Thursday, March 22, 2007

Not So Easy, But Worth the Effort

So I just mapped out my strategy for the first 3 days of the season. This stuff is not so easy. Despite there being only 1 game on the 1st, it took me almost 1/2 hour to plan things out through day 3. The process involved looking at the MLB schedule for each day, and figuring out how good a lineup I could realistically expect to put together by rotating players on and off of my team throughout each day.

Going through this process for the first time made me realize two things:
1. Very few people are going to put this kind of effort into Rotohog.
2. Its going to be possible to put together some incredibly good lineups on a daily basis.

In other words, those who put in the hard work are going to absolutely CRUSH everyone else at this game. The folks at Rotohog are marketing the game as putting the skill back into fantasy baseball...and I think they're going to succeed beyond their wildest expectations. There is no chance at all that whoever wins this thing is anything but an excellent player. On the other hand, I expect a LOT of complaining after the fact that the game rewards the wrong skills...and expect that for 2008 some adjustments will be made to the rules.

4 comments:

Happybooker said...

It's going to be interesting to see how rational the market is. In theory, every top player's value should decline with each game. This is apparent with pitchers, assuming that the early prices were reasonably set.

Had there been a pitcher whose cost was $100, the cost per anticipated point would be points/100. Each start should account for approximately 3.5% of the year's production. (It's obviously not a smooth curve, but over the course of the season...) For the second game, if there were no change in the price, the value would be points (.965)/100.

My guess is that the market won't work that way. If a top performer, say Santana, has a great opening game, the price should fall the day after. If he has a normal deviation relatively weak start, the price should stay the same or rise marginally. My guess is that the market will perform in just the opposite way.

Clearly, an underpriced pitcher (I'd suggest Adam Wainwright, for example) will not be subject to this kind of thing. This really does hang on the original price being set accurately.

The effects on hitters is also less crucial because they tend to start 140-150 times per season rather than 30 times. Even so, after a month, forgone production should have a negative effect on well set original prices, particularly on top end hitters.

What drafting strategy makes sense in terms of this analysis of production/price and and anticipated irrational market?

Happybooker said...

Does anyone know what the policy is going to be on athletes who are not yet part of the Rotohog universe? Alex Gordon, for example, would be a fantastic buy at $.50 but I don't see him around.

Alex said...

happybooker - I'll find out the answer to your question about players who haven't been added yet and post it in the next day or two.

I think your assumptions about what should happen with valuations are wrong. I'll try to write a post discussing why tomorrow.

Adam said...

Hey Alex, do you have any information on the transaction costs, i.e., the bid/ask spread, other than the one example in their FAQ? From your post and your one a couple weeks ago, it sounds like you're going to rotate a lot of players off and on your team on a regular basis and it seems like that could slowly erode your talent level/budget.