After reading my article, Ron emailed me with a response. There is some interesting strategy and counter-intelligence here.
I had the great pleasure to hear from Ron Shandler upon reading my article on the Cabrera pick. One thing that regular readers know is that our primary focus on this site is the strategical aspect of fantasy baseball, and how to take the step of deliberately taking advantage of your opponents and their tendencies, as a general would do in war.
Occasionally I hear that this is hogwash, and that experts do not do this, or that it is overblown and that such strategical thinking is of limited value. Those who have read Sam Walker’s book Fantasyland, and recall the stories about conducting the auction, know that experts do in fact engage in this type of psychological warfare.
So it was with great relish that I read Ron’s explanation for his pick. Here is his email to me:
Patrick…
Well done. You might want to add a bit more insight to your blog…
Based on our most recent HQ projections, Wright was actually a better #1
pick than Cabrera (Ed. Note-on the day he did the draft-when I wrote my piece Cabrera was higher). But in a snake draft, where there is little opportunity
to “play the table,” I figured the only place I could conceivably have a
bit of fun was in the first round.So when I lucked into the #1 pick, I surveyed the other owners if anyone
thought that I shouldn’t pick A-Rod. Nearly everyone concurred that A-Rod
had to be #1. But for the reasons you ably noted, he was not my #1. So I
then confided in the owners who had the #2-#5 picks that I was going to
pick Wright, and explained why. That effectively sent them off scurrying to
plot their first picks.And then I picked Cabrera. I *love* counter-intelligence.
I knew I was giving up some SBs, but speed is not as scarce a commodity as
it had been, so I figured I could backfill speed later in the draft.And now you have… the rest of the story.
Great stuff from Ron. For those who commented on not using the first pick to get some speed, you have Ron’s take on the matter. This type of “counter-intelligence” can really alter your opponents’ strategies, and there are simply so many opportunities to take advantage of it, especially when you do live drafts or auctions.
13 responses so far ↓
1 Mike Podhorzer // Feb 21, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Awesome getting a personal response from Ron. However, doesn’t this just confirm that experts don’t actually draft in an expert draft (especially a mock) the way they normally would? He admitted he had Wright worth more, and basically the only reason he went with Cabrera was to “have a bit of fun” and mess with his opponents’ heads.
In a real draft, you wouldn’t give up value just to mess with your opponents’ heads, you’re going to want to draft the most valuable player, which in this case he believed was Wright.
2 Patrick DiCaprio // Feb 21, 2008 at 5:00 pm
But now when he does an actual expert draft, no one will have any idea what he is doing. Plus, he wasn’t REALLY giving up value, other than maybe $1 (the difference between Wright and Cabrera) which is really not giving up anything. But giving up $1 of value to throw off your opponents is clearly worth it.
The other key here is that he was unwilling to take A-Rod despite the general consensus, for the reasons I stated. Were it a real draft he still would have taken Cabrera number one, given the comment on “speed.”
3 Mike Podhorzer // Feb 21, 2008 at 5:36 pm
This is why I much prefer auctions. Ron actually was hurt by drafting first because he was forced to take his top player, which wasn’t A-Rod, yet would have been able to get great value (in his eyes) if he drafted from the 7th spot, for example, instead and drafted Miguel there.
So in a straight draft, it’s definitely preferable to draft in the middle spots if you disagree with the consensus top pick.
I’m probably going to be attending the Tout Wars AL draft Ron will be a part of, should be interesting to see if he drafts Cabrera, and for how much.
4 Brett // Feb 21, 2008 at 5:50 pm
I have a hard time buying your “ARod’s power is inconsistent” theory for not picking him #1.
If we want to be ignorant and look simply at HR, sure, they are inconsistent on a year to year basis, but his worst total (36) in the past 10 years is higher than Cabrera’s best (34). ARod’s FB% is consistently higher. His isolated power is higher.
In favor of Cabrera, his RBI totals will increase in Detroit (though not as much as some might think if he’s hitting 3rd with Granderson and Polanco and their good but not great OBPs in front of him).
Also you’d bet on Cabrera’s BA being ~.020 higher than ARod’s, but of course this is even less predictable than the HR numbers. For what it’s worth, Cabrera’s BABIP has been high recently.
And that’s not even mentioning speed. Projections are pretty consistently expecting ARod to have ~10-15 SBs more than Cabrera, and in a mixed league getting that from a power hitter is huge.
Given ARod’s power and speed, the chances of Cabrera out-earning him are small. Impossible? Of course not, but why bet on the longshot when the odds are even money?
And I don’t buy the “wanted to confuse my opponents” line at all. You know what the opponents are thinking? “Well, I pick #4, so I’m going to choose between guys like Santana, Wright, Cabrera, etc. Whoa - ARod is available? I’ll take him! I’m so confused!”
Now all that said, I have too much respect for Ron Shandler to think that there’s not something else going on.
Maybe he truly believes that ARod will hit 22 HR this year and that Cabrera will hit 5th and have 180 RBIs. But even if so, in that case it would probably be better to pick ARod and trade him.
A similar argument could be made for Wright (mainly around his speed) over Cabrera.
5 Jason Collette // Feb 21, 2008 at 6:42 pm
I’m with you on the auctions Mike - I like to be able to control my draft strategy and not have it affected by my draft slot. I’m looking forward to my local auction for Cabrera’s bid.
If you go to AL Tout, I’ll see you there. It was fun to watch that draft before I did the NL one the next day.
6 Patrick DiCaprio // Feb 21, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Jason and Mike, I definitely agree with auctions, in fact i really hate drafts and only do one draft league per year.
Brett, A-Rod’s inconsistency, and whether it is true or not is almost beside the point. One hallmark of a true expert is to come to independent comclusions and to act on them, as Ron did.
It is an interesting question. We are talking about the number one overall pick and whether A-Rod should be taken. His 2004 and 2006seasons are not worthy of the number one pick. His 2005 and 2007 seasons are. If you think you know which version we will get in 2008 you are a better man than I.
But Ron, albeit in the minority, has Cabrera projected for 36-131-.342/.417./609, which is better than A-Rod’s 2005 and 2007 and would be worthy of the number one pick. HQ’s reliability scores say that Cabrera has an 83 out of 100 “chance” of meeting that projection. A-Rod has a 44-132-.305/.400/.598 and only a 52 out of 100 reliability.
So the weight of Ron’s evidence is that they are roughly equal but cabrera is more likely to meet his number one pick stats than A-Rod. We can disagree about the accuracy but we cannot disagree on the fact that it is the actual projection and Ron acted on it.
7 Brett // Feb 21, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Patrick,
Thanks for the reply. If the projections say that Cabrera’s expected value is higher than ARod’s, then I can’t really argue with that.
My gut reactions based on the numbers you’ve quoted:
- I would put the chances of Cabrera hitting .342 at much lower than 83%. If the 83% is kind of an “aggregate” number (in the sense that it doesn’t necessarily mean an 83% chance of hitting .342 but there’s an 83% chance of his overall line being worth approximately the same as 36-131-.342), then I’d say the chances of him hitting over 36 HR aren’t high.
- I’m not familiar with the concept of the reliability score. To me it’s contradictory with the concept of a projection (by definition a weighted average). If ARod has a smaller chance of meeting his projection than Cabrera does, then his projection should be lowered. Put another way: does Ryan Howard have a chance of hitting 80 HR? Sure, so does Craig Counsell. So does Howard get a projection of 80 HR with a “reliability score” of 2? Why doesn’t Counsell get a projection of 80 HR with a reliabiltiy score of .000000001? No, they get a projection AND a reliability score, which makes no sense to me - do you get what I’m saying?
I think the problem is that the projections reflect a reasonable good-case scenario - health, performance, etc. The problem is that they don’t accurately reflect the chances of disaster or simply a relatively poor season.
Now, the problem with THAT is that you cannot project ANY player to get 120 RBI. But of course it’s silly to say that - we know that SOMEONE (or a few) will end up with more than that, and why not Cabrera or Howard?
Tom Tango has a great explanation at http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/forecasting-2006/
Some of the quotes are remarkably succint and insightful:
“You could come up with a reasonable list of 15 or 20 players that would lead the league in RBI. But, that’s not what we area trying to figure out. We are trying to come up with reasonable over/unders, numbers that you could find equal reasons where the player will over-perform and under-perform. Injuries, as we know with Bonds, can devastate any forecast.”
My point is that a projection needs to be a 50% weighted-average (or an over/under, as quoted above, even though that’s not precisely mathematically correct). PECOTA’s projections work like this.
Alright, I’m getting off topic.
Other than the above-mentioned problems, your numbers don’t mention SB which is one of the main points of my argument. Now we’re diverging into arguments about pricing theory, but simply put, let’s assume that the projections ARE correct. I think a 15 SB and 8 HR advantage (maybe ~3-4 SGP, for McGee fans) is worth more than a .040 BA advantage (2 SGP?). Maybe I’m wrong.
I could go on but I’ve bored everyone to tears already I’m afraid…
8 Patrick DiCaprio // Feb 21, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Brett, I put “chance” in quotes because it isn’t a percentage chance but a relative score, but the point is that Cabrera is more likely to hit his projection than A-Rod, per HQ.
Thanks for reading, this is a fascinating discussion.
9 digglahhh // Feb 21, 2008 at 10:14 pm
I’m assuming that the “reliability” metric is something of a misnomer.
We’re we talking reliability in it’s dictionary definition sense, it would make sense that A-Rod’s projection be altered to a higher reliability.
But that can’t be the way that it is used, because for that paradigm to hold, that is for there to be an true indicator of reliability, it would assume that there exists a 100% reliable prediction.
I’d assume that lowering A-Rod’s projections wouldn’t really alter the reliability of the projections at all.
I’m guessing the reliability metric is more of a measure of the player himself than of the numbers. Basically, if we think of the projection as an average, I’m reading the “reliability” as a standard deviation.
I could be totally wrong here, but that’s my interpretation. But, otherwise, I’d be in the giving a player both makes no sense camp w/ Brett. If you can increase the reliability by altering the project, why not do it. So, again, I can’t see it working that way.
10 Brett // Feb 22, 2008 at 2:27 am
Ok, I was thinking about it some more and I think I take back some of what I said about the reliability scores.
Perhaps the reliability score is a measure of a projection’s variance.
There are no arguments (I hope) that any projection is a weighted mean, but what we don’t know from the single mean is what went into that.
For instance (to keep it simple, I’ll use HR in place of a full line), Cabrera is projected for 36 HR, but perhaps there is an 80% chance that the total will be between 30 and 42.
Or make it even simpler (making up the numbers):
10% chance of 50
30% chance of 42
20% chance of 36
30% chance of 30
10% chance of 22
That would result in a weighted mean of 36.
I’m exagerrating here, but maybe ARod looks like:
50% 80 HR
50% 8 HR
So mean = 44 HR, but much higher variance. Or, if I’m interpreting the reliability score correctly, a lower one.
Now think intuitively about ARod and Cabrera’s HR totals, and this makes sense. ARod’s certainly fluctuate more.
So anyway, I buy the two numbers now.
I still don’t buy that ARod’s not as valuable as Cabrera, because even with the increased variance, the worst case isn’t much worse than Cabrera’s mean (for HR, and I believe BA and SB will just about cancel each other out).
What if I asked you to pick a number of HR for ARod, such that he has a 10% chance of hitting LESS than that number (and thus a 90% chance of hitting that number or more). Probably something in the low to mid 30s, I’d think (i.e. his worst in the last 12 years or so).
How about steals? Maybe 8 or 10?
My point is that ARod’s 10% worst numbers are not all that worse than Cabrera’s 50% numbers. As such, I just don’t see how Cabrera can be picked first. I’d give him about a 10% chance of out-earning ARod.
Ah..I need to learn to be a little more terse…sorry guys.
11 Mike Podhorzer // Feb 22, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Great discussion guys. Brett, digglahhh, good to see such intelligent people reading this blog! Anyway, I’m not looking at my Forecaster now, but I believe the Reliability Score is based on historical performance and the variation in the player’s stats.
So the score doesn’t have anything to do with his projection (which is why changing it won’t change the Rel Score), but rather that A-Rod has a wider range of past performance than Cabrera. So basically, Cabrera is more consistent, always hitting around 30 HRs and in the .320 range, whereas A-Rod has ranged from 35 HRs to 54 HRs and averages from .286 to .321.
Maybe Ron could quickly chime in, or I could check my Forecaster when I get home and see if it has a better explanation.
12 Patrick DiCaprio // Feb 22, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Brett, your understanding of the reliability score is correct. It is essentially a measure of the variance in the projection.
13 digglahhh // Feb 23, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Not to get back into whether reliability scores and projections contradict each other, but…
Isn’t it somewhat paradoxical to both extol the virtues of a player’s consistency and then project him to set career highs across the board?
On the other hand, the prediction isn’t totally egregious, and I guess you could argue that one of his past season’s performances taking place in the context that his 2008 season will (line-up, ballpark, etc.) could have already produced such a season.
Regardless, the crux of this pick isn’t Cabrera; it’s A-Rod. A-Rod has had numerous seasons that Cabrera can’t eclipse; A-Rod’s career SLG is higher than Cabrera’s single season best! So, to take the plunge on this pick you have to be convinced A-Rod will have a season that rivals his worst. Additionally, you have to assume Cabrera reaches new heights or repeats his best and it translates better. You need to have faith that two things will happen. On the other hand, if you pick A-Rod, you simply have to have faith that what happens almost every year will happen again.
There’s an anti-Occam’s-Razor-esque element of choosing a theory that makes more than the minimum amount of assumptions here. Though, I see the counterargument about the assumptions and conventional wisdom basically being the tail that’s wagging the dog. In essence, I assume his reply would be that he made the system precisely to quantify all that which we are speaking of arbitrarily.
Regardless of what the projections say, I still don’t like this from a risk/reward point of view.
I appreciate the integrity of sticking by your system, and the principle of independence as a pillar of expertise, but I’d counter with discretion being the better part of valor. Didn’t Bill James do that regarding Win Shares and his ultimate ranking of Biggio?
As was previously mentioned, why not just draft A-Rod and then trade him to Cabrera’s owner for Cabrera and something else. They play the same position and have similar skill sets, the Cabrera owner couldn’t object on the grounds of messing up his team’s balance or roster flexibility. Just make sure you draft about twenty “extra” steals also.
Bottom line is even if his unconventional pick proves wise, he didn’t maximize the potential profit of having that wisdom.
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