Top Position Players By VORP

by faketeams on May 22, 2008 1:01 PM EDT in Baseball Comment 2 comments

There has certainly been an outage of offense in the American League this season. The questions of why and for how long remain unanswered. Here is a list of the Top 3 players by position using Baseball Prospectus' VORP statistic. Note how much difference there is just between the top player and the third-best one. This would lead me to believe a Stars & Scrubs versus a balance approach may be the best fantasy strategy. Agree?

Also, note how poorly the OF VORP leaders due relative to the other position players. The top VORP is lower. This supports the contention that the OF is "shallow" relative to the other positions. However, the drop-off is not as dramatic. There could be more depth in the OF relative to other positions. This supports a strategy that focuses on acquiring the top positions player at the expense of OFs. Agree?

Finally, look at the top three DHs. This helps epxlain the drop in AL production this season. That extra hitter has struggled mightily. I bet the answer to this question goes a ways to explaining the production outage in the AL.

NAME	TEAM	POS	AVG	OBP	SLG	VORP
Brian McCann	ATL	c	0.331	0.393	0.606	21.6
Geovany Soto	CHN	c	0.314	0.414	0.601	20.2
Ryan Doumit	PIT	c	0.35	0.382	0.573	12.4
Lance Berkman	HOU	1b	0.382	0.463	0.763	44.7
Albert Pujols	SLN	1b	0.351	0.479	0.602	31.1
Kevin Youkilis	BOS	1b	0.32	0.386	0.584	20.4
Dan Uggla	FLO	2b	0.323	0.402	0.695	32.2
Chase Utley	PHI	2b	0.31	0.387	0.63	27.8
Brandon Phillips	CIN	2b	0.299	0.342	0.531	16.5
Rafael Furcal	LAN	ss	0.366	0.448	0.597	26.1
Hanley Ramirez	FLO	ss	0.304	0.392	0.515	23
Miguel Tejada	HOU	ss	0.34	0.373	0.518	20.6
Chipper Jones	ATL	3b	0.41	0.482	0.687	37.8
David Wright	NYN	3b	0.287	0.388	0.52	16
Aramis Ramirez	CHN	3b	0.285	0.406	0.513	14.4
Ryan Ludwick	SLN	rf	0.336	0.418	0.733	24.8
Josh Hamilton	TEX	cf	0.328	0.375	0.599	23.8
Nate McLouth	PIT	cf	0.298	0.382	0.602	23.1
Matt Holliday	COL	lf	0.324	0.414	0.528	19.5
Carlos Quentin	CHA	lf	0.294	0.408	0.588	19
Pat Burrell	PHI	lf	0.271	0.413	0.542	16.4
Milton Bradley	TEX	dh	0.317	0.425	0.566	19
Hideki Matsui	NYA	dh	0.297	0.381	0.458	12.5
David Ortiz	BOS	dh	0.249	0.353	0.469	11.8

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Comments

While I’m not arguing against the Stars&Scrubs strategy, raise your hand if you’re top 3-rated outfielders were Ludwick, Hamilton, and McLouth.

Who had Larry Jones over David Wright?

I’m proud to say that I targeted, and own, both Hamilton and Quentin in my AL-only, auction roto team, and picked up Quentin at a mere two bucks during the auction. I’d be lying if I said I expected him to put forth the 5x numbers he has thus far.

You know Selig? Ombudsman.

by rolub on May 22, 2008 4:34 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

don't agree

On stars and scrubs: #1 – things will even out. #2 – how do you know who the star will be. Would you have taken Berkman or Chipper as your top-rated stars? (like rolub said)

On the OF VORP leaders: #1 – it’s random, small-sample size. #2 – by definition, VORP will be lower for OF because replacement level in the OF is high (it’s also high at 1B, of course, which makes Berkman’s fast start even more incredible).

So no, OF is not shallow. Actually in an AL or NL-only league, there’s generally no position scarcity at any position except catcher. In mixed leagues, there’s a sliding scale.

Really, drafting for a particular position is foolish. You should draft players who are the best value, once position scarcity is figured in. If you do this correctly and it means you value catchers or shortstops more highly (and more accurately) than your leaguemates, then drafting top catchers or shortstops is the right move.

Finally you must keep in mind that major league replacement level is not the same as roto replacement level. VORP in general is not a very useful statistic to measure roto production.

by bobo123 on May 22, 2008 5:14 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs