In my 12 team, non-keeper mixed league I needed to pick up an outfielder. Below are the main guys that were under consideration. Of course there were more but these were the only guys with serious consideration. For background here is the offensive point structure:

1B - Singles
1 point
2B - Doubles
2 points
3B - Triples
3 points
BB - Walks (Batters)
1 point
E - Errors
-1 point
HP - Hit by Pitch
1 point
HR - Home Runs
4 points
R - Runs
1 point
RBI - Runs Batted In
1 point
SB - Stolen Bases
2 points

The guys under consideration:

Chris Young
Ryan Church
Mark Teahen
Randy Winn

Here were my thoughts on each guy:

Chris Young–Clearly he will not be hitting for a high batting average this year. He is batting .253, and his xBA is only .255. That OBP hurts in traditional roto, but in a head to head points league, his combo of power and skill is valuable. With the above point structure a power hitter with low OBP is likely to be more valuable than a singles hitter. Young has above average power and only a 27% hit rate so there is at least potential upside on the BA front. 25HR and 75 RBI is likely the best he can do for the season, not too shabby but not tremendous in a 12 team mixed league.

Ryan Church–I thought at first I would give him the number one spot. However, he plays in a poor hitter’s park, and something like 15 HR and 70 RBI is likely his seasonal upside. He has a nice 12% BB rate, 80% contact rate and a 31% hit rate. So, his underlying stats indicate that he is doing about what one would expect, and he should be able to keep it up without any significant drop off. He appears to be a low risk, low-reward pickup.

Mark Teahen–I actually owned Teahen at the time, and strongly thought he should be dropped. Why? He is probably tapped out; a 35% hit rate that should drop to the norm means he is close to his peak BA right now. It is hard to imagine it will go higher without a huge dose of luck. His contact rate is a not-great 76%, lending further evidence to a dropping BA. According to Shandler’s PX and SX metrics, despite his luck to date in the hit rate department he was below average in both counts: 90 PX and 92 SX. His xBA? A poor .244.

The league structure is such that trades are very rare, and in three years in the league I haven’t done even one trade. So shopping him is out of the question. What else can I do but drop him??

Randy Winn–He is very similar to Teahen, and if i weren’t satisfied with Teahen why Winn?? He has a high BA and the shine of a long hitting streak this year. But he has a 35% hit rate also, well out of line with his career norms. The overall picture is a bit rosier than Teahen’s; Winn has a .282 xBA and a 83% contact rate, so at least he won’t have a precipitous drop off. But with no obvious power and speed skills and only a BA decline in the future, taking him is out of the question.

As you may be able to tell, I am a big believer in the principle that all things will regress to the mean. When making these decisions, I felt that the specter of change was a huge factor, much more important than their actual performance to date. On skills, these guys are all roughly similar; if they weren’t I suppose they wouldn’t be free agents. I think many players might be surprised that an owner might just cut a guy who was performing well. The Fantasy General has to sometimes make tough decisions that are unorthodox, and in the absence of any trade market certainly cutting a player is preferable to riding him down to the depths. If you can’t sell high sometimes you must “cut” high.

Sun Tzu wrote about the mixing of orthodox and unorthodox strategies. More on this in a later post. For now, the result was that I had a choice between Church and Young. This is a perfect crystallization of whether one is risk averse or not. Church appears to be a sure thing; Young has higher upside with much more risk.

So what is the context? This is an important factor for all such decisions. My team is first overall in the league in points, and in first place in the division, but has a 6-4 record, and no team in the league has more than 7 wins. So the context is that although the team looks good right now there are many reasons to think that the position is much more vulnerable than it might appear. Generally, a strong contender eschews risk; a team looking to make a move embraces it, and this is another principle I will address in depth in a later post. So in theory, my choice should be Church.

However, given that there are many teams close in overall record. There are three at 6-4, one at 7-3, five at 5-5. The winner of each division and the next three best records make the playoffs, with overall points as a tiebreaker. So the fact that I am first in points is important right now. But the next two teams in points are in my division and both are only one game behind at 5-5. So my position is not strong but weak.

Given the context, I thought that Young was a better play; if he hits his upside then that will be worth more than church in overall points, and given the closeness of each team that could be a deciding factor. So Young was the pickup. Will it work?? Well, who knows, as I have written before the process matters not the result. But it will sure make me feel better about it if the result is good.