2007 In Review

Before we launch into 2008, let us reflect upon 2007. With respect to MLB, I will not acknowledge that 2007 existed, else I would be forced to confront the Mets epic collapse. For BPGPL, however, there is something worth exploring -- the impact of the auction. The common wisdom for Rotisserie Baseball is that the draft/auction is only one piece of the puzzle, since there are significant transactions that determine a winner throughout the season. Thus, I set out to map out expected results for each team as if the original roster was maintained all season.

Assuming everyone was drawing on the same fountain of knowledge, I used the Baseball Prospectus projections from the beginning of the season. A few players did not have projections due to their status as rookies or retirees, so I just threw in their actual totals at the end of the season, which was generally negligible except for Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa. The bottom line is that the results were fairly clustered, but the top two teams projected to be the same as the actual.

		Actual		Projected
Replacement Levelers		93		67
Boston Doodles		72.5		62
Maniacal Mets		65		53
Smooth Segues		64		42
TINSTAAPP		63		59
PECOTA Monkeys		62		62
Makyuu no Shoutai		52		56
donkeys		34.5		51
LeetSauceII		23.5		45
Norcal Peaceniks		20.5		53

The other things of note are that the PECOTA Monkeys were projected to finish tied for 2nd, but fell to the bottom half of the league. Meanwhile Smooth Segues spent $3.00 on Moises Alou, Sammy Sosa and Kenny Lofton (featuring a combined 120 years of experience on planet earth) and got 190 runs, 41 hrs, 179 RBIs and 26 SBs. That was good enough to take a strongly projected 10th place and turn it into a finish close to being in-the-money. Everyone should be on notice that Bobby Bonilla will likely go for more than $1.00 in 2008.

Special mention goes out to the Maniacal Mets who spent a whopping $1.00 on Chien-Ming Wang in the middle of the auction. That was a point where everyone else could have easily bid higher, but BP projected bad things for Wang, so why would would we?

And lastly, several people called me out during the auction for focusing on high OBP and SB players while ignoring power hitters and pitchers. Surely enough, I finished #1 in both of those categories...and last or next-to-last in HRs, ERA, WHIP and Wins. Whoops.