Collette Calls: Scoring Tweaks

One of the requirements we have to fulfill in order to participate in Tout Wars each season is taking part in the weekly Tout Table topics. We aren't required to participate on every topic, but it is strongly encouraged. The benefit of the exercise is that the readers get insights on a variety of topics from 20+ industry writers each week, and this week's topic about scoring changes certainly had a high level of participation. I encourage you to read the entire piece to see what myself and 31 others had to say on the topic once you finish reading this piece as I break down my particular contribution to the conversation:

Expand the Saves category to some combination of SV + H or eliminating wins and saves & going with IP and SV+H+W as replacements. Too many pitchers are undesirable based on roles due to limitations of legacy scoring.

I am serious, because I long to play in a league which gets away from the standard scoring categories for pitching, as those no longer align with the reality of modern baseball. The original Rotisserie league began with with the core four of wins, saves, ERA and WHIP, and strikeouts were later added to the fold to get us the traditional 5x5 leagues most still enjoy today. Each of the eight leagues I play in this season uses those same five pitching categories, but I am hoping to find some league where we can change the status quo for pitching. Joe Sheehan touched on the same point in his comments in the roundtable when he desired to "find more ways to shape fantasy rosters to map to real baseball's usage patterns." 

We enter the draft season focused on starters and closers, and we only look at the arms in between when speculating on them being closers. 30 teams carrying 13 pitchers gives us 390 draftable pitchers in a 15-team mixed league on draft day, yet we are still drafting for nine pitching spots for most leagues, leaving 66 percent on the free agent pile once the regular phase of the draft ends. A large percentage of those will remain there most of the season because the standard scoring system lessens their fantasy value unless that reliever is pitching frequently with strong ratios and strikeouts in a middle relief role. 

Using our Earned Auction Values tool, and eliminating all relievers with more than five saves, 21 pitchers have a positive dollar value in 15-team standard mixed league formats:

These pitchers have some combination of excellent ratios and strong strikeout rates or have vultured a fair amount of wins this season. These 21 pitchers represent just eight percent of the aforementioned free agent pitcher pool. Most, if not all, of these names were undrafted during the regular phase of a draft. I know this because most of them were end-game $1 relievers in single-league formats, if they were even drafted. Those 21 plus 32 other relievers give us a total of 53 relievers currently earning positive dollar values under standard pitching formats. Our tool doesn't allow me to combine saves, holds, and wins into a singular category, but combining just saves and holds gives us additional pitchers turning a positive dollar value on the season. While that still leaves a large percentage of pitchers in the free agent pool, that is still an extra pitcher out there returning value in a "solds" league who is otherwise a non-factor in standard scoring leagues. The table below shows the change in player values going from the traditional saves to saves+holds. Effective relievers such as A.J. Minter, Cionel Perez, Brad Boxberger, Anthony Bass, Evan Phillips and Alex Lange gain value while the traditional closer values are pulled down

Meanwhile, we have 76 starting pitchers with positive dollar values in the standard scoring categories this season, led by Justin Verlander returning a $30 value in 15-team mixed league formats, with 15 other hurlers returning at least $20 of earned value this season. Changing the scoring from wins to innings pitched total adds 19 additional pitchers returning positive dollar values this season. This change has more of an impact than the change on relief pitchers, as it takes several negative earners and turns them into at least a non-negative impact. The following pitchers improve from having no value or negative value in standard scoring formats to neutral or positive value with IP replacing wins:

Many of these guys are on bad teams and are usually streaming options in standard scoring formats but now have some value in IP leagues where they are not penalized by their physical or collegial surroundings. Conversely, the top-end pitchers are not as impacted as the relievers were, with only one pitcher — Tony Gonsolin — losing as much as $5 in value:

I play in many leagues, some with some staunch Rotisserie conservatives who will never consider these moves and others where the group is more willing to adjust to the changing times in the real game. In Tout Wars, we've incorporated OBP and a swingman role over the years while experimenting with other categories in certain leagues within the Tout Wars kingdom. LABR and NFBC continue to hold to the traditional 5x5 formats and I would be surprised if either changed in the near future. You should consider this conversation in your local leagues this winter to help increase the number of attractive players in the player pool. Just these two simple changes alter the valuation of more than 50 pitchers who otherwise spend most of the season languishing on the free agent pile.