Week 1: Who Needs Good Draft Picks?

Not the best screenshots ever captured, but hey, at least we have some! We had a draft video chat and got to watch Dean leave his 2 year old to draft for him from round 25 onward. It was awesome. If you didn't make it hopefully you can next year!

But Michael, just two weeks ago you said it was Dean and Paul’s season to lose? Right, about that. Paul put it together for the first matchup week but Dean’s strategy of drafting a bunch of injured guys was further challenged by Nestor Cores giving up 8 runs to the Bronx-Torpedo-Bats. Michael and Arthur have jumped out to the fast start here, from the dregs of draft day budgets to the top of the week 1 ranks. So are draft pick values bunk? Let’s slow-roll that conclusion until May 1^st at least. Nearly anything can happen in one week, so there’s no victory laps happening today. 

What is Expected Week Wins? EWW as most of you may feel about it and as the acronym will be, it is a representation of how good a team’s week was. It takes what the league average for each category was for the entire season, the season long standard deviation for each data point, and what each team’s actual value for the week was, then it outputs how many standings points you would have been EXPECTED to earn. So Paul’s league leading 24 home runs this week against an average of 17.6 home runs accounting for a full 0.957 points, nearly a perfect 1.00; whereas Max’s 29 pitching strikeouts against a league average of 110 pitching strikeouts was worth a whopping 0.018 points, very bad. What this EWW chart shows is that Michael and Arthur would have averaged 9.8 and 9.5 standings points (out of a total of 14 points) this week if they had played a neutral opponent. Cory and Paul who had to play these teams ended up with a negative Wins Over Expected because they scored fewer points than their stats would have fared against a neutral opponent. Dave won the week 1 lottery because he had an underwhelming week on his own outputs, but he got to play Max.

Let’s talk matchups

The headline matchup was draft-day-kingpins Dean and Keith being matched up in week 1. Keith ended up winning the plate appearances lottery, out PA-ing Dean by over 60 PAs, a number that is hard to keep up with for the rest of the hitting categories. 60 more PAs would have helped Dean, but it would not have overcome a .211 AVG or a 4.70 ERA, both rates that were far behind league averages this week. Keith didn’t have his A-game either but he survived the week to get the win.

The next most interesting matchup to me was Dave against Max. Would Dave be able to blank Max and was Max going to get to 30 Innings Pitched? Max’s pitching leaves a lot to be desired, but heading into the final weekend he was flirting with a sub-3 ERA, a bunch of Save-Holds, and positive Net Wins…but he hadn’t gotten to 30 Innings Pitched yet. Those final IP ended up being Max’s downfall and the ratios tumbled, opening the door for Dave to take over the matchup. Dave’s hitting had over 100 PAs more than Max. Note that Max had 8 bench hitters during this period, so, lot of missed lineup setting it would appear. But, ‘did I win yet?’ yes you will always have 2024, Max.

The next upset of the week saw Arthur taking down Paul. Paul’s home runs and SLG paced the league but Arthur’s pitching volume was a little too much. Both of these teams have jumped out of the gate fast and are ranked 2 and 3 in the league.

Yet another matchup that surprised was Michael beating Cory. Michael and Cory also ended up ranked in the top 4. Cory had a slow start to the matchup week, then came on strong for about 7 straight days before fading over the weekend again. Aaron Judge, for Cory, nearly had more Home Runs and RBIs than a few of the teams in the league. Michael’s mid round hitters had big weeks to jump him off to an early start.

Finally, Kevin just took down Robert, welcome back to Floored, Kevin! Still likely learning the pitching side of the league, Kevin’s Innings Pitched were a little lower than I think we’ll see moving forward, with Kevin’s low pitching volume keeping him from matching pace with Robert’s pitching Ks and quality starts while still losing ERA and WHIP. Some poor pitching performances on Sunday appear to have tipped these ratios Robert’s way. Overall, a league average week for both of these teams with an EWW right near 7. Long ways to go.

Out of the gates we’ve come. Some of us have more to figure out than the others, but all of us can enjoy the ride.