitching volume that the bottom tier does not. And for the most case…this has lead to good performance.

For comparison purposes, it can be noted that 5 out of the 8 hitting categories reward volume (hitting Ks, AVG, and SLG do not) but for pitching, 4 of the 6 categories reward volume (ERA and WHIP do not).

So if you’re going to make that move, keep the odds in your favor and boost the volume.