In this Game Theory Article, I’m going to look at a pitcher’s ERA and how owners perceive it. All ERAs aren’t created equal, but as a fantasy owner we do compartmentalize are a large portion of them.

Understanding how other owners perceive ERA (or any other roto stat) is important to getting the most out of a trade. By no means does an owner’s perception of an ERA directly reflect his willingness to trade that player or alter his prognostication of future performance, but it will hint at chinks in the armor to exploit. An owner’s projection of future performance will largely depend on his fantasy baseball experience and the more skilled the owner, the more likely he is to rely on advanced statistics and the player’s previous statistics.

0.00 -> 1.69 ERA

This is the first compartment for a pitcher’s ERA and it’s by far the most complex of the bunch. This number is so far below the expected ERA for (almost) every pitcher and so unrealistic, owners by and large, will actually penalize a player for accumulating an ERA this low. Inexperienced owners may very well think that lower is better, but experienced owners often act counter-intuitively. Owners will simply associate an ERA this low with “Too Good To Be True” and not even attempt a trade. They assume they’ll be paying a premium for such a hot start, when in reality, the premium is minimal (or even negative) because the current owner is also shares the belief that an ERA this low is too good to be true. In reality, an ERA this low IS too good to be true but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try and acquire the player.

Take a player like Chris Narveson, Jeremy Guthrie, or Jaime Garcia, they’ve all posted two very good starts and everyone knows that their success won’t continue at this level, but that doesn’t mean that they’ve flashed the skills to post an ERA lower than expected. If Jaime Garcia had posted an ERA in the twos, everyone would be calling his start legit, amazing and definitely real but since it’s in the zeros, no one wants to give him credit. On player’s like this, it’s almost best to look at the peripherals while assuming a mid-2′s ERA in order to trick your brain.

1.70 -> 2.99 ERA

This is the next step and for some reason owners perceive these ERAs as legitimate and as a result of improved skill. Owners are far more willing to look at an ERA in this region as a legitimate manifestation rather than a luck-based period of dominance. For some reason, owners will trust their deductive reasoning skills in this area while completely disregarding them in the previous tier. When you have a great early season pitcher that you think will eventually flutter, you’re far more likely to deal him if his ERA sits in this region. Owner’s don’t have to suspend disbelief and can draw up numerous example of early season all-stars that’ve continued their dominance throughout the year and posted an ERA from 1.70 to 2.99.

When it comes to fantasy baseball, it’s all about making sure the other owner can compare the current player to someone in recent history. People dreamed on Brandon Belt because Jason Heyward, Michael Stanton, Buster Posey and Pedro Alvarez all succeeded last year. Last year was the year of the rookie, but that doesn’t matter to ninety-five out of a hundred owners. Everyone rationalizes their acquisition of Belt by pointing to the aforementioned 2010 Rookies. Had last year’s rookies pulled a Cameron Maybin/Alex Gordon impersonation, the hype around Brandon Belt would’ve been slightly tempered.

3.00->4.24 ERA

This is the “as expected” ERA and everyone can basically rationalize the performance of any pitcher that’s performed at this level. Whether it’s Roy Halladay, Shaun Marcum, John Danks or Mr. Complete Nobody, fantasy owners can rationalize their ERA in this area and the value doesn’t change even if the pitcher in question should be sporting a far higher or far lower ERA. It’ll take a damn long time for an owner to realize that their star pitcher’s 4.07 ERA will stick around for the year. You could cut this off at the 3.99 region, but I’ve found that there’s very little difference between 3.99 and the low-4.00s.

When pitchers enter this category after posting high-4.00′s and 5.00 ERAs throughout their career, they’re often very easy to acquire relative to their performance. They haven’t done quite enough to sell the current owner on being an owner and have performed about as well as expect…

4.25 -> 5.99 ERA

This is the ERA that you should target if you’d like to get a steal or two. Owners have had players on their teams that’ve posted ERAs in this region before and they’ve definitely had a high-round draft pick that has settled into this area. This is the fear area and there’s a genuine question in the owners head as to whether or not this ERA is legit. We’ve all had 2010 A.J. Burnett’s on our rosters before. We’ve all had 2010 Josh Beckett’s on our roster before. We’ve all had that fear that goes along with knowing that these guys might not turn it around this year. Owners can relate to this ERA and have experienced it. It’s really the sweet spot when it comes to trading.

6.00+ ERA

This is much like the first category in that people refuse to believe it’s real and almost assign no value to the events that’ve occurred. Billingsley, Cliff Lee, and Francisco Liriano could continue their post-6.00 ERA for a month and their trade value wouldn’t budge unless their was speculation of an injury. Anxious and neophyte owners will often trade these players, but in serious leagues they’ll be almost impossible to acquire.

That’s basically it. There’s a lot of stuff that goes into public perception of a player, but ERA plays a small part. It plays an even larger part with players that had uncertainty following them into the season. A lot of people love Ted Lilly, but they also fully acknowledged the fact that he could fall apart at some point this season. When there’s that uncertainty going into a season, fantasy owners are far more likely to stop trusting the statistics and start relying on their gut.

I fully understand why the big-boys over at Yahoo! and ESPN write numerous articles detailing how you should never wheel and deal too early and you should always buy low and sell high. Their audience is mainly public leaguers and you’re lucky if you get one other owner that knows what he’s doing.

How many of us play in Leagues where selling high is a viable option, though? Really, does anyone play in a league where you can parlay a hot start into anything more than a bump of one or two spots in your pre-draft rankings?

Well, I think it’s about time I started writing a piece here and there about making trades in serious leagues with serious owners.

The goal of a trade is always to identify and then capitalize on the difference between perception and reality. The larger the gap, the more room you have to operate. In competitive leagues, the perception gaps are definitely smaller but they still exist because of personal biases. In public leagues, perception shifts with the wind: A hot start means that a players worth owning, a dominant performance can be extrapolated across the season, and an 0-6 start means that the Red Sox are done.

In serious leagues, it’s a bit different but you can still use perception and biases to your advance.

• In a lot of serious leagues, fantasy owners will often OVERvalue rather than UNDERvalue, a player’s peripherals.
• In serious leagues, owners will often OVERvalue prospect (and youth) production.
• In serious leagues, owners often blatantly ignore improved performance in favour of long-term data in order to limit risk.
• In serious leagues, no one wants to look like an idiot.

Every fantasy player has a certain set of personal biases towards players. Finding these biases can be a chore, but once you’ve picked up on them you can exploit them. Fantasy Sports are really just a very complicated version of Texas Hold ‘Em Poker. There’s some skill and some luck, but regardless of skill and experience, patterns will develop.

I’ll start by dealing with the Post-Hype Sleeper and in particular, Cameron Maybin.

Maybin’s an interesting case, but he’s not a unique case. Once a top-ten prospect, Maybin basically stunk the joint up in Florida and now finds himself in San Diego. He’s putting up decent numbers and could either be getting lucky or maybe he’s on his way to being a useful fantasy player.

Anyone that’s ever owned Maybin (or Alex Gordon) before will err on the side of caution. They’ll remember on just how badly Maybin screwed their team. Their biases will generally trend towards Maybin being a fluke rather than Maybin genuinely improving with a change of scenery. If you think Maybin’s going to continue improving, it’s pretty easy to take Maybin off their hands. If you give them anything, they’ll assume that they’re selling high.

If this is the first time that you or another owner has rostered Maybin though, it’s different. The person that’s missed out on Maybin while he was a prospect still reflects on Baseball America’s praise and figures he’ll *FINALLY* develop. It’s much tougher to acquire Maybin from someone who thinks they’ve made a great late-round pick and they’re the owner that correctly predicted Maybin’s breakthrough. It is, however, much easier to sell to these fantasy owners and you can normally sell high to these guys (if you think Maybin isn’t legit, obviously.)

There’s a huge gap in perception when it comes to post-hype sleepers and it’s almost fully based on whether or not the owner’s rostered the player before.

In competitive leagues, the bigger the gap in perception from one owner to the next, the greater the chance of getting a trade done. These are the guys you have to target and post-hype sleepers obviously aren’t the only type of players with a perception-gap but they’re a good start…

Again. Really? Another Position Scarcity Article? Well, fangraphs brought it up again. Rather than continuing to type out massive amounts of gibberish o’er there, I’ll do it here.

When you look to plug your catcher position, it mustbe filled by a catcher. Therefore, catchers should be compared to catchers and third baseman to the corner infield pool in order to calculate their useful stats. Once that task is complete, then and only then can you begin comparing players within one positional pool to the rest of the player pool.

I think we’re all pretty smart and understand that comparing raw statistics is stupid. The question is how should we compare catchers to third basemen?

First, we should do absolutely everything possible to eliminate category scarcity from our rankings. A catcher stealing ten extra bases is no different than an outfielder stealing ten extra bases. Specific categories is something that you’ll have to account for yourself during your draft. If there are two equally valuable outfielders and you need stolen bases, draft the outfielder that has stolen bases. Adding value above the mean in the form of Z-Scores for each position is a bad idea. In almost every case, our samples aren’t normally distributed because of a small sample size or just the fact that we’re arbitrarily cutting them off to fit our league settings.

Second,

1. This isn’t about what the average player will produce
2. This isn’t about what the average drafted player will produce
3. This isn’t about what the replacement level player will produce
4. This is about what the average TEAM will produce

Your goal is simple: Win the league. To win the league you must accumulate statistics. This may seem simple, but it seems to get lost during the positional scarcity discussion. Everyone starts looking at the projected statistics for the 17 catchers drafted when they assign a multiplier to the catcher position. The fact of the matter is that many of the drafted players will never see a single AB in your fantasy line-up. They’re not drafted because of their projected mediocre statistics, they’re drafted because of their ability to put up statistics that will warrant a spot as the starting catcher on someone’s roster.

When you’re assessing risk, you should pay attention to the three points mentioned above because it is about what the average player, average drafted player and average replacement level will produce. When you’re calculating position scarcity, though, that means absolutely nothing. The only thing that matters is how many statistics a player will accumulate compared to other point accumulating players.

For the purpose of examples, I’ll simply assume a default Yahoo! League. In our Yahoo! league, we have 12 of each position, and 12 UTIL (any position) spots.

When dealing with position scarcity, we needn’t bother with anything beyond these spots.

The average output for these spots is a 0.285 Batting Average, 87R, 20.5HR, 79RBI, 13.4SB.

It’s pretty easy to see that stolen bases are traditionally undervalued compared to HR. If you’re in a league where everyone has the exact same strategy (draft the most valuable player,) you’ll end up with each team averaging 122 stolen bases. Obviously none of us have ever been in a league without strategy, so there’s a very good chance that the stolen base numbers will be higher because people will sacrifice other categories to attain those stolen bases. However, these numbers adequately reflect major league norms: In 2011, the average team clubbed 154 HR while stealing 99 bases (1.55-to-1 ratio) and our fantasy squad puts up a 1.53-to-1 ratio.

Looking at the projections from Rotochamp, here’s what each top-round selection provides beyond the numbers in raw statistics:

These are what you’d expect not above the replacement player, but rather above the average player in someone’s roster or above the average player currently accumulating points.

When you evaluate players based solely on the mean, you completely disregard distribution. Disregarding distribution is a terrible idea, but I’m a believer that it makes more sense to use your brain-mind  than it does a distribution model to compute distribution. The distribution of the statistics won’t give you a clear enough idea as to their true value, but your brain-mind easily interprets and digests (probably w/ more precisions) than a computer. The larger the sample size, the better job the computer will do but in the case of a standard yahoo! league, you’re interpretation of the statistics will be more competent.

When you compare an individual player’s projections to the mean, you’re not assuming that any particular player within the player groups puts up specific statistics; you’re just assuming that someone puts up those statistics and they’re on someone’s roster while they do it. This is why I always stress the importance of understanding whether or not you’re the smartest guy in the league. The ability to predict which players jump in and out of the top-twelve is far more important than the ability to calculate position scarcity.

….to be continued..

I enjoy random strategies, especially the punting of batting average. A bad batting average will absolutely make or break how a player’s perceived. Our underlying biases really draw us away from those .220 hitters and we tend to overrate the importance of batting average. People view rate states in a completely different manner than they view counting states. No one looks at low HR totals as a stat that will *hurt* you, but a low batting average is always viewed as a statistic that will inflict sadistic pain on your fantasy roster. If we transformed the HR category into a rate stat, say HR / AB, Jacoby Ellsbury would be the new Adam Dunn.

Thus, here’s a list of gentlemen that’ll bring the awful by achieving 60% or less of the possible 100% points available for BA. As is generally the case, Ichiro comes in tops in RotoChamp‘s projections because of his hatred of the walk and free-swinging mentality. When you punt batting average, you’re essentially eliminating 1/5th of your offensive production and thus, you’ve got to make that up in the other categories. These strategies often work much better in head-to-head leagues where you only have to beat your opponent and it doesn’t matter by how much.

C: Carlos Santana, Geovany Soto, Miguel Montero, Mike Napoli, Jorge Posada, Chris Ianetta, J.P. Arencibia, John Buck, Russell Martin, , Miguel Olivo, Rod Barajas, Alex Avila, Chris Snider, and a host of other catchers are below average in terms of batting average.

Catcher’s always interesting because people really tend to overvalue the batting average portion of the equation but their limited ABs really end up placing them below average.

Your Best Bets: Mike Napoli, Chris Iannetta, Jorge Posada, John Buck and J.P. Arencibia.

1B: Mark Teixera, Price Fielder, Ryan Howard, Adam Dunn, Adam LaRoche, Carlos Pena, Lance Berkman, Garrett Jones, Kila Ka’aihue, Brett Wallace, Matt LaPorta, Chris Davis, Russell Branyan

First Base always comes with a great average and the cut-off seems to be .270 in terms of perception. Anything in the .260s and lower really scares people off, but they feel like they can manage it with .270.

Your Best Bets: Ryan Howard, Adam Dunn, Carlos Pena and Prince Fielder all provide huge amounts of power and counting stats. If you’re going to punt batting average, you have to grab a couple power-hitting first basemen and slot them in wherever you can.

2B: Brandon Phillips, Rickie Weeks, Dan Uggla, Aaron Hill, Kelly Johnson, Gordon Beckham, Sean Rodriguez, Ty Wigginton, Juan Uribe, Danny Espinosa, Reid Brignac, and Bill Hall.

Ideally, you want to grab Phillips, Weeks or Uggla. If you’re not getting Uggla, you should nab some kind of power-speed combination with your second base pick.

Your Best Bets: Dan Uggla, Aaron Hill, Rickie Weeks, Danny Espinosa, Reid Brignac, Sean Rodriguez, Brandon Phillips.

SS: Jimmy Rollins, Ian Desmond, Alcides Escobar, Asdrubal Cabrera, Jhonny Peralta, J.J. Hardy,

Shortstop is a barren wasteland in 2011.

Your Best Bet: Grab some runs. Unless you can get Jimmy Rollins here, there’s not too many gentlemen that put up awful batting averages. I think someone like Alcides Escobar offers a lot of upside if you want to wait..

3B: Alex Rodriguez, Jose Bautista, Aramis Ramirez, Pedro Alvarez, Ian Stewart, Mark Reynolds, Edwin Encarnacion, Kevin Kouzmanoff, Chipper Jones, Casey Blake, Brent Morel

Third base is absolutely loaded with options this year.

Best Buy: Depends where you wanna pick, really. I think Bautista will play as an OF, but A-Rod, Ramirez, Alvarez, Stewart and Reynolds are all must targets.

OF: Matt Kemp, Jose Bautista, Alex Rios, B.J. Upton, Mike Stanton, Chris Young, Michael Bourn, Corey Hart, Curtis Granderson, Colby Rasmus, Drew Stubbs, Brett Gardner, Bobby Abreu, Vernon Wells, Grady Sizemore,  Jason Bay, Nick Swisher, Snider, Torres, Rayburn, Austin Jackson, Matt Joyce and a plethora of other players

Outfield is deep and it’s generally where you have to get your steals from. There’s all sorts of value in a player like B.J. Upton and Drew Stubbs, and even Brett Gardner and Curtis Granderson.

Best Option: Best available player with a BA lower than .275 — preferably speed-oriented.

Here’s a full list of BA that *hurt* you:

I have all sorts of unwritten yet incredibly clever rules floating around in my head. They’ll get different names depending on my mood on that particular day.

Today, it was inspired by some fangraphs article imploring you not to reach for a third basemen when there’s an equally talented third basemen a few rounds later. Well, I can’t help but view this as a simple reworking of the basic “tier your players” fantasy logic.

I’m going to tell you to completely and totally ignore that logic because no one likes a reach, unless it’s a reach around.

Going into a draft and after weeks of studying, you’ll have your favorite players. You’ll compare their ADP to what you project as a probable outcome and decide, “Damn! I’m going to get me some Brian Matusz this year!”

Well, every other player in your league has done the exact same thing and if you’re in a competitive league, there will be a couple of guys that have the same list of value picks that you do. If you want that player on your roster, you’re going to have to reach but you really shouldn’t reach too far, you should reach somewhere between your projected upside and the players actual ADP.

If you like a player and project that he’s going to perform at a certain level then go ahead and draft him. In the early rounds, you may get your nuts busted for drafting a 24th ADP at 15th overall, but that player is not going to get back to you so if you want him, you’ve got to draft him. You can wait until after the draft, but more often than not you’ll be placed in a situation where the rosters don’t match and you have to give up more than just your 15th pick.

In the later rounds, shit gets hairy. If you want to draft a player, just go ahead and draft him two or three rounds before his ADP if  you think he’ll perform at that level. Ideally, you’d want to draft him right before the next owner, but since you’re not a mind reader you’ve got to occasionally reach.

Everyone gets so hung up with ADPs and get personally offended when someone drafts one of their guys too far ahead of their ADP. Just because you’ve decided that a player is a great bargain doesn’t entitle you to his rights because odds are everyone else sees the same thing that you do.

At the end of the year, there are all sorts of player that drastically out-pace their ADP and others that lag well behind their projected value. If you’ve done your due diligence and genuinely believe that a player will perform at an expected level, DRAFT HIM before anyone else does.

Trust your math and your gut and be aggressive. Fantasy Baseball isn’t about who can put together the best set of ADPs or best set of projected statistics. It’s about who has the most points at the end of the year.

A reach in March is a brilliant move in October. Don’t be stupid, but be aggressive.

I love projection models. They do a great job taking available data and spitting out a reasonable expectation of output for the upcoming season. If you’re in a competitive league, I’m sure you’ve seen owners sifting through excel tabs named MARCEL, ESPN, YAHOO, ROTOCHAMP, BILL JAMES, ZIPS, and AVERAGE.

Projection models don’t tell the whole story though and that’s why you need to use your brain-mind in addition to the projection models. In very competitive leagues, this is one of the few spots that you can get an advantage on your competition. While your entire league’s evaluating players based on the models, you’ll be relying on your head and gut to interpret rather than rely on the data.

Here’s what I mean: A projection model will look at a player like Josh Johnson and decide that he’s due to pitch 179 innings in 2011. That isn’t to say that Josh Johnson has the greatest probability of pitching 179 innings but rather it’s a combination of how many innings Johnson has pitched in previous years combined with (more than likely) a weighted average of Johnson’s predicted Innings Pitched.

This was just quickly tossed together to illustrate a point. You’ll notice it’s Josh Johnson versus Mr. Blue in terms of probability of achieving X number of innings pitched. Johnson (green line) has a much higher chance of accumulating very few innings pitched than Mr. Blue as illustrated by the orange in the graph. Because of this higher probability of absolute failure, Johnson’s predicted innings pitched are less than Mr. Blue and thus, his fantasy points will depend on that number. Yet, as you can see, Johnson probably won’t pitch that amount of innings. There’s a much greater chance of Johnson pitching considerably more innings and he probably has around the same shot of pitching 200, 210, 230, 2-whatever as Mr. Blue.

Well, when it comes to fantasy baseball, the ORANGE area really doesn’t matter all that much. If Johnson’s on the DL all year, we can find a replacement. If Johnson does terribly, we can find a replacement. Our replacement will not be as good as Johnson, but he’ll suffice.

Our projection of Josh Johnson already takes into account that Josh Johnson is an injury risk. There is no need to further downgrade him. Quite frankly, I’m all for projecting Josh Johnson as a full-time starter while keeping track of risk. So rather than accounting for risk on every player individually and adjusting their points individually, you account for risk on a team basis.

This is only part of how projection models calculate IP, though. They also look at how many innings our player (Johnson) has pitched in the past and weight the most recent years the heaviest. In most cases they do not discriminate though. If our player missed a week because of a nasty case of athlete’s foot, the models count it the same as a week with shoulder soreness.

That’s why you have to root through a player’s injury history to see exactly what kind of innings you can expect from your player. Our player, Johnson, has had shoulder issues so the point is moot in this case.

I just want to make sure that everyone interprets their projection models correctly because it’s a serious problem when you look at a projection model and then start highlighting players that are injury risks. Johnson may well get injured and is definitely a risky pick, but his 179 IP isn’t a ceiling, it’s an average.

After looking through the statistics, I’m starting to doubt whether or not I should even bother drafting a catcher. Obviously, I’ll have a catcher on my roster but I’m not sure if I want to pay more than the league minimum to acquire a catcher. This may be the first year that I purposely stream the catching position.

I won’t be paying for Joe Mauer. Too many fantasy owners look at Mauer’s absolute batting average rather than looking at it relative to his plate appearances. As with any catcher, Mauer’s also an injury risk and 23rd overall just seems crazy to me.

Victor Martinez is a safe bet, but he’s a 32-year old catcher in Detroit. Martinez should get the bulk of the DH ABs, but I worry that ESPN’s 25HR projection may be a bit optimistic and V-Mart coming off the board at 43rd scares me.

I love Buster Posey, but I doubt I’ll compete in a single fantasy league where his hype and youth don’t move him up a round. Same goes for Carlos Santana, but there’s still so much uncertainty around the kid.  Brian McCann’s one of the few catchers that I’ll target as he’s shown consistency and should play well on an improved Braves’ squad.

After a couple rounds without a catcher, Soto looks good but his on-again off-again style worries me. I’m not sure what Miguel Montero to expect, but he better not have a 24% K-Rate. Wieters, Napoli, Molina, Suzuki, Posada, and Ruiz are either boring or risky.

So the simple question is why I should take that risk when the same amount of risk-reward is available well into the 200s?

Chris Iannetta’s had hype for a very long time and John Buck just came off a smash-kill season. J.P. Arencibia, who replaced Buck in Toronto, should hit 20 homers in Toronto. Everyone hits 20 HR in Toronto. Russell Martin was an elite catching option just a couple years ago and the youngster behind him is a top-5 prospect.

Hell, I don’t care who takes the starting catching job in Boston, I’d happily toss them on my roster. Saltalamacchia used to be a highly regarded prospect back when Texas had three amazing catching prospects (Max Ramirez, Salty and Teagarden — What happened there?)

There’s just so much upside at catcher this year, it seems almost ridiculous to target a player based on position scarcity. Why not just keep a catcher as your absolute last roster spot and continually play the hot hand. I’m going to have no problem dropping John Buck to pick up Arencibia and then dropping J.P. to pick up Salty.

It’s not just about player distribution, though. You have to remember that position scarcity shouldn’t skew your other analyses. Even if catcher were incredibly shallow, that doesn’t make it right to disregard their increased chance of injury. When fantasy players start focusing on math that they don’t understand, they lose common sense. Joe Mauer’s terrific Z-Scores are useless if he’s got a sore back…

Will Carrol, the INJURY EXPERT, recently claimed that 90% of people had no clue what OPS was and it was tough to explain it.

So here goes (from wikipedia)

where OBP is on-base percentage, and SLG is slugging percentage. These percentages are defined

and

Now, Let’s make it digestible for STUPID PEOPLE:

Screw Hit By Pitch. Screw Sacrifice Flies. Rickie Weeks got dinged 25 times last year and we’re dealing with less than 20 sacrifice flies (or hits). Big deal. Screw ‘em.

EXPLANATON:

When a batter comes to bat he can either go back to the bench or go to a base. The end. So, as a fan, we want to know exactly how often a batter runs to a base and how often he heads back to the dug-out.  Might as well get it in a percentage because we like percentage. It’s 80% humidity with a 70% chance of showers and there’s 100% shot of me awkwardly getting arm-pit sweat stains and having to spend the rest of the day hiding them from some chick that I’m totally into. Anyways, player A gets on base 40% of the time and thus has a 0.400 On Base Percentage. Ta da.

Obviously, not all hits are created equal. Some people hit DINGERS! So the second thing we want to know is just how far the guy gets when he hits the ball. Well, just divide the number of bases that the dude’s touched by the amount of AT BATS.

Now we have everything we need to know about the batter. We know how often he gets on base and we know how far he gets. Add them together and ta-da.

This isn’t the perfect formula as there’s some double counting going on, but gosh darn does it tell a great story.

There seems to be a plethora of uncertainty leading into 2011 and it’s affecting big name players on very good ball clubs. If you tell me Chase Utley needs surgery and will miss two months of the season, I know how to value him on draft-day. If you tell me that he’s achy and no-one knows what the hell’s going on, then I have issues. Then we all have issues.

Anyways, here’s a few tips and tricks I’ve developed over the course of my fantasy lifetime that’s gotta be closing in on the 15-year anniversary sometime soon. Shit, that’s a long time. If you take anything from this, take this: It all comes down to league format and league depth.

In a head-to-head league, your goal is to win the championship in the final month of the season. Based on your league and how you’ve fared in the past, you should know whether or not you’ll be making the playoffs heading into the season. If you know that you’re always first to the waiver-wire and have nabbed a great sleeper pick in the past three years, you’re probably good to go. For the most part, the uncertainty resides in the top-tier clubs and Chase Utley, Justin Morneau, Kendry Morales, Grady Sizemore, Jason Bay, Carlos Quentin and even Dom Brown and Michael Cuddyer will be in an actual playoff race while our fantasy seasons are separating the men from the boys. Even if they’re on and off of the DL for the entirety of the season, you want these players on your roster when the playoffs roll around.

How to get them on your rosters is the question: Do you draft these guys and hope for the best or do you attempt to trade for them and if you do attempt to trade for them, when do you try and pull the trigger?

Again, this will depend on league format. A lot of shallower leagues are transitioning to very, very few disabled list spots to keep rosters moving. I like these leagues because fantasy baseball’s nothing more than showing other people that your decision making skills are superior in every way. Thus, the more decisions the better! Right? Right. In these shallow DL leagues, it makes sense to pass on these gimpy all-stars on draft day but acquire them during their first *return* to the disabled list. Anyone that drafts Chase Utley or Justin Morneau is expecting them to miss time so their value will not come down until they miss more time than the owner expected. Some owners are more fickle than others and you can normally tell by the ADDED/DROPPED archives. If Utley’s owner has made 10 transactions in a week, you know he’s got his eye on another second basemen and is just waiting for someone to ask for Utley. If you’re in a money league with the buds, you already know the owners’ personalities. You can tell who’s busy micromanaging and who’s just sitting back and letting the world happen.

In leagues with multiple DL spots it’s quite different though. It’s nearly impossible to pry away an injured player from an owner who has him stashed on the DL. Prying away that player means that they have to give up not only Utley, but also their current second basemen, in order to make the roster limits work. You know that owner’s going to value that as a two-for-one trade and you know you’ll actually have to OVERPAY to pry him off the DL. In these cases, you either have to DRAFT the gimpy all-star or you have to pray for at least a few weeks to a month of mediocrity.

A mediocre month from Utley means that you can realistically throw an owner a Rickie Weeks for Chase Utley trade and it’ll look real good. Swap a couple of bench players to finalize the deal and bam, you’re now the proud owner of Chase Utley. In a head-to-head league you can simply carry an extra second basemen and wait it out. Utley will perform for you during the playoffs and the difference between a healthy Utley and a healthy Weeks at the end of the season will give you a great shot at winning it all.

In points leagues and roto leagues it’s a bit different, though. You can’t just *make* the playoffs, you have to accumulate the most points. You have to figure out just how successful you think these players will be and how many games you’ll get out of ‘em.

Let’s look at Chase Utley:

He’ll probably be gimpy on and off for the majority of the year and you’ll get 100 games out of him. That means you’ve got to find 62 games from someone like Tsuyoshi Nishioka. Well, it’s really as simple as running the math.

PROJECTIONS DIVIDED BY PROJECTED GAMES MULTIPLIED BY EXPECTED GAMES and then ADD UTLEY AND THE REPLACEMENT PLAYER TOGETHER. Then Subtract 5%-10% because you’ll probably screw this strategy up a couple times. We’re morons and we’ll keep playing a gimpy Utley until we just can’t take it anymore.

You’ll end up with a projection that will surprise you. A gimpy Utley and a replacement player generally aren’t that bad. The deeper the league, the worse the replacement player gets, but you’ll notice that Utley still comes in as a terrific second base option at 100-115 games. You do have to keep in mind that you’re essentially wasting the power of a bench player, though. But turning a gimpy Chase Utley into essentially Ian Kinsler is a great sacrifice of your bench player.

In points and roto leagues, I’m all about drafting players like this because it allows you to prepare for their eventual gimpiness. That way, you can go ahead and draft that second basemen that’s above replacement level to compliment Utley.

If you’re league’s very active, trading for a gimpy player will save you money in every possible situation unless that player just takes off. You have to remember that most people really focus in on players around this time of the year and a knock on Utley now will stick with him throughout the entire year. “Isn’t that what bugged him back in Spring Training?” is generally a common sentence during the day-to-day bullshitting of fantasy baseball.

After nabbing your gimp, make sure to double up and try to acquire someone’s back-up second basemen that’s not doing anything. Normally an end of the line, flavour of the week, starting pitcher will get the job done. They’ll see that they can add to their pitching totals without sacrificing any of their hitting and bam! deal’s done.

This is often one of the hardest parts of fantasy baseball. For the most part, fantasy owners will not carry too many offensive bench players because once the schedule gets rolling, there’s very little opportunity to slot them into your roster. It seems like about half of the owners completely forsake the offensive bench player and use the extra roster spot to throw another pitcher into the mix. Even with this approach, it’s not very often that all of your starters and relievers will be going on the same day. This is a great strategy, but if an offensive player flops or ends up injured but not on the DL you’re up the creek without a paddle. In shallow leagues this generally isn’t a problem as you can find a competent replacement on the waiver-wire by sacrificing a pitcher. In medium to deep leagues though, the offensive bench player is key.

What to Look For In an Offensive Bencher:

There are two ways to approach this conundrum and it will largely depend on the roster that you’re already fielding. If while you’re drafting your roster looks a bit old and gimpy, I’d be running towards the safety net. If you look at your roster and it looks good, but something’s missing, I’d go running for the high-upside players that’ll be scooped up immediately when they catch fire.

In either strategy, if you can find a multi-eligibility player to fill in these gaps, that’s optimal. Carrying someone that can play 1B, OF and UTIL like Adam Lind seems like a great idea for a bland roster. Lind can be plugged in to a handful of positions, has great power, and will topple down draft boards because of his AWFUL 2010. Ideally in standard leagues, it’s worth a draft pick to carry someone like Mark Reynods (1B/3B) or Ian Stewart (20G @ 2nd) as your bench player. To dig a bit deeper, take a peek at Daniel Murphy. Although Murphy’s sliding out of contention for the starting second basemen’s job, there’s still a shot he’ll get the nod if the Mets want to keep Brad Emaus (optionless) around.

Other players to look at when you’re dealing with a bland roster are the young kids and players coming off brutal years. Freddie Freeman and Ike Davis come to mind.  Chase Headley still provides all sorts of upside and is probably one of those fancy post-hype sleepers.

If your roster is looking solid, I trend towards the players with tangible skills. Jose Tabata and Dexter Fowler provide all sorts of upside and contribute to one category without killing the others. If you’re falling behind in Stolen Bases, just plug one of those guys in for a few games a week to balance your roster. Even if Carlos Pena continues to post an atrocious batting average, he’s a great fit for the bench in head-to-head leagues. On Thursday or Friday, if you’re average is looking good but you’re falling behind in homers, toss in Carlos Pena. In both head to head and even roto leagues, you can micromanage to the extreme and see day by day just how much batting average you can sacrifice for power or just how much power you can sacrifice for stolen bases.

Keeping with the idea of micromanaging, another great idea for your bench player is a SPLITS-KING!

In a deep league, you know who kills left-handed pitching? Lastings Milledge. Who knows if he’ll make the club, but he’s averaging a .350 wOBA against lefties after posting a .400 wOBA last year against south-paws. Hideki Matsui is being drafted 235th overall according to ESPN, but he posted an 0.861 OPS last year against Righties. Luke Scott’s being drafted 216th overall, but he put together a 0.935 OPS season against righties last year.

It’s easy to figure out your team’s splits and your player’s splits by simply jumping over to fangraphs and using a couple years worth of data. Splits can sometimes be fickle, so the more data the better. Lyle Overbay’s pretty good versus Righties and Curtis Granderson is absolutely turrrrible versus lefties (Andre Either ain’t much better either)

The Answer: Find someone that has multi-eligibility. Find someone with high-upside to sit on. Find someone with a single skill to plug and play. Find someone with great splits to play occasionally or find someone to replace one of your players that has terrible splits. Any of these strategies work in fantasy baseball and it’s generally advised to mix-and-match as many as possible into a single player. If you simply draft the *next best* player to be your bench player, he’ll end up being far less useful than someone who actually has a role on your fantasy squad. The *next best* player has to be better than the player ahead of him whereas the types listed above just have to be better at something than the player ahead of him. If your league’s all about trading, you can generally get away with drafting the next best player to fill your coffers.