value by dollar projections at USA Today

[Cooner]

http://fantasybaseball.usatoday.com/ind ... rojections

Ok, so this site was recommended on another thread, and I"ve been using their projections to set up my rankings (plan on adding other projections and altering myself, but wanted to get things set up).

With their projections, I made my own rankings, and noticed that their lists sorted by dollar value didn't work with their projections. For instance:

Kelvim Escobar Ana 205 14 0 4.1300 1.3610 188 2.38 -0.49 $5.90
Zack Greinke KC 195 12 0 3.5500 1.2000 147 3.34 -0.5 $5.82

name team IP W SV ERA WHIP K K/BB "total points" value

Note Greinke has Escobar in era, whip and K/BB easily, losing only by 2 wins and a few Ks. Yet Escobar has a better dollar value. Doing my own method of using standard deviations to calcluate how much each player contributes, I have Greinke ahead by quite a bit (again, all assuming these projections).

Any thoughts on how they do their calculations?

[Pogotheostrich]

I'm not sure how they do their calculations but 40 Ks is more than a few.

[trevisc]

you also have to think about the fact that Escobar has been pitching for a while now and has a more predictable track record then Greinke. I would guess that you are paying a little extra for less risk.

[DieHardCubbie]

Any thoughts on how they do their calculations?

With Grienke being projected at almost a point higher...I don't see where they are coming up with their dollar values at...unless like Trev said, risk is factored in...

[bigjimblue]

Maybe they value him more because they considered it a keeper league.

[Cooner]

taking the mean of the projections of the top 90-odd starting pitchers, and then considering standard deviations from those means, ie giving each player a point for being one standard deviation above the mean in a given catagory and -1 point for each s.d. below the mean and adding, I get

Grienke: 0.67 0.39 -0.21 -0.54 0.39 0.62 0.83 0.98 2.66
Escobar: 0.83 0.79 0.77 0.96 1.19 -0.44 -0.69 -1.1 -0.79

for: IP, W, ERA, WHIP, K, K/BB, weighted ERA, weighted WHIP, total

where total is the sum of W, K, K/BB, weighted ERA, and weighted WHIP.

that's why i said their projections have Greinke well above Escobar


edit: i may have found my problem... i think i'm basing these std devs from the mean of all pitchers, relievers and starters. Therefore, Escobar's K difference is down-weighted since Greinke is still well over the mean number of Ks. I did it that way to try and compare starters and relievers' contributions, but that doesn't seem to be the way to go...

if i only consider starting pitchers, then the standard deviation of Ks is going to be much smaller, so Escobar's 40 more Ks counts much more. As both relievers and starters have fairly similar ERAs/WHIP, it's more narrowly peaked, and the std dev is smaller, so Greinke's advantages are worth more.

The problem with this approach is that it screws up the relievers... MR who have a few wins projected get big points for those few wins, because it's many deviaitons away from the mean number of reliever wins.