How Would You Build a Sabermetric Categorical League?

[StlSluggers]

I was having a discussion with a fellow Cafe'r today, and I got to wondering:

If you were going to make a categorical league featuring only sabermetric stats, what would it be?

Just thinking it over, you lose Runs and RBI for hitters, right? SB itself couldn't work anymore, right?. SB-CS or SB-2*CS, maybe? What about for pitchers? You have to lose Wins and Saves, right? Would QS be viable, or is that not considered a sabermetric-type stat? Would K/9 be a better choice than K alone?

[BritSox]

Use EqA instead of BA. That takes into account steals. Total bases has to be in there too. QS is SABR-friendly enough. I wouldn't use K-rate, because it isn't particularly SABR to ignore the value of IP. Unless you make it an entirely peripherals-based league, and have IP as a cat, along with K/9, BB/9 and HR/9. SAbermetrics does really like K/BB, so that's a possibility, though then you can't really have WHIP, as you're double-counting walks.

Would it be possible to get WPA as a cat? That would rule.

[StlSluggers]

Would it be possible to get WPA as a cat? That would rule.

WPA is nice, but you'd need a way to marginalize it for people who play longer than others. A reliever that comes in during a highly volatile situation would give a huge boost to WPA without doing much.

You could have a clutch category using WPA and LI.

[BritSox]

A reliever that comes in during a highly volatile situation would give a huge boost to WPA without doing much.

Yeah, but then again, if you're removing SV or HLD as categories, this would mean relievers have some value.

[noseeum]

Win shares?

[Tavish]

You can't make a categorical league that will be all that true to sabremetric findings unless you weight each individual category differently. As a basic example if you had 2 hitting categories OBP and SLG, you would need to have leading the OBP category worth more than leading the SLG category. You would need to give the first place team in the SLG category, who has a lead of .100 points, way more points than the second place team who leads the next best by .005 points.

You are better off just using a point system, since they are so much more superior anyways.

[DaQ]

Hmm...this is odd. I was having the EXACT same conversation with a fellow Cafe member today as well.

Basically, I am trying to create a 5X5 league for my college friends and myself. I had the categories as OBP, HR, RBI, R, SB-CS for hitters and the QS, Saves, ERA, WHIP and K for pitchers.

Upon my conversation with JT, I could change it to OBP, SLG, RBI, R, SB-CS for hitters and then QS, Saves, ERA, WHIP and K/9 for pitchers.

Any thoughts on which produces a better 5X5 league? I checked on RotoTimes and both systems don't affect things too much in terms of change.

* As of now, I have it OBP, R, HR, RBI, SB-CS and QS, Saves, ERA, WHIP and K's. I feel OBP>BA since it counts both hits and walks. As for pitchers, K/9 hurts spot-starting and surely helps relievers, but I feel it puts too much emphasis on relievers (I checked a site and using K/9 makes Joe Borowski>Brandon Webb) and QS is more indicative of a SP's performance than wins.

[Absolutely Adequate]

I've looked into this and, as far as I can tell, points leagues would be the best possible way to do this. They are simply more customizable.

http://www.fantasybaseballcafe.com/foru ... hp?t=86494
http://www.fantasybaseballcafe.com/foru ... hp?t=97135

Two past discussions that may help a little.

[DaQ]

Well, if I was making a very, very competitive league, it would be points with an auction draft, and it would be a dynasty league. However, I doubt many college students are going to join a league like that, especially when the auction itself will last around five or six hours.

Therefore, I came up with roto. I think roto requires a total team effort to win, and I won't hear complaints from half the league about why they couldn't get Pujols.

5X5 seems simple enough. Using OBP technically includes six categories, and the pitching ones are mainly the more known statistics (with the exception of QS, though it is getting more popular).

I'm not trying to make a very sophisticated league here, so I think what I have should be ok. Any suggestions though are definitely welcome.

[JTWood]

I've looked into this and, as far as I can tell, points leagues would be the best possible way to do this. They are simply more customizable.

AA, I love you. <img src=/forums/images/smiles/kiss.gif>

Everyone read this? Points. That's right. Points. I'm changing the title of this thred to read "How Would You Build the Perfect League?"