I played last year for the first time. It was my first time and all of my friends first time as well. I had Runs Hits HRs RBIs SB's Total Bases and Avg. I added Total Bases last year because I wanted to reward extra base hits. But I dont think that stat worked out very well. One team got ahead and no one ever caught them.
Ive heard that OPS is the best stat to use. It incorporates walks and extra base hits and power andhaving a good eye.
So what should I use? What about fielding % Id like to maybe try that. I dont think I want to use negative stats.
Its a tough call to decide which stats to use. Most leagues are 5x5. Five pitching (era, k's, saves, whip & wins) & five hitting (hits, avg., hr,runs and sb). Personally, I feel that is more than enough. When you begin to add total bases and other categories, they begin getting redundant and overlap. For example, if you get a guy who hits alot of dingers, hes already getting credit for every category, now your making them even more valuable if you are counting total bases. If anything, sluggers like Sosa, Thome and Sexson should be penalized for wiffing so much. 5X5 is more enough to have a fun and competitive league.
I am in a 12 team keeper and we have been using these stats for 3 yrs now. I love it. Makes you alot more careful of some of the players you would normally use.
Runs
Hits
Doubles
Triples
Home Runs
Runs Batted In
Stolen Bases
Walks
Strikeouts
Total Bases
Errors
Batting Average
On-base Percentage
Slugging Percentage
Pitching Appearances
Innings Pitched
Wins
Losses
Complete Games
Shutouts
Saves
Home Runs
Walks
Strikeouts
Holds
Earned Run Average
(Walks + Hits)/ Innings Pitched
Strikeouts per Nine Innings
I think OBP and SLG are much better indicators of a quality hitter than batting average. With these categories, Barry Bonds was the best player in our league last year (huge OBP and SLG) by a comfortable margin over Pujols (great OBP and SLG also). In my opinion, that's a legitimate result.
Personally, I wouldn't want to go back to using Batting Average. If I'd switch from using both OBP and SLG, I'd use OPS as a single-category replacement for Batting Average.
Roger Angell: I was talking with Bob Gibson and I said: 'Are you always this competitive?' He said: 'Oh, I think so. I got a three-year old daughter, and I've played about 500 games of tic-tac-toe with her and she hasn't beat me yet.'
I'm in a 6x6. In a concession to traditional versus stats guys, we kept BA and added OPS. I agree that OBP and SLG replacing BA is teh way I would prefer, but our compromise seems to work. OPs basically adds extra weight to the good overall hitters, so if it double counts, at least it double counts the things that should matter more.
On pitching we added holds to the traditional 5. I really like, because it brings a whole bunch of interesting pitchers into play and adds another element of strategy in to the mix. It also makes pitching staffs more like real baseball with starters, closers, and set-up guys.
I prefer 5x5 also. I could live with either Average or OPS as the 5th offensive category, all the others being standard. I think most leagues choose Average over OPS because it's the way it's always been done and it's easier to follow in the box scores (not that that's a good reason).
For pitching (wins, era, saves, whip and Ks). Of these 5 categories the one I dislike the most is saves. It's too easy to get a save when you didn't pitch that well. A better category would be Save percentage, but ratio categories tend to confuse people.
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by princethomas » Tue Jan 27, 2004 3:24 pm 
