Rounding Third: Hitting Category Targets

Category targets are a slippery and somewhat controversial targets in the fantasy sports world. All too often league context directs what you need to do to compete, even in a standard 5x5 roto categorical league. The liveliness of the ball has obliterated our target numbers in two of the last three years, to boot. So one size (i.e., categorical targets) doesn't necessarily fit all, and there's a risk in some cases where a player will look at the projected stats mid-draft and think they are all set, when in reality they need to keep accumulating that category.

Nonetheless, it's worth knowing what it took to achieve our goals in last season's context, especially when you are off in a particular category. Sometimes I think, "I'm light in steals" during a draft, but that might be it. I want to know if I'm one rabbit off, or do I need to make it a significant priority to find multiple speedy players in the rest of the draft. That's especially pertinent in overall contests, where one can't simply punt a category because its top providers don't appear to offer value for the cost.

As with last year, I'm listing the 80th/70th/50th/20th percentiles for each category in the NFBC and TGFBI (The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational). The general rule of thumb is that you need to average around the 80th percentile in each category to win your league and 70th percentile to cash in your league. Some leagues are more stratified than others, so in some cases you'll need to hit the 75th percentile to cash, or, in some cases, as low as the 65th percentile. This also gives you an idea of what you're up against if you intend to punt a category —the threshold in every other category rises accordingly.

I'm going to do something a little different with this year's article. Instead of just listing the targets based on 2019 data, I'm also going to include the 2018 data to give you a side-by-side comparison. We don't know what the batted ball environment is going to be like in 2020 — all we have are guesses with varying degrees of education. But if you want to factor in some regression to the results from last year's Happy Fun Ball, at least you have a starting place.

We'll attack the hitting categories in this article and handle the pitching separately.

Batting Average

* OC = RotoWire Online Championship
* ME = NFBC Main Event
* TGFBI = The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational

Batting average was up across the board in each event. That tracks with league-wide stats in the game — in 2018, the overall MLB batting average was .248 (down from .255 in 2017), but it jumped back up to .252 in 2019. The roster format in TGFBI was changed in 2019 to mirror that of the NFBC, so it makes sense that the differences between it and the Main Event, both 15-team leagues, were ironed out.

Runs

So I have to admit, I was surprised in both the extent of the difference between 2019 and 2018, and the gap between the Main Event and TGFBI. I don't really have a good explanation for the latter this year, given the teams are playing with the same rules and platform. Even if the proposition that more teams stop trying in TGFBI is true, that wouldn't explain the gap among the top percentiles. If anything, you would think that the top teams in TGFBI would post higher totals, given they presumably had less competition in the free-agent market.

As for the big jump in runs scored, perhaps I shouldn't have been so surprised. If you look at the progression in runs scored per team per game since 2013, the jump in the runs we need in our various leagues is commensurate with that in baseball overall: 4.17, 4.07, 4.25, 4.48, 4.65, 4.46, and then 4.83 last year.

We, I, spend a lot of time talking about the jump in power in the game, and I'll continue to do so here. But we don't spend enough time discussing the counting stats in our game. In the 12-team Online Championship, you needed to get 87.5 runs per each 14 offensive slots to hit the 80th percentile. That's nearly 10 runs more per offensive slot than in 2018.

Home Runs

And here it is — this is what it looks like in the fantasy world when you play in a record-setting home run season. In two of our three contests, the 2018 80th percentile falls short of the 2019 20th percentile. Instead of needing 22 homers from each offensive slot in the RotoWire Online Championship, you needed 27 per slot to hit the 80th percentile. And remember, that's including two catcher slots. In my season primer for the RotoWire Magazine (hitting newsstands now!), I discuss one of the major implications of the power-rich environment — owning the jackrabbits that don't hit for power (Dee Gordon, Billy Hamilton, Mallex Smith, etc...) — is that much more difficult, as they're actively hurting you in a plentiful category. If you're seeing the likes of Nolan Arenado, Alex Bregman or Pete Alonso slipping in your draft, it's connected to this reason. You need speed at some point, but it's better to get that speed with players who also hit for some power.

RBI

It comes as no surprise that the gains in our RBI targets are similar to the jumps in runs scored and homers hit, as the categories are intertwined. In the 12-team leagues, our RBI-per slot target for the 80th percentile jumped from 75 to 84.

Stolen Bases

There were only 2,280 stolen bases in all of baseball, down from 2,474 the year before, at a pace of only 0.47 stolen bases per MLB game. Unless the ball gets deadened considerably, I don't see this trend turning around. The value of each out is increasing, and thus teams are increasingly reticent to spend them on the basepaths with marginal runners. Moreover, the payoff for stealing a base is lower now, too — there are fewer singles due to the shift, and fewer balls in play period. Getting into scoring position from first to second or from second to third means less than it used to in scoring more runs.

As alluded to in the comment above about home runs, that also means the pure stolen base guys are worth less to us, and they're also increasingly scarce in the game. And yet, I've continually fallen short in this category in recent years, and it's made me really revisit what I'm doing in the early rounds of drafts. To that end, I've been trying to find the 10 to 20 stolen base guys in the first 10 rounds, all things being equal, so I don't have to reach for someone like Delino DeShields Jr. — only to see him lose playing time. And then I can safely afford someone like Jorge Soler, Edwin Encarnacion or another no-speed power hitter later.

I want to emphasize that these targets are necessarily backward-looking, so maybe instead of even using the word "target" instead we should categorize them as previous milestones or some other verbiage. They are a loose framework to help you organize your team-build, and naturally the run-scoring environment can change each year — especially if the ball does indeed become less lively. Good luck plotting your draft strategy, and we'll discuss the pitcher framework next!