He was feeling pretty good in January, but I agree these are not cautious bids.

I agree with you 99 percent Eugene. The original categories (all 8) were almost perfect, the exception being BA, which should have been OBP from the beginning because Walks count against pitchers and should count for hitters (especially if you aren't counting runs). Each category serves as a proxy for skills that are valued in baseball, and figuring out how to value them in our game is the challenge.

That said, batting average is good fun. Love to get the .320 Michael Conforto season, the .354 Willie McGee season, the .250 Chris Davis season and see your fortunes change. That's fine. Just as the 2020 Christian Yelich was not.

And where the one percent comes in, I'm a fan of tinkering. Changes present different challenges and that's not a bad thing. But I understand why others aren't fans.

We're not playing real baseball.  If so, we would count different stats with different values. We're playing a specific game.  For that reason I have no issue with AVG over OBP, although I play in an OBP league as well as two with AVG.  I despise QS. It's a bogus stat that doesn't actual measure quality.  All three of my leagues have Ks already b/c they are 5x5, so removing Wins only devalues the top starters who are more likely to get higher win totals.  I'm sure there are many better measures of starting pitcher quality than Wins, but not in simple form.  We already have Ks, WHIP, and ERA (nobody uses ERA+ or even FIP or xFIP [why should we?, we already have walks and Ks in various forms]).

I'm good with using what we have always used.  It's not baseball. It's a game based on baseball.

I do like wins. And I do like batting average.

When I was a kid rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers wins was the only category, at first. And when I learned about batting average, I started caring about that.

The New York Times listed batters by batting average each Sunday, pitchers by ERA. I became a huge fan of ERA.

And here I am.

If Okrent (as a very precocious baseball fan -- he's younger than I am) had invented Rotisserie baseball when I was watching Junior Gilliam on a black and white TV, saves would not have been a category.

And now, we could just as easily ditch saves.

I like wins, too ... and custom ball parks ... and natural grass ... so your reason for preferring BA to OBP strikes me apples vs oranges ...

Hitter A: .260/.320/.400

Hitter B: .240/.340/.400

How can you prefer to play a game in which Hitter A is valued more than Hitter B?  Because in real baseball, Hitter B is a more valuable hitter than Hitter A ... simple as that, right?

I love my Tony Gwynn ... and admit that Wade Boggs was a better hitter ...

These bids seem high for a 32 year old guy Wikipedia says "missed the entire 2020 season due to undergoing surgery to repair a flexor tendon in his right arm" 

Put this down as "Lynch Mob PAN" 

Unless he's in the Best Shape Of His Life, of course :-)

I like wins.  Maybe because early in my roto career Jeff Parrett helped win a league for me back in '92.

But really, I like wins for the same reason I like batting average.

I feel like people who want to move to OBP and Quality Starts are the intellectual descendants of those who thought all ballparks should have uniform outfield dimensions and artificial turf.

Tim might like him - but when he got tossed out at $2 to kick off the CBS auction everyone passed.

Pomeranz drew $8.

Hi Bluester.

Everybody hates wins now, except Alex. I'm sure he'll be happy to say you can't drop wins, that's why we play the game.

But the problems with Wins as a category have always been there. In Tout Wars' new 12-team mixed auction league we're experimenting with two "innovations." Wins are replaced by Innings Pitched, and Saves are replaced by Saves plus Holds.

We can ignore the latter. In terms of wins and IP, relying on the short season isn't helpful. There was so much churn and so many short starts that many pitchers who you wouldn't expect to have wins got more than their share, and wins are a huge factor in pitching pricing. 

Wins are somewhat random + Wins are a huge factor in pitching pricing = A reason to change.

But wins have always been a big part of innings. In 2019 the correlation coefficient for Wins compared to IP was .89. So only 11 percent of wins totals aren't explained by innings pitched. Overall.

This is why changing from Wins to IP means little change in your formulas. Pitchers on bad teams get a slight bump, but most of the change comes from the freaky middle relievers who end up winning a lot of games. It's fair to take them out of the equation. Starters with a few more innings don't move any needle very much.

Replacing wins with strikeouts, on the other hand, is totally different. Wins is 89 percent innings,  whoah, wins are 86 percent of strikeouts. Not that different.

You'll definitely want to boost your top strikeout pitchers, and since you're playing in NL only all the other pitchers who get strikeouts get a boost. But it seems not a giant one, because if they weren't striking out guys they may well have been getting wins.

I'm surprised. And enjoy the novelty of your new rules.

In Tout Wars we've dropped all the IP and AB minimums. 5x5 polices that stuff. 

In the ADL (resolutely 4x4) we landed on 11 pitchers and 1050 innings. But if you finish between 950 and 1050 you don't get 0 points in ERA and WHIP, you get the missing innings added at 10 ERA and 20 WHIP. And standings are adjusted.

But since we went to 10 pitchers only one team has missed the minimum and that was sort of strategic somehow, that I can't right now describe. That I can't right now imagine.

Is the Closer Monkey up?

Even if he is our very own Tim McLeod's closer rankings are very considered and seem to me to be useful. Click here to read.

Very exact bid, I'd say.

Peter and Folks:

Both my leagues are dumping wins, one for innings pitched and the other for strike outs. Each are deep NL only leagues; #1: 5x5 league, wins replaced by innings; #2, 4 x4, wins replaced by strike outs. My question - Should these changes have any effect on my pitcher choices and/or budget (I usually will spend $70 to $75 on pitching). Any NL names that get bumped up by reason of these changes? Thanks.

Here is the CBS NL only draft: https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/news/fantasy-baseball-2021-mock-draft-nl-only-salary-cap-draft-results-in-big-bidding-for-high-end-studs/

In Rotoman's newsletter today --

ROTOROB PICK: Sure, Corbin was horrendous last year, compiling the worst WHIP of any qualified starter. But he also had the highest BABIP in the bigs -- 51 points higher than his career mark. There's no doubt Corbin has regressed in the past two years, but the underlying numbers suggest a bounce-back is coming. Perhaps not to his 2018 level of greatness, but certainly more in line with his 2017 or 2019 seasons.

https://rotoman.substack.com/p/rotomans-guide-newsletter-no-11

I imagine I'm not the only one who got this in the mail today at 1:15 PM.

Rotoman's Guide Newsletter No. 11

Finding that surprising pitcher

Jonathan Loaisiga, Yankees: He throws hard and his curve gets plenty of swing and miss. He hasn’t had any success so far and missed much of 2019 with rotator cuff issues, plus he’s expected to work in relief, all good reasons he should be no more than a dollar or two in AL-only auctions. The physical talent is there, can health, opportunity, and the mental part come together?

https://rotoman.substack.com/p/rotomans-guide-newsletter-no-11

I know that Mike liked my pic if he hadn't I might have gotten Cain for $9 if I remember correctly. ;-)

Not so fast with that Sort #.

Among other fits of candor that got the Mariners' CEO fired on Monday:

Likewise, Mather hailed the prospect Logan Gilbert as a “top-of-the-rotation pitcher,” but said “you won’t see him on April 1, but by mid-April.” And while the Mariners had several top prospects at their alternate training site last season, Mather said that he had a better chance of being called up to the majors than they did.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/sports/baseball/kevin-mather-mariners.html

Willie Calhoun not only is an oufielder in Mike Gianella's Outfield Tier Rankings, posted today at BP, he's the --

Two-Star Value Pick: Willie Calhoun
The market is probably giving up too soon on Calhoun, who is being drafted well outside the Top 300 thus far. The raw power that gives Calhoun a chance to slug 30-35 home runs didn’t go anywhere, and there isn’t anything in 2020’s limited sample that sounds any alarm bells. At this reduced price, Calhoun is the outfielder you want if you’re looking to shoot for the moon in the last round or two of your draft.

 baseballprospectus.com

BP's Mike G likes this pick, Phil.

His "Outfield Tiered Ranking for 2021 (Part 2") went up today.

One of my favorite types of bargains are players who are talented but who are also getting discounted because of playing-time concerns. The Mets signings of Albert Almora and Kevin Pillar could squeeze Nimmo out of some starts (particularly against lefties), but he should still get most of the reps in center for the Mets. Veterans who still have some gas left in the tank are also tempting targets, and Cain’s PECOTA projection doesn’t lie, as he could be a 15/20 hitter if he can recapture his form after opting out of the 2020 season. He’s ranked this low not merely because he missed a full season but because his 2019 was a step down from Cain’s prior levels of performance.

baseballprospectus.com