How Much Is A Fantasy Player Worth?

It seems than more and more often, managers are starting to abandon certain stats in favor of others. Home runs are becoming a rarity while stolen bases seem to be on the rise. This had lead to managers attempting to gain as much power as possible in the early rounds and spending late round picks on players like Cameron Maybin or Emilio Bonifacio to get their stolen bases. How much does having a player who provides no power affect his value? How much does a player with no speed affect you?

While attempting to judge positional scarcity, I started looking at the league average stats of players. There were a few obvious trends that you would expect such as shortstops hitting for less power than other positions or 1st basemen having less speed than outfielders. What I did was calculate the positional average of 6 main categories: Hits, Runs, Home Runs, Runs Batted In, Stolen Bases, Walks. Depending on your league settings, you can modify these categories. Average is tough to quantify and give a set value, so I used hits. It won't always give an accurate representation of player value because it is entirely dependent on plate appearances. However, if a player misses time due a freak injury that you feel has no impact on his future abilities, you can extrapolate his stats out of a full season.

The values are after the jump.

Remember that these formulas have no bearing on the real life value of a player. These values are for the 2011 season, and you will see changes in these values as the positional averages vary from season to season. Fortunately, they shouldn't vary be massive amounts. These formulas are based on every at bat taken by a player at the given position. If you are in a smaller league (10-12 teams), editing the player field to just the top 15 or so players for the infield positions may be more helpful as they are the only ones that would be starting in the league.

There are a few slight issues with the system. One is that catchers, 1st basemen and 3rd basemen would get an insane boost over another for having just one stolen base extra. Since catchers, 1st basemen and 3rd basemen do not steal that many bases as a whole, stolen bases is removed from their equation. Adding an arbitrary number of about +15 would be more accurate.

H = Hits

HR = Home Runs

R = Runs

RBI = Runs Batted In

SB = Stolen Bases

BB = Walks

C = 1.045H + 8.176HR + 2.248R + 2.008RBI+ 2.550BB (+15SB)

1B = 0.9790H + 6.830HR + 2.117R + 1.607RBI + 2.394BB (+15SB)

2B = 0.9909H + 13.149HR + 2.031R + 2.443RBI + 11.8SB + 3.187BB

3B = 0.9909H + 10.181HR + 2.131R + 2.088RBI + 3.076BB (+15SB)

SS = 0.9756H + 15.375HR + 2.066R + 2.574RBI + 9.5SB + 3.363BB

OF = 0.9773H + 8.705HR + 1.911R + 2.156RBI + 8.7SB + 2.784BB

The idea behind this is to accurately judge a player's value based on his position. Yes, Matt Kemp outperformed Troy Tulowitzki by a large margin last season in every category, but was it as much as most of us think?

Troy Tulowitzki = 0.9756(162) + 15.375(30) + 2.066(81) + 2.574(105) + 9.5(9) +3.363(59) = 1340.8302 points

Matt Kemp = 0.9773(195) + 8.705(39) + 1.911(115) + 2.156(126) + 8.7(40) + 2.784(74) = 1575.5055 points

As you can see, finding a high quality shortstop is a lot harder than finding a quality outfielder, so Tulowitzki gets a bonus as the players around him as not as good. These formulas work for all players, and if you want to see how Kinsler stacks up against Longoria, all you have to do is sub in the values for the appropriate position.

I'm sure many people will question this thought process, because it is far from perfect, and I'm not denying that by any means. I'd just like to prove that positional scarcity is real and that it can be quantified, and hopefully this accomplishes that.

Or have I totally lost it?